Basil Syrup

Put the water for boiling in a pot over high heat. If you have a lid, put it on the pot, so it heats faster.

Allow the water to come to a boil. Before proceeding to the next step, be sure the water is boiling vigorously, and that your ice water is stationed within arm's reach of the boiling pot. This way transfering the basil from the boiling water to the ice water will be easy.

Add the basil to the water, moving it around slightly in order to submerge and blanch all the basil evenly. It is important to do this for no more than the 30 seconds allotted here or both the flavor and color of the basil will worsen.

Use tongs to remove the basil from the boiling water and immediately thrust it into the ice water. This stops the cooking of the basil, setting the color to a vibrant green.

Remove the basil from the ice water by hand and gently squeeze excess water out by hand. Continue removing excess water by gently squeezing the basil in a paper towel or two. There's no need to get it perfectly dry; we just don't want to introduce lots of extra water into the syrup, which would dilute it.

Combine the syrup and basil in a vessel that works well with an immersion blender and blend for several minutes. You can use a normal blender instead as long as you make sure you've scaled the recipe to a point that it works well for the size and type of your blender. Put the blended syrup (without straining) into a container.

Refrigerate the syrup for at least 5 hours, to allow proper flavor infusion.

Line a strainer with cheesecloth and pour in the unfiltered syrup to strain.

Without agitating the syrup, allow it to strain.

Put the strained syrup into a squeeze bottle or whatever container fits and refrigerate.