Summer Pesto

-->
I am re-posting this for all of you who have fresh basil available now.  Use it before the weather changes!

I have a lot of lovely basil in my herb garden so it’s time to make pesto.  Whenever there is an abundance of something, that is the best time to preserve it.  In the case of fresh herbs, it’s also good to be taking cuttings as that encourages more growth. 

Fresh Basil growing in my herb pot. 

Panzanella

I knew that we were ending up with too much bread in the house for how we eat bread, so I thought I should try something a little different.  Instead of toast, sandwiches, and croutons for on top of salads, I thought of making Panzanella--bread salad!

It's a very simple salad to make.  All you really need are tomatoes, bread and some vinaigrette ingredients.

I had a little surprise thrown into my plan--bread that was too hard to cut into cubes!  It turned into this:

Bread that was too hard to cube.

Bread that is too stale can become breadcrumbs in your food processor.

And it will live in my freezer until I need bread crumbs for something.

Lucky for me, I did have some other bread that I could cube up.  I decided to make it into croutons so I coated the cubes with olive oil, salt and pepper and baked them in the oven for 15 minutes. If you have a hearty loaf that's a little stale, you can skip toasting and use it fresh.

Bread cubes ready for the oven.

While these were toasting, I made a vinaigrette using red wine vinegar, finely diced shallot, fresh basil, salt and pepper.

Panzanella!

I diced up a tomato and mixed it all together.  Then I had to wait 10-15 minutes until the croutons and tomatoes and vinaigrette all worked together to make a delicious salad.  Agonizing wait, but well worth it!

The lovely Tomato

Last week I proclaimed it to be "the week of the tomato" at my house. This is absolutely the best time of year for tomatoes and we have been enjoying them every day, sometimes more than once.  Here are some of the ways that we've eaten them:

Make a caprese salad appetizer--put it on a stick!

I love Caprese salads and have come up with some variations of that such as the appetizer pictured. 

I have found a great local source for heirloom tomatoes and have also discovered a new cheese (to me) that is incredibly delicious with tomatoes: Burrata. It is sold in the same areas of the cheese case where you purchase fresh mozzarella. 

Sliced Tomatoes with Balsamic Reduction, fresh Basil and Burrata cheese.

Tomatoes are a great addition to a sandwich.

Put together skewers of meat and vegetables.

Make Panzanella!

Mixing different colors of tomatoes together looks delicious all by itself.

Put a few tomatoes on a potato and green bean salad.

How are you enjoying your tomatoes?

Summer Cucumbers in Sour Cream Updated

Cucumber Salad

As a kid I loved the family picnics for all the fabulous picnic foods.  I remember fondly that I had an aunt who would make this salad, but I didn't know how to make it, and didn't consider asking for the recipe.

As a young adult I encountered this same salad through my husband.  His grandmother, who was an outstanding cook, would make this salad during the summer.  I tried to learn how to make it from her, but she never measured anything, and I lacked confidence that I could make something without a recipe.

Now I try to impress upon people that a recipe is only "a starting place", and sometimes it is "only a suggestion". 

I am quite sure that the salad I had as a child was simply sliced cucumbers in sour cream, a little milk and salt and pepper.  Not being knowledgeable about food at that time in my life, I could be wrong and it might have had a little vinegar mixed in also.

Nana, my husbands lovely grandmother, had a more involved process for her salad. First she sliced the cucumber very thin, and then she put it into a colander, salted the cuke slices, and weighted it down for several hours to remove a lot of the water.

Sliced and salted in a colander.

Put some weight on top and let the liquid come out in a bowl, not in your salad. Can you see the liquid in the bottom bowl?

Salted cucumbers after thirty minutes. 

This is the way I do it now because I have discovered that salting the cucumbers helps keep the salad from being too watery and seasons the cukes without tasting salty.


I put the colander in one bowl to collect the water that drains off, and one bowl on top with jars of food to put some weight on the cukes.  I leave that on my counter for several hours and then taste the cukes.  If they do taste overly salty, rinse them and give them time to drain. 

Water from Salted Cucumbers

About 1 cup of water was removed from cucumbers in 4 hours.

 If I want to make this ahead of time, I would also squeeze out some liquid before combining with my dressing.

I don't usually have sour cream in the house, but I always have plain yogurt, so I now make most creamy dressing using yogurt.  I put about 1 cup yogurt, 1 tbsp. cider vinegar, salt and pepper in a bowl and whisk.

Next, take a piece of cucumber and taste the two together.  Adjust as needed.

TASTE!

Adding dill and a touch of sugar.

When everything tastes delicious, combine it in one bowl and enjoy.

My Cucumber Salad. 

Because of the draining off of excess liquid, this salad will last in the fridge a couple of days without becoming "soupy". 

Minimalist Macaroni and Cheese--Your new favorite!

I consider this a "minimalist" dish for these two reasons:
You can make this with a minimal number of ingredients  AND  with a minimum number of dirty dishes!  Who doesn't love that?

First gather your ingredients and equipment (Mise en Place)

• One deep pasta pot
• 1 pound dried pasta, any shape 
• Colander for draining pasta
• 3 cups (or more) grated cheese (I used a medium cheddar once, and a combination of what I had in the fridge--mozzerella, co-jack, cheddar-- another time)
• 2 Tbsp. all purpose flour
• 1- 2 tsp. dry mustard
• 1-1/2 cups whole or 2% milk
• Salt
• Pepper

Bring water to a boil in your pasta pot.  Add pasta and 2 Tablespoons salt and stir.  When water returns to a boil, turn down heat, stir again, and set timer.  I like to check my pasta a couple of minutes before the package directs you to stop cooking because I want my pasta perfectly firm, not mushy and soft. When it tastes right to me, I drain it in the colander.  I don't rinse because I want the cheese sauce to coat the pasta.

 While the pasta cooked, I mixed up 1/2 cup of the milk with 2 Tablespoons flour in a lidded jar. 

Using the same pan that you cooked your pasta in, pour in the 1 cup of milk and heat over medium heat.  Stir.  Once you see that the milk is steaming, whisk in the flour mixture.  If you used a jar and shook it up hard it should be lump free.  Continue to whisk for 2-3 minutes, or until the mixture looks thick and creamy.  Next, stir in handfuls of cheese, salt and dry mustard; continue stirring in cheese until it has all been incorporated.  Remove from heat.

Put half of the drained pasta in the cheese sauce and stir to coat evenly.  Continue adding pasta until you have all of it mixed up with the cheese sauce.

Now you can put it into individual bowls and serve!  Here's what is left for clean up:

Minimal clean up. (plus the pan)

I like mine topped with chopped fresh tomatoes and ground pepper.

Creamy Macaroni and Cheese!

Raw Vegetable Salads

Did you know you can eat beets without cooking them?  Same for Butternut squash--you can make it into a salad or add it to a salad without cooking!

I have only discovered this about a year ago, and have started making salads using raw vegetables.  You can do this with zucchini, carrots, cucumber, etc.  This is such a quick and easy salad to mix up, and we all love it so we enjoy it at least once a week at this time of year.

Beet Salad with Butternut Squash Salad, and Greens topped with radishes.

All I add is a simple vinaigrette, homemade of course.  My favorite flavors are dijon mustard, garlic or shallot, and fresh lemon juice.  (Remember, 3 parts oil to 1 part lemon juice)

Make your salads colorful and everyone will want some. In the photo above:
Asparagus, Beets, Cannelini Beans (canned) and Carrots. 

Try this at your house!

End of Summer Watermelon Salad

I love cool weather so I look forward to the end of summer.  I enjoy the many, many vegetables and fruit that are available locally and taste so delicious.  So I am posting another recipe to enjoy while we have fresh watermelon.

Watermelon Salad.

First, here's a safety tip for cutting your watermelon:

Cut one end off, and use that edge as your flat surface to prevent the watermelon from being a rolling object.

 I like to remove all of the watermelon rind first by cutting from top to bottom, and rotating the watermelon on its flat side as I work. Next I lay it on my cutting board like this:

Lay the watermelon on its side and cut slices.

 I bought a warm (room temperature) watermelon, so to chill it quickly I put the slices  on a metal tray and stuck it in the fridge for 30 minutes. 

While that was chilling, I got out some Feta Cheese and cut it into cubes, but you could just as easily crumble it.  I took a red onion, sliced it thinly, and soaked the onion in cold water for a few minutes.  I also chopped up some fresh herbs.  You could try this with basil, parsley or mint, depending on what you like.

Now, just dice up your watermelon and add your cheese, onion and herbs.  Does this make you hungry?

Tuna Salad with a French twist--Pan Bagnat

After a week in France, I can still mostly just write and read French, but I think I also learned to make a great picnic sandwich.

I was first introduced to this sandwich in a book I was reading some years back.  I don't recall the book anymore, but I remember the family in the book who made their weekend treks to the beach and packed a delicious sounding picnic lunch.  The whole family participated in making the sandwich.  Mom mixed up the tuna and vegetables, Dad went to the Boulangerie to buy the bread, and of course the two daughters had their parts to play too.  In fact I think this is the reason I have always remembered this picnic sandwich.  The young girls took turns sitting on the sandwich as they drove to the beach so it would be ready to eat when they arrived. 

Here's a description from Wikipedia:

The Pan-bagnat (Occitan: pan banhat for bathed/wet bread) is a sandwich that is a specialty of the region of Nice, France. The sandwich is composed of pain de campagne, whole wheat bread formed in a circle, although white bread is also sometimes used, around the classic Salade Niçoise, a salad composed mainly of raw vegetables, hard boiled eggs, anchovies and/or tuna, and olive oil (never mayonnaise). Sometimes balsamic vinegar, ground pepper, and salt will also be added.

My French Pan Bagnat

The first time we made this using canned Tuna packed in Olive Oil.  We chopped up onion, green olives and capers; we mixed this all together adding salt and pepper, and some fresh lemon juice.  We put the tuna on both halves of the bread, with the tomatoes and lettuce in the middle.  We wrapped that up in foil, and put some heavy stuff on it:

Foil Wrapped Pan Bagnat

Add some weight so the inside bread gets "wet". 

 The sandwich was delicious, and I might add, travels very well!

We enjoyed this so much we decided to pack another picnic making the sandwich again.  This time we ended up with a different bread from the Boulangerie (with limited French, you learn to point and make do). 

Same Sandwich with a few changes.  Still delicious!

This was our favorite bread for the sandwich, so if you spot this in a Boulangerie, buy it and make Pan Bagnat!

 This was such an easy sandwich to make.  It went together quickly, it tasted great, and it can fit into small spaces--like underneath a person!  We cut this into triangles so we each ate one fourth of the sandwich. 


It was a nice French lunch, and then we continued our hike and came across this:

Oh look Honey, a bathroom right next to where people are walking...

I have made Pan Bagnat since we returned from our vacation, and I must say that the bread is really a key ingredient.  I have mixed up the filling with different vegetables, sometimes adding small diced carrots, thinly sliced cucumber, scallion, garlic, etc. but the most important part of the success of this is to find a crusty loaf with a soft inside.  I haven't given up on this because it really is that good.

Anyone have bread suggestions for me?

End of Summer Salads

I am trying to squeeze in as many fresh fruits and vegetables as I can while everything is so fresh!  I am glad to be back to my own kitchen, my local Farmers Market and my favorite recipes.

One of the first salads I had to make when I got home is a Zucchini-Tomato Salad.

I have a tool that looks like a vegetable peeler but it actually has little teeth that make the zucchini into "strings". I have also done this with a regular vegetable peeler and that works too.

Next I cut grape or cherry tomatoes in half, finely chop up some shallot/garlic/onion, whatever I have on hand, and make a lemon-dijon vinaigrette.  Try this at home!

Zucchini Salad

Rough Recipe:

Yellow and Green Zucchini
Cherry or Grape Tomatoes
Shallot/Garlic Cloves and/or Onion, finely chopped

Vinaigrette:
1 Tbsp. Fresh Lemon Juice
1 Tbsp. Dijon Mustard
3 Tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

Put your vinaigrette ingredients in a jar and shake-shake-shake.  Taste and adjust seasonings!  When you like it, pour over your zucchini-tomato mixture and enjoy!