From Peppers to Pesto

While half of the garden is finishing up in the summer heat, the other portion is still producing.  Peppers is one of those items.  We have several varieties going right now: Jalapenos.  These are probably my favorite, followed by Anaheims.  This year I planted a new variety (for us) called Shishito Peppers.  They are delicious, roasted and blistered.  I'll plant these from here on out.  We have a bunch of Banana Peppers that continue to produce.  We eat them raw.  We pickle a bunch of them, too.

There is a local meat market in our town called Cormier's Specialty Meats.  They sell boudin mixed with cream cheese for making poppers.  One afternoon last week I cut the banana peppers in half and seeded them.  Using a spoon, Tricia and I filled each pepper half with the boudin cream cheese and broiled in the oven.  Mighty good!

One of the other things we're making is pesto.  Plenty of pesto!  We have a lot of basil that popped up volunteer in the garden.  We've given away many seedlings and have a bunch more.  If you're in the area and would like some, get in touch and I'll pot one or two up for you.  We'll pick 8 cups of pesto leaves packed to make a big batch of pesto.  

We love to make pesto and freeze it in 16 ounce sour cream containers.  It makes the perfect lunch!  You simply start some pasta going on the stove, thaw out a container of pesto, drain your pasta and stir in the pesto and you have a delicious, easy meal.  The whole family loves it.  We even like to snack on it by spreading it on toast.  One word of warning:  Check your teeth before you go in public.  Pesto notoriously gets stuck between your teeth.  It's pretty embarrassing going out in town with big, green pieces of pesto in your teeth.  (That's experience speaking, right there!)

This week I planted a couple more rows of Purple Hull Peas and two rows of Black Turtle Beans.  Also, we got three varieties of pumpkins in the ground.  I got out my LSU Vegetable Planting Guide and looked at what I can begin planting in early August.  Time to get additional things in the ground!

A Perfect Quick Meal Fresh (Frozen) From the Garden

We've done this post many times, but doing this in advance (a stitch in time saves nine, right?) has pulled us out of a bind many times when we ask ourselves "What's for supper tonight?"  Of course I'm talking pesto.  Time after time, we raid the leaves off of our basil plants and make pesto.  We freeze it in individual containers and pull them out and thaw and make some pasta and BOOM!  There's a delicious, quick and nutritious meal idea.  Today I added another ingredient that stepped up the pesto a notch or two. 

I moved a bench next to the basil plant and picked a bunch of the fresh tender, new leaves.

I picked 8 cups of basil leaves.  The secret ingredient I used this time?  Green onions.  You might call them shallots or onion tops.  I added a cup of these to the 8 cups basil leaves.

I grated some Parmesan cheese in a big measuring cup.

Here are all the ingredients.  You can see the green onions with the basil, the grated parmesan cheese.  Since we have pecans, we substitute them instead of walnuts or pine nuts.  Extra virgin olive oil.  12 cloves garlic.

Here's the recipe we have used for years.  You can see that we quadruple the recipe since we make batches for freezing.

This is the dry-looking paste that is made by mixing the leaves with the pecans in the food processor.

Then the cloves of garlic go in the processor...

And then the olive oil...

A delicious concoction indeed, but we're not done.

We add all the cheese along with salt and pepper to taste.

Then I spoon it into containers for freezing.

I wish you could taste how good this stuff is!

We have served this over pasta.  We've used it as a base (instead of tomato sauce) for homemade pizzas.  We've also made grilled cheese and pesto sandwiches before.  All were terrific!!

The "Besto" Pesto

Welcome to the Jungle!  In July, the sweet potato vines always engulf this section of the garden.  If one were to stand for too long in one location, you are in danger of the vines encircling your body and tying you down.  The vines are knee high and very healthy with all the rain we've gotten.

Barely holding its own in the middle of the vines are two Sweet Basil Plants like you see below:

And two Genovese Basil plants like you see below:

We really like fresh basil in cooking various dishes and love fresh pesto on pizzas with homegrown tomatoes, corn and mozzarella.  But today we're making pesto.  While standing in the vines, I pull off the healthiest leaves and fill a big measuring cup that I've brought with me that will hold 8 cups.  Once I get 8 cups of basil leaves packed down, I bring them inside and soak them in water.  We don't like bugs in our pesto!

We start grating Parmesan cheese as the recipe calls for 2 cups.

In fact, I've assembled all the ingredients.  You will need:

8 cups basil leaves

2 cups freshly grated Parmesan Cheese

2 cups extra virgin olive oil

1 1/3 cup cashew pieces

12 garlic cloves, minced

Salt and pepper

Process the basil leaves by pulsing until the leaves are uniformly chopped.  It smells great!

Add the cashew pieces and process until mixed.

Mince the garlic and pulse again until mixed.

Pour the 2 cups of olive oil into the mixture while it is on.  Once done, I scrape the sides of the food processor down with a spatula to ensure all is properly mixed.

Now is the time to add the grated Parmesan Cheese:

Pesto freezes remarkably well, so we spoon the pesto into Daisy Sour Cream containers that hold 16 ounces each.  Of course I taste it.  It is delicious!

I made two batches of pesto as described above.  I ended up with Five Pounds of pesto.  I labeled it with a Sharpie and freezer tape.

And that's it.  So simple to put together a quick meal.  Just thaw out a container of pesto and put some pasta on.  Voila!  Pesto Pasta for lunch after church.  Everyone loves it.  Pro tip: Be sure to check your teeth before going out.  Pesto tends to stick in the corner of your teeth.  That can be embarrassing!  That's experience speaking...

A Good Fresh Summertime Pizza!

One great thing about the summer (let's talk positive things!) is coming up with delicious ways to use all the fresh produce coming in from the garden.  I am going to admit, my sweet corn produced in dismal fashion this year.  The germination of the heirloom varieties I planted was bad on the first planting and hardly any came up.  Then I went and bought hybrid sweet corn from Tractor Supply and experienced the same thing!

This weekend the same gentleman from our church that blessed us with all the Crack Peas also gave us a garbage bag full of fresh picked sweet corn.  It was a bag so full, I could hardly carry it.  We shucked it, cleaned it, and removed all the silk.  Then we blanched and froze some whole (on the cob).  Then we began to cut some off the cob and bagged and froze that as well.

With more corn than we knew what to do with and a copious amount of tomatoes ripening, we decided to make a few homemade pizzas.  We made pizza dough in the bread machine and spread homemade pesto on the crust, sprinkling fresh cut corn on top complimented by fresh sliced tomatoes.  This pizza is coming together!

Lots of cheese was grated on top as we waited for the oven to warm up...

We removed the pie from the oven and sliced fresh basil on top and cut the pizza into eighths.

Time to eat!

Many trendy 'farm to table' restaurants popped up in the past few years boasting about local foods and relationships with local farmers and ranchers.  You don't have to go to a restaurant to experience this, though.  Any gardener can do this.  Food is best when fresh.  Nothing can be fresher than something that you put labor into and can go out in the garden, harvest, and find a good recipe to use nature's bounty in making a meal that you won't forget. 

Don't Get Perturbed About The Herbs

We cook with a lot of herbs. In order to have them in close proximity to the kitchen, we have them growing in terra cotta pots out on the back patio.  Right outside the french doors, we have oregano, parsley, and rosemary growing.  Most grow all year long.  Due to the quantity of plants and the size, our basil is located in the garden, so it is not as convenient.  Perhaps I'll grow a basil plant on the patio this spring for cooking purposes and leave the others in the garden for making pesto in large quantities like we frequently do.

Just this past weekend, I started a few pots of parsley, dill and cilantro seeds growing on the back patio.  Fresh parsley smells GREAT all cut up and we love to add bunches of it on top of a steaming bowl of gumbo.  When I was in the grocery store business, we would get some specialty mustard from a company called Inglehoffer.  They made different herbed mustards that came in little glass jars.  My favorite was a dill mustard and I'd like to make some of our own.  Another thing is recently I had a chicken sandwich with dill mayonnaise and although I loathe mayonnaise, it was pretty good.

Finally, cilantro.  We like it in pico de gallo and in Tricia's rice dishes.  Some people love it and some people hate it and say it tastes like soap and smells like stink bugs. This Article tells you why.  It is genetic.  It you hate it, chances are you have the OR6A2 gene that allows you to pick up the scent of aldehyde chemicals.  Those are found in both cilantro and soap.  I almost forgot mint!  We have mint growing out on the back patio as well.  Fresh mint hot tea is real good.

Parsley, Dill, Cilantro and Oregano (not as catchy as Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)

Green Onions.  Now here is something that I can't get enough of.  I love to add a big, heaping handful on top of a big plate of red beans and rice and sausage.  So Good!  Although I planted a bunch of it from seed recently, they haven't germinated yet and we needed some for a recipe that Tricia was making.  Unfortunately, we had to run to the store and pick up a bunch of commercially grown green onions.

I usually cut the green onions all the way down to the roots and use the whole thing for cooking with, but here's the deal: if the green onions you purchased were in good shape (and why would you purchase them if they weren't), simply keep the roots wet and when you've snipped off the tops, plant them in your garden.  I just planted four of them yesterday as you can see below:

"Recycled" Green Onions

The green onions from the same purchased bunch that I put in the ground last week in the center below were already almost ready to be snipped and used to flavor delicious gumbos, soups, and rice and gravy.  

Grows in NO TIME!!

So while we patiently wait for our green onions planted from seed to grow, we'll have some 'recycled green onions' in inventory while we wait.  I'd like to try planting some other herbs this spring that we haven't used before - like fennel, sage, and thyme.  I also have some lemon balm that I'll get started in early spring.

Drying Basil

Basil does not do well with a frost.  The leaves turn yellow and die and all it is good for is to pull up the whole plant and compost it.  We have made lots of pesto with our basis this year and have numerous containers frozen, ready to be thawed out and mixed with pasta for a quick, delicious healthy meal.  If you can't have fresh basil, dried basil is the next best thing.

Prior to the frost, Tricia harvested the leaves remaining on the plants, brought them inside and washed them in the sink to get all the bugs and dust off of them.  We like to dry basil and store it in the pantry in ZipLoc storage bags for use in cooking various recipes.  Once the leaves are washed and dried, it is time to put them in our dehydrator.  We load them in a single layer, filling each tray, and turn it on.

Filling the dehydrator tray with basil leaves

We just leave it running until the leaves are dry and "crispy."  I think it took a day and a half, but we turned it off when we left the house for safety reasons.

Plugged in and drying the basil

There's no mistaking it when the basil is dried.  

Dried

I poured the dried basil into a storage bag and then we'll seal it and put it in the pantry.  If it is truly dry, it will have a good, long shelf-life.

This bag should be plenty to get us through until next Spring when we plant another row of Genovese basil and have fresh leaves to pick again.

Dried basil is great in soups and pasta dishes.  With the cold 'soup weather' coming up real soon, we'll put a serious dent in the dried basil inventory.

Making Basil Pecan Pesto 2015

One inch of rain fell over Our Maker's Acres Family Farm during the month of July. The dry weather coupled with heat in the upper 90s and heat index values in the mid 100s have put the garden into a scorched mode.  I think cactus, probably would be thriving right now if I had them planted. One thing that is thriving is basil.  We plant basil from seed that we save each year, but we really don't need to as many plants come up on a volunteer basis from seeds that have fallen off of last year's crop.

A row of healthy basil

The basil are flowering right now and of course attract numerous bees.  You can see a big fat bumblebee in the photo below enjoying some nectar/pollen from the basil flowers.  As soon as the bees leave, I like to pinch off the flowering portion of the plant to entice them to grow more leaves instead of flowers.

Bees Love Basil

I like to go out to the garden with an 8 cup measuring cup and find plants like you see below.  Notice how the basil leaves are so vibrant, green and healthy.  You can smell the scent of basil just by standing near the plant.  I begin picking leaves off of the plant until there's really nothing left except the small leaves or any yellowed or insect damaged leaves.  The plant won't be harmed and after a rainfall, it will explode with new growth to replace the leaves you harvested.

Ready to pick

I pick with both hands, dropping the leaves in the Pyrex cup until it is full.  Then I pack the leaves down and begin again.  My goal is to get 8 cups of packed fresh basil leaves.  It doesn't take me long at all.  We're going to make Basil Pesto.  We do this every year several times.  Sorry if you've already read this in previous posts. This is so good we like to repeat every year.

8 cups of packed basil leaves

So I've laid out everything we need to make basil pesto on the counter.  The ingredients are few and simple.  Basil, Parmesan cheese, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and pecans.  The recipe actually calls for pine nuts, and I love pine nuts, but those things are expensive!  We pick pecans off of our trees in the yard and we've found that they work GREAT in pesto!  (The price is right, too!)

Ingredients to make basil pesto

So here are the quantities of what you'll need.  Due to the size of our food processor, I generally cut the ingredients in half and do two batches.

8 cups washed basil leaves

2 cups freshly grated Parmesan cheese

2 cups extra virgin olive oil

1 1/3 cups pine nuts, walnuts, or pecans (we always use pecans)

12 medium garlic cloves

Salt and pepper to taste

First, however, you'll want to soak the leaves in a sink that you have cleaned, thrashing the water about to loosen any dirt and dislodge any insects or worms that might have hitch-hiked inside.  Then I'll scoop out handfuls and run them through a salad spinner to dry out the leaves.

Cleaning up the leaves

First I'll place 6 garlic cloves and about 3/4 of a cup of soaked & dried pecans into the food processor with the chopping blade on and pulse for a little bit.

Garlic and Pecans about ready to be chopped

After pulsing for a bit, the garlic and pecans are chopped up nicely.  Now I'll add 4 packed cups of basil leaves a little at a time to the food processor and chop until there is just a green paste.

Chopped Garlic and Pecans

While the processor is running, I'll pour 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil to the processor.  This will liquefy the basil/pecan/garlic combo a bit and change it into a smooth consistency. 

Adding EVOO

While the machine is running, I'll quickly grate 1 cup of Parmesan cheese.  I open the top of the processor and add the Parmesan cheese.  Finally I'll sprinkle some sea salt and grind some black peppercorns to the top of the pesto, put the top back on and mix it all up.

Mix up the Parmesan Cheese, Salt, and Pepper - And then you are done!

Once it is all combined, we spoon it into sour cream containers and freeze for later use.

I'll admit, the green stuff might not look appetizing, but it is simply delicious,  We have numerous containers frozen in our inventory.  All you have to do is thaw and cook some pasta and then stir the pesto into the cooked pasta for a quick, delicious, nutritious meal.  Word of warning: After eating pesto pasta, check your teeth in the mirror.  This stuff is notorious for sticking in the cracks in your teeth, making for potentially embarrassing situations!