Right now, somewhere in your garden or maybe on your windowsill, there is a basil plant growing faster than you can eat it. This is not a problem. This is a gift.

My grandmother grew basil in old terra cotta pots along the side of the house in Marano, the ones with chips on the rim that she never threw away because, as she said, they still hold dirt fine. She would send me out as a boy to pick leaves for lunch and tell me, pinch from the top, always from the top, so the plant keeps growing bushy instead of tall and skinny. I still do this. Every time.

Most people stop at pesto. And pesto is beautiful. A proper Genovese pesto, pounded by hand in a marble mortar, the olive oil slowly turning emerald as the basil releases its oil into the pine nuts and the garlic and the Parmigiano, that is one of the great achievements of human cooking. I will fight anyone who puts cream in it. But basil has more to give, and a good roundup of 26 basil recipes from AOL makes the case better than I can.

The range is what I love. Basil on a margherita pizza, that is obvious. But also basil in a watermelon salad, torn over ripe tomatoes with flaky salt and good olive oil, blended into lemonade, tucked inside summer rolls. The herb plays with sweet and savory both, which is something Italian cooking has known forever but American kitchens are starting to run with in directions that surprise me.

A few things to keep in mind. Never, and I mean never, chop basil with a dull knife. You bruise the leaves and they turn black within minutes, and that bruised flavor is bitter and muddy. Stack the leaves, roll them into a little cigar, and slice into thin ribbons with a sharp blade. Chiffonade, they call it. It takes ten seconds and makes everything look like it came from a restaurant.

And add basil at the end. If you cook it too long the volatile oils that make it smell like summer disappear. You lose the soul of the herb. A few seconds of heat wakes it up. Anything more and you are killing it.

Please, for the love of everything good, do not put it in the refrigerator. Basil hates the cold. The leaves go black and the plant acts like it is dying, because basically it is. Keep it on the counter, stems in a glass of water like a bouquet, change the water every day or two. It will last a week easy, sometimes longer.

The 26 recipes I linked above treat basil like a main character, not a garnish. Tear it by hand over a bowl of strawberries with balsamic vinegar. Blend it with olive oil and freeze it in ice cube trays for January, when you open your freezer and suddenly smell July. Put whole leaves between slices of tomato and fresh mozzarella and let summer do the rest.

Good food does not need to be expensive or complicated. It needs patience and care and sometimes just a plant that is growing faster than you can keep up with.