Yellowing Basil

Hey all,

My basil is turning yellow.  I've read that that's due to overwatering, but I find that hard to believe.  I live in the desert and I often forget to water my plants.  I could be wrong, but is there any other reason you know of that my basil is turning yellow?

Molly

Summer Salad in need of tweaking

I made a roasted vegetable chickpea salad last night.  I made it as written, except I mistakenly bought two bunches of parsley at the store rather than one parsley and one cilantro.  I also omitted the mint.  The salad was good, but a tad on the sweet side.  My first thought for making it next time is to take out the honey from the dressing.  TomCat also pointed out that the gorgonzola is really strong and somewhat sweet.  We were thinking of replacing the gorgonzola with feta next time.  Here's the recipe as I found it, not with my changes. I strongly suggest putting in some changes though.


1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 poblano pepper, chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped
4 ears of fresh corn, corn cut from the cob
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 (15-ounce) cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
4 ounces gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
1 avocado, chopped
3 tablespoons freshly chopped basil
3 tablespoons freshly chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley
1 tablespoon freshly chopped mint
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons honey

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil and add tomatoes, peppers, corn, onions and garlic. Drizzle with 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes, toss, then roast for 10 minutes more. Remove from oven and let cool slightly.

While veggies are cooling, add chickpeas to a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk together remaining olive oil, vinegar and honey. Set aside.

Add veggies to the chickpeas in the bowl. Add in fresh herbs, then crumble on gorgonzola. Drizzle with dressing, tossing to coat, then top with freshly chopped avocado. Season more if desired. Serve immediately!


It is a really delicious salad and has tons of potential. Seems to be pretty healthy too. It's a lot of chopping, but the salad is huge, so you'll have plenty of leftovers. We had it with some London broil and steamed broccoli. Yum!

Molly

Deluxe Grilled Cheese sandwiches

Remember grilled cheese sandwiches from the high school cafeteria?  Remember how they were all brown and crisp on one side, and white and uncooked on the other, with a single (double if you were lucky) slice of overly-orange American cheese inside?  These are not them!

Here's a link to my inspiration.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Provolone-and-Broccoli-Rabe-Panini-232159

The first time I made these I didn't have broccoli-rabe, but I did have arugula, so that's what I used.  Don't be turned off by the anchovy fillets - their flavor compliments arugula in a wonderful way.

Cook some garlic and anchovy fillets (or anchovy paste) in oil until the anchovies are mashed, and the garlic is beginning to brown.  Meanwhile, put clean dry arugula into a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 1-2 min.  I recently used 5 oz of arugula (a regular container from the store) for 3 sandwiches.  The microwave should wilt the arugula without completely cooking it.  Stir the oil into the arugula and set aside.

Make grilled cheese sandwiches using whatever bread you want and provolone cheese.  Add a pile of the arugula to the sandwich as you're making it.  Enjoy!

Another great addition to these sandwiches is a sausage.  Italian pork sausage is good.  We've also been getting some basil chicken sausages lately that are pretty good as well.  I just cook them, then slice them in half lengthwise, and then split them open down the middle so they lie flat in the sandwich.

I made these a couple nights ago, and also added some eggplant slices that I had cooked on my griddle.  I couldn't really taste the eggplant, but to be honest, that's a bonus to me.

The addition of the flavored arugula takes the concept of a grilled cheese sandwich to a new height.  Since I've started making these, we've had grilled cheese at least once every two weeks or so, whereas before I think we'd had them, umm, maybe once in all the years Aleks and I have been together.  Try them!  And let me know what you think.

-Maggie

No dill :( GARLIC jar pickles

There was a nice convergence in our house last week of me reading Dad's post about pickles (particularly the part about making slices out of the larger cukes), receiving more cucumbers in our CSA box than we could hope to eat in a week, and needing something to do with Will over the weekend while Aleks worked.  All I had to do was find some grape leaves.  Unfortunately, that stymied me.  However, I recently made a cucumber salad recipe from Epicurious.com that involved tossing cucumber slices with salt, letting them sit in a colendar for ~15 min, and then squeezing out excess water and rinsing them.  I remembered being pleasantly surprised at how crispy the cukes were even after several days in the dressing.  I wondered if I could apply the same technique as a pre-treatment to making pickles in lieu of grape leaves to keep the pickles crisp.

Will and I got out our slicer on Sunday and sliced two quart mason jars worth of cukes (I think we had about 2-3 pounds).  We also had a few smaller cukes that I cut into spears and put into a half-pint jelly jar.  I don't have a garden with dill growing in it, and I forgot to buy dill at the store, so unfortunately, that got left out.  I did however have garlic on hand, and like I always do, I used it.  A lot of it. I made 1/2 recipe of brine, which was plenty.  I also somewhat randomly through a few mustard seeds into one of the jars, figuring that maybe we would want some flavor since I didn't have any dill.

Here's Will, who got dressed up for the occasion, ladling the brine into our jars.

I'm happy to report that as of today (Wed) we have some pretty decent, if somewhat over-garlicky, reasonably crisp pickles!  Even the spears turned out well.  I'm going to leave them out on the counter for 1 more day, then throw them in the fridge.  Next time, and given that we just got another pile of cukes in our CSA box there is likely to be a next time, I'm going to try to remember the dill.

I think that if you're lacking grape leaves, this method is a reasonable substitute:

Slice 1 lb of cucumbers (I sliced them to 3/8" thick), then toss slices with 1 t salt.  Let stand for ~15 min, rinse under cold water, and then squeeze to remove excess water.  Proceed according to Dad's instructions.

Also, I liked doing this in a mason jar.  We filled the jar right up to the top, then put a lid on.  While the contents weren't sterile, the jars actually sealed as the brine cooled, and the lid was in direct contact with the brine, minimizing the risk of contamination.

Thanks for the inspiration, Dad!

-Maggie

Garlic Dill Crock Pickles

When we got home from a week in New Hampshire, we found the garden overflowing and picked, literally, a wheelbarrow load of vegetables, including a large crop of cucumbers.  Time to make pickles.

I start with the recipe from Kanga's book, "The Herb Shelf".  She attributes this recipe to her mother, so for those reading this who are my children, your great grandmother.  This is also the recipe that we used every summer on the farm when you were growing up.

The pickle crock

"Put a layer of grape leaves in the bottom of a one gallon crock.  These provide the alum necessary for a crisp pickle.  Next add three stalks of dill, seed heads and all.  Next put a layer of cucumbers, then a layer of dill and a layer of cucumbers until the crock is almost full.  End with a layer of dill and another layer of grape leaves.

In the meantime, bring to boil one gallon of water, let it cool a little and add one-half cup of salt and one cup of apple cider vinegar.  When the salt has dissolved, pour the mixture into the crock.  Place an inverted plate on the pickles, and a rock on top of the plate to keep the brine level above the cucumbers.  Tie a clean white cloth over the whole thing and wait a week before you sample the pickles.  This produces a delicious pickle unlike any I have found on the grocer's shelf."

Jar of large slices

Dill is in the garden now, of course, and we are lucky to have a fox grape vine invading the thorn bush at the top of the property, so I picked leaves from that for the alum.  We use our plastic "crock".  I like to seal it with a plastic bag full of water floated on the surface to keep air out rather than using the inverted plate concept.  Air feeding aerobic microbes is what causes the scum that can form on the top of a pickle crock and eventually ruin your pickles.  I also used a 50/50 mix of apple cider vinegar and distilled white vinegar.  Kanga does not mention garlic in her recipe, but I always peel and add several cloves of garlic to the brine, this year fresh home grown from our inadvertent garlic crop.  I also like to add at least one hot pepper (but not too much!) for a hint of excitement.  And while cucumbers are the main actor here, nearly any vegetable can be pickles in the brine.  So far, I have added some yellow beans and some carrot slices.  Cauliflower florets work well also.  Because of our week long absence, many of the pickling cucumbers had grown larger than ideal size.  For the over sized cucumbers, I slice them into thick slices, maybe 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick and put the slices in the brine.  These pickle quickly.  Since we had so many over growns this year, I set up an additional container of just slices to pickle and they were done in two days.  They are now in jars in the fridge staying crisp.  In the July heat, the salt and acid make these pickles amazingly refreshing.  And as far as I am concerned there is no better topping for a summertime burger on a kaiser roll.

No recipe just a quick word.  I got into some leftover wild-caught Sockeye last week after a dinner event with a bunch of joey-type mountain bikers.  Froze the remains and made a killer breakfast this morning of salmon hash?? with grits, sautéed spinach, grits, and poached eggs.  Thanks for the idea with all of the fish postings.

Beer Can Chicken

This isn't so much of a recipe as it is just a cool thing.  On Sunday night Tomcat and I made a beer can chicken.  It. was. awesome.  We got the grill going with some charcoal and woodchips, put a basic rub on the bird, and popped her on a beer can.

The insertion of the beer can.

Sitting on the grill 

Final product.

We served this up with mashed potatoes, broccoli, and roasted cauliflower.  It was a delicious meal.  The chicken smelled like bacon when we took it off the grill.  That's probably due to the smokiness and the brown sugar that was in the rub.  It was so tender and juicy.  Highly recommended!

I plan to try out a new recipe tonight - don't know what yet.  Look for another post from me tomorrow.

Molly

Fruit Sauce

This post hardly counts as introducing something new, but I just wanted to remind all of you how amazing a simple fruit sauce on top of ice cream tastes!  I've made a few fruit sauces in the past few weeks as toppings for cheesecakes.  I tried applying Mom's method for blueberry pie to a fruit sauce and it turned out really well.  Here's the general recipe:

Cut ~1/2 lb strawberries into pieces, place in a pan, and cover ~2/3 of the way with OJ.  Heat until the strawberries are cooked and soft.  Meanwhile, cut the other 1/2 lb strawberries and place in a bowl with some blueberries and raspberries (one of those small packs, maybe 1/2 pint, of each).  Puree the strawberries (gotta love that immersion blender!) or just mash it up.  Gradually add cold water to about 1-2 T cornstarch, stirring to making a smooth liquid.  Add the cornstarch to the strawberry sauce, and heat until activated (sauce will thicken a bit).  Pour the sauce over the rest of the fruit and stir.  Stir a couple more times as the sauce cools.  You'll end up with a sauce that's just a bit thickened and tastes mostly like uncooked fruit, but still blends together into a sauce.  Yum!  Like, I said, just a reminder that this kind of thing is amazing on top of ice cream.  Tastes like summer and can't be beat!

-Maggie

4th of July

Fruit pizza!

Sunset!

(It was about 85 and cloudy/rainy all day.  Amazing!)

Anaheim Chilies filled with Corn, Cheddar, and Cilantro

I've been making these for years, since July, 2004 ( the month of the first Gourmet magazine I ever got) and have always found them to be wonderful.  When I was first pregnant with Will and craving eggs and cheese I would adopt the flavor combination and stir the ingredients into and egg and milk mixture, then bake it for brunch.  Here's the original recipe at the request of Molly.

4 Anaheim chilies - about 1 pound
1/2 T olive oil
1/2 medium yellow onion, diced - about 1/2 c
2 ears of corn, shaved - about 2 c kernels (I think you'll need more than 2 ears to get this many kernels)
1-2 jalepeno chilies, seeded and diced
1/4 c water
1 T coarsely chopped cilantro
2 oz white cheddar cheese, grated - about 1/2 c

Grill/roast Anaheim chilis over the flame of a gas burner until the skin is blistered and charred.  Transfer to a bowl or paper bag and cover to steam chilies slightly.  Saute onions in oil with 1/4 t salt until onions begin to soften, about 3 min.  Add corn, jalepeno, and water.  Cover and cook over low heat until corn is tender, about 5 min., then set aside to cool.  Peel Anaheim chilies, leaving stem intact.  Make a lengthwise slit in each chili and remove seeds.  Toss corn mixture with cilantro, cheese, 1/4 t salt, and a pinch of pepper.  Stuff each chili with 1/3-1/2 c corn mixture.  Place seam side down in a lightly oiled baking dish, and bake at 375, uncovered, until heated through and chilis are puffed, 15-20 min.

It's unclear to me why this recipe doesn't also include garlic.  As Dad said, "If the knife touches onions, it may as well touch garlic"  though I would amend that to "If the knife is touched, it may as well touch garlic."  I would add it to the onions.

-Maggie