This handful of just harvested summer favor will be perfect for personal pan pizzas enjoyed on the porch tonight. The challenge when picking these Sweet Hearts of the Patio, is to keep enough for toppings as they go easily from plant to hand to taste buds.
Another celebration of #SimplyRed Squares with BeckyB.
Close your eyes and think of your favorite Italian eatery. That aroma fills our kitchen.
Minnesota’s miraculous seasonal changes are a blessing that brings long days of sunshine (sometimes rain) and green – green everywhere you look. Green plants in the garden, variations of green in herb pots by the back door, and even green in the kitchen where my first batch of early summer pesto is resting on the counter.
While the fixings are simple and I can make this delicious condiment from memory: basil, garlic (both from our garden), nuts, Palestinian olive oil, with dashes of fresh ground pepper and sea salt taste (note – the Parmigiano Reggiano will be added when served), I check Beth Dooley’s recipe in The Northern Heartland Kitchen cookbook as a touchstone for perfection.
Happy Gardening and Bon Appétit!
Just as menus change seasonally – from crisp salads with freshly picked mixed greens and vibrant plump berries to hearty, wintery weather stews – my choice of herbs also shifts. Dried dill is among our often-used winter herb adding a smidge of flavor in a vegetarian quiche or a sprinkling of color to fresh Spätzli. Whereas thyme is a nearly daily summer additive on lightly sautéed yellow squash or roasted green beans (each later garnished with 25-year-old balsamic vinegar), it tends to be rare in my winter recipes.
Regardless of the season, basil and oregano are cooking staples and each has, for years, transitioned from backdoor terracotta pots to the kitchen shelf. For the first time and in an effort to prolong the lazy days of summer and its menus, I dried some of the potted English thyme. It took two harvestings as the first snipping of tiny, dried leaves filled less than a quarter of one 5-ounce glass bottle. With the words of the brilliant songwriter Jim Croce in my head while carefully monitoring the oven drying so as not to char the fragrant herb, I have thymus vulgaris in a bottle.
If we were on Sesame Street, today’s harvest would be a B – day with a Basket of Basil, a Bunch of Broccoli, and a little bit of Blueberries.
The basil is drying in the oven, the broccoli is ready for tonight’s salad and the blueberries may make muffins, grace vanilla ice cream, or simply provide the perfect snack. We anticipate a meager berry season as this first picking only yielded a cup and did not fill the Caradori bowl. Thus, the tasty decisions must be made with careful deliberation.
After the Bs, my alphabet harvest gets a bit jumbled, as I also harvested Mini-Me™ cucumbers (a first time variety in our garden) and rhubarb for another dozen scones.
Food writer, Beth Dooley offers a trio of pesto recipes in The Northern Heartland Kitchen: More than 200 recipes to satisfy appetites. Her traditional basil version of this “pounded sauce” is a favorite at our house.
As reported earlier, this summer’s basil crop is the best we have ever grown and a quick cutting this morning yielded five individual servings of fresh pesto – one for tonight’s 3-cheese tortellini and four for the freezer; so good when the cold winds blow and summer basil is only a fragrant memory.
Happy Gardening and Bon Appétit!
The potted herbs clustered around the backdoor are mid-summer hearty and offer a veritable Pantone spectrum from dusty silver sage to vibrant Genovese basil – my version of “50 shades of green.”
The basil crop is the best I have ever grown although, as to what might be different, I cannot claim credit as a variety of factors are equal – bought at same greenhouse as previous years, planted in the large Italian terracotta pot that formerly held a St. Thomas, V.I. lime tree from Dad, and tucked under the wind chimes on the left side of the doorway. Every day with easy morning sun and cool afternoon shade.
In an attempt to capture the lazy summer day in a jar, this morning’s task included harvesting and drying fresh basil. Great for aromatic hearty winter stews or tasty marinara sauce garnished pasta.
Happy Gardening and Bon Appétit!
PS – Ever the librarian, my backdoor crop in alpha order: basil, bay leaf, dill, nasturtiums (although technically not an herb but an edible flower – both leaf and blossom), oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, tarragon, and thyme.
As I prepped this morning’s basil harvest for the second batch of summer pesto, I smiled and remembered the first time I had this savory concoction. It was summer 1977. I was in library school and a friend who was in town for a library association meeting had offered to treat this poor grad student to dinner. We met at Helen C. White Hall, wandered over to Memorial Union, spent time on the Terrace before strolling up one side of State Street and then back. Reaching the small second floor storefront Italian restaurant where we had dinner required trudging up narrow wooden stairs. (This was long before ADA required accessibility. It was a restaurant Dad hated when I took him there not because of the food but because he worried about exits – or the lack thereof. But that’s another story.)
My friend was quite excited with the chef’s pasta du jour which featured fresh pesto on tortellini. I had no idea what pesto was but as I did not want to appear anything less than sophisticated, I ordered the same entrée. I remember my surprise when I was served a dish far more green than pasta white; heavy on the garlic. For this first sampling, it was a good there was a nice red wine accompanying our meal.
Despite growing up with big vegetable gardens at my house and my grandparents, basil and garlic were simply not things we grew. From my narrow culinary perspective at the time, basil and garlic were dried herbs from McCormick; used infrequently, mostly just for Aunt Thelma’s spaghetti sauce. But now, basil graces pots just outside the back door for quick access and grows in the tomato squares as a companion plant. While we do not have garlic growing this summer, we have harvested splendid crops in years past. With a nod to food writer Beth Dooley and author of our well used The Northern Heartland Kitchen cookbook, we will fully enjoy this batch of savory almond basil pesto. Bon appétit!
The excitement over my first, post vaccination day trip to St. Paul in April and lunch out with a friend in a restaurant which followed strict (and therefore reassuring) COVID protocols, slipped into what can only be dubbed COVID malaise. While our neighbors have been in their yard for weeks, adding raised beds and planting, I can only claim a minimalist effort having helped Richard turn over the six, 4×4 foot vegetable squares, sans seeds or seedlings. While the chilly temps and night time frost advisories offered the cover of an excuse, I simply lacked my annual dose of springtime, get-in-the-dirt time enthusiasm.
But then, Michelle inspired me. During last night’s A Late Show with Stephen Colbert, our former First Lady offered her heartfelt comments about coping with pandemic anxieties. I took her words to heart: “… push beyond … just the doing gets you out of the funk.” After stops at two green houses for healthy plants and an assortment of vegetable seeds, we spent the afternoon planting. Today’s in the ground tally of various varieties includes:
Tomorrow’s goal (assuming the rain holds off): Potatoes, beets, lettuce, radishes, beans, nasturtiums, and a flavorful collection of potted herbs: more basil, plus dill, leeks, oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Michelle was right – “just the doing” was the prescription I needed.
This morning’s harvest. Our six 4-foot squares (definitely not filled to capacity ala Mel Bartholomew’s methodology) are keeping us in fresh vegetables. Add to that the pots of herbs on the screened porch and we have freezer stashes of freshly simmered marinara sauce and zucchini chocolate chip bread to enjoy in the chilly months.
With an abundance of gorgeous basil and two batches of pesto already in the freezer, I began exploring new possibilities. These Lemon Basil Cookies featured crushed pistachios for a different culinary experience
Knit+ Librarian 