Thai Basil Pesto

So, while I'm on a pesto roll, I've got two huge Thai basil plants in my garden.  Thai basil has a great, anise-y smell that makes you crave a trip to Rearn Thai or similar.  This recipe is an oldie but a goodie - I haven't made it in awhile, but those plants were begging me to do something!  This recipe is from my friend Marlene, rockstar geologist and co-creator and coordinator of the Sustainable Food Systems major at Guilford College.  If you don't have overgrown Thai basil in your yard, it's easy to find at international markets like Super G.

Thai Basil Pesto
Ingredients

• 1.5 cups Thai basil leaves, packed
• 0.5 cups cilantro leaves, whole (get this at Super G too, so cheap!)
• 0.5 cups peanut butter
• 1 tbs fresh ginger root, grated
• 3 cloves garlic coarsely chopped (from the CSA!)
• 1 tbs brown sugar
• 1 tsp chili garlic paste, more to taste (I subbed a habañero from the CSA basket)
• 3 tbs lime juice

Directions
Put all the ingredients in a food processor, whiz it until smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides if necessary.

This is good on noodles, grilled salmon or shrimp.  I've also made a pizza with it, using this pesto as the base and adding shrimp and mozzarella but I haven't made that in a long time!  Need to change that.

Some pics!

All the ingredients in the food processor (I doubled the recipe)

Started out with only 1/2 habanero, added the other half after tasting for heat...proceed cautiously!

Ready for the freezer!

Microgreens Pesto

The past few weeks we've been getting "microgreens" in the CSA basket.  I think they are radish sprouts?  Anyway,they are very peppery, a bit too peppery for me to eat on their own.  I thought they might make a good substitution for arugula in this  this arugula pesto recipe, which I've been making for awhile.  We really liked it on what we call a "salad pizza" and I"m sure it'd be good on grilled meat or fish as well.  The main change I made besides using the microgreens instead of arugula was to use pistachios instead of the pine nuts I usually use.  You can by a bag of them at Costco and they're good for snacks and salads, and work very nicely in this pesto.

Microgreens Pistachio Pesto (adapted from Arugula Pesto from Serious Eats)

Ingredients

1 cup packed microgreens
2 tbs shelled pistachio nuts (roasted and salted)
1/2 oz freshly grated parmesan cheese
2 medium garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
1 tsp lemon juice
2 1/2  tbs olive oil (a little more if you think it needs it)
Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

Instructions
 
Place all the ingredients except olive oil, salt and pepper in a food processor, and pulse until finely chopped, scraping down the bowl with a spatula as required. While the processor is running, add olive oil slowly to form a smooth paste.  Add additional olive oil if you like your pesto a little more loose.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Can be frozen - I either use an ice cube tray or freeze it in 1/4 cup amounts in snack sized ziploc bags that I press flat and put in a quart freezer bag. The 1/4 amount is just right for a pizza.

This is easy to double if you've got an overabundance of greens.

Esquites!

Hello, new readers!  (And hello to Stacey, Ara and Erin who I know have been reading for awhile!)  This week Nick and Will put the URL for this blog in the CSA note we get each week, so I thought I might have a few folks drop by to check it out.  If you're new here, I hope you find something useful to you.  I started this blog during summer 2019 because I thought it might be fun to track what I did with every single item in each weeks' CSA box, but that got to be a little much (really, you don't need to see every salad I eat).  What it has been good for, though is a place for me to keep track of new recipes I make with items from the CSA that I think are worth repeating and that others might be interested in.  Having that record helps me remember what I've made that turned out well, and also provides a good place to make a note of any changes I've made or pitfalls I ran into.

This past week I made esquites, which is a Mexican corn salad.  Even if we're not growing it at the Guilford College Farm, I do love corn season, and I could eat it on the cob every day.  Last week I had a version of this at a my friend Marlene's house and she rightfully pointed out that it was a lot easier to handle if you're serving a lot of folks than corn on the cob.  Or, I realized, if you're eating dinner on the sofa while watching TV (by the way, go check out Derry Girls on Netflix, it's hilarious!).

I found this recipe for esquites by Kenji Lopez-Alt on Serious Eats and adapted it a bit.

Ingredients

• 3 cups fresh corn kernels (about 4-5 ears, I used bicolor corn from Rudd Farm at the Curb Market)
• 1 tbs vegetable oil
• Kosher salt
• 2 tbs low fat mayonaise (Hellmans)
• 2 oz Cotija cheese, grated 
• 1/4 cup chopped chives (I didn't have scallions!)
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, finely chopped
• 1 jalepeño pepper, seeded and finely chopped <----THERE it is, the lone CSA ingredient!
• 1 clove garlic, grated on a Microplane (oh, wait, that's from the CSA too)
• 1 tbs fresh lime juice
•  sprinkle of chili powder to taste

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a large non-stick skillet of dutch oven (I used the latter) over high  heat.   Add corn kernels, season w/ salt to taste, and stir and toss occasionally (about 3-4 minutes) until corn is cooked and hopefully some of it is lightly browned.  Transfer to a large bowl. 
2. Add the rest of the ingredients to the corn and stir to combine.  Adjust seasoning to taste.

Some pics!

Taking the corn off the cob (the bundt pan does a great job of holding the cob steady and catching the corn).

Mixing it up

Plated up w/ a BLT made with tomatoes from the CSA,  Marlene's homemade sourdough and our homemade bacon!

A nice change of pace from corn on the cob.

Enchiladas Verdes w/ homemade salsa verde

Last week we got tomatillos in the box, and I've had jalapeños from the last two boxes, so it was time to make some salsa verde and enchiladas verdes.

The Enchiladas Verdes recipe is adapted from a Cooking Light recipe from 1999.  It's also great w/ leftover rotisserie chicken and a jar of your favorite tomatillo salsa instead making your own.  It's easy to put together ahead of time, and makes good leftovers.

The salsa base is from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen, and I've written about another tomatillo salsa from the same book here.  This is a simmered sauce, and one he recommends for enchiladas.  I made a double batch and froze half for enchiladas later (because I might have still had tomatillos from last week's CSA box).

Essential Simmered Tomatillo-Serrano Sauce (CSA ingredients are marked w/ an *)


*1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed
*Fresh serrano chiles to taste (3, 1/2 oz total - I ended up subbing two of the jalepeños from the CSA, they weighed about 1 oz and I took the seeds out of one of them after roasting.
1 tbs olive oil
1 medium yellow onion (6 oz) roughly chopped
*2 large garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
2 cups chicken stock (you could probably sub water here to make it vegetarian, but we're making chicken enchiladas so...)
1/3 cup roughly chopped cilantro.

1.  Lay the tomatillos and chiles on a baking sheet and broil about 4" from the broiler for about 5 minutes a side.  The tomatillos and chiles should start to soften and blacken.  Transfer the vegetables and any accumulated juices to a blender or food processor.

2.  Heat 1/2 tbs of the olive oil in a 5 qt dutch oven over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook, stirring often, until deep golden, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook and stir a minute longer.  Scrape the mixture into the blender or food processor. If your using a blender, take out the "stopper" in the cover and cover loosely w/ a kitchen towel while blending to prevent a massive cleanup of your kitchen becoming necessary.  Pulse the whatever your using a few times to reduce the vegetables to a rough puree.

3. Add 1/2 tbs of oil to the pot and heat over medium high.  When it's hot enough to sizzle when a drop of puree is placed in it, pour all of the puree in and stir constantly for 4 or 5 minutes.   The sauce base will reduce and become thicker and darker.  Stirr in the broth, return to a boil, reduce the heat to medium and simmer briskly until thick enough to coat the back of spoon, about 10 minutes.  Stir in cilantro and season to taste w/ salt.

Some pics!
The vegetables ready for their tan:

In the blender:

The "rough puree"

Final product, ready to go in the fridge to wait for enchilada assembly:

Enchiladas Verdes Adapted from Cooking Light

1. 12 oz shredded cooked chicken (I usually use white meat, but whatever you like)
2. 2 oz shredded asiago or asadero cheese (you could also substitute mexican shredded cheese blend if you can't find those)
3. 1/3 cup finely chopped onion 
4. 1/3 cup finely chopped cilantro
5. 1/3 cup chicken broth (If I'm fancy and have planned ahead, homemade, butI will use bullion here, or Better than Bullion) 
6. 1/3 cup low fat sour cream or greek yogurt
7. 1 tbs fresh lime juice
8. 1/2 tsp ground cumin
9. 1/4 tsp salt
10. 1/8 tsp black pepper
11. 8-10 small corn tortillas
12. 2 cups tomatillo salsa (a jar is fine if you don't want to mess with homemade, Harris Teeter has a good one)
13. 1 oz shredded asiago or asadero cheese

• Mix together the first 10 ingredients to make the filling.
• Spray a 9"x13" baking dish with cooking spray,  and pour 1/2 cup salsa in the bottom and tilt to coast the bottom of the dish.
• Heat each tortilla in a skillet or on a comal (I heat mine over a gas flame to get a little char), place the tortilla on a small plate, and scoop 1/3 cup filling down the middle of the tortilla, roll up and place seam side down.  Repeat w/ remaining tortillas until you run out of filling.
• Pour remaining salsa over enchiladas.  
• Sprinkle w/ remaining 1 oz cheese, cover w/ foil and bake at 400°F until thoroughly heated, about 20-30 minutes.

Some pics!
All the ingredients for the filling (some of the red onion from the CSA here!)

 Salsa in the dish

First enchilada off the assembly line

All enchilada-ed!

Time for dinner

Homemade Bacon (who knew?)

My friend Marlene emailed me a couple of weeks ago w/ a link to this NY Times article (along with several others) asking "...want to try homemade bacon?"   I had several pork bellies in the freezer because of Marlene (she thought they were ribs from Ofuskee Farm, but they were bellies) and she also had pork bellies from PTB Farms (who I've mentioned before).  We each made up our own cure, riffing off of the NY Times recipe (I left out the coriander, thyme and fennel because they didn't seem like very "baconlike" ingredients to me) and several others from around the web.  Here's what I used:

Cure:

• 2.5 Tbs kosher salt (Diamond Crystal)
• 1/2 tsp pink salt (note: this is not himalayan pink salt!  It's pink salt w/ sodium nitrite for curing meats!)
• 2 Tbs maple syrup
• 2 Tbs honey
• 2 Tbs cold black coffee
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed (CSA ingredient, so it's legit to have bacon on the blog)
• 1 Tbs black peppercorns, crushed (put them in a ziploc and hit 'em w/ a meat mallet a few times)
• 2-2.5 lbs pork belly (I had 3 tiny bellies, ranging in size about 10-12 oz) 

 Instructions:

1. Place the pork bellies in a Ziploc bag.
2. Mix together the dry cure ingredients, add to bag
3. Add wet cure ingredients, close the bag
4. Massage the bag to coat the bellies with the cure ingredients as best you can
5. Press most of the air out of the bag and place bag in fridge
6. Flip the bag over and massage the cure into the meat 1x day for 7 days
7. After 7 days, remove the bellies from the bag, and rinse the cure off of the meat.  Pat dry with paper towels, and place on a rack in the fridge to dry for 6-24 hours.
8. Since my bellies were so small, I rolled and tied them at this point
9. Smoke over applewood at 200-225°F for 1.5-2 hours until internal temperature is 150°F

Some before pics:
Ready to go into the smoker

Coming out of the smoker (we also had probe thermometers in two of the bellies while smoking so we knew when to pull them).

mmm...bacon

You could slice and eat it just like this, but we pan fried a few slices and then put some on parchment and stuck it in a 400°F oven to bake 8-12 minutes, keeping an eye on it and flipping it about every 3-5 minutes. 

Forgot to take an after pic.  Combined with Marlene's homemade sourdough sandwich bread, these gorgeous tomatoes from the CSA and some smoked corn mayonnaise from Deep Run Roots, it made some damn fine BLT's.  (which would also be damn fine w/ some Hellman's or Duke's and any good white sandwich bread).

What to do with eggplant? Pasta Sauce!

So last year we were inundated with eggplant. I think there was a research project that the farm was doing w/ NC A&T.  This year it's not been so much, but still, the eggplant and tomatoes are in full force right now.  I've definitely figured out a few things to do w/ eggplant which you can find if  you click the "eggplant" label over there -->

But I wanted to try something new, so I searched "eggplant" on https://smittenkitchen.com, and Deb, per usual did not disappoint.  She had many recipes for eggplant, but this recipe for Rigatoni and Eggplant Puree really got my attention, since I had eggplant AND a pint of cherry tomatoes in this weeks (and last week's) CSA.

I made it pretty much as described.  The only big difference was that I only made 6 oz of  pasta (it was just the two of us) and used half the sauce it made, and I only used  4 tbs of oilve oil instead of 6.  I also added 6 of these Turkey Meatballs from Trader Joes, thawed and cut into quarters.  The puree is definitely not photo-worthy, but it was pretty tasty overall!
Some pics!
The ingredients! (full disclosure, the eggplants were from last week)

Getting the roasted veg into the food processor:

This was a little tricky b/c the Al foil I'd put on the baking sheet had a hole and the juices from the veg had welded the foil to the sheet.  It all worked out.

Mixing up the sauce with the rigatoni.  Needed 2-3 scoops of pasta water to loosen it up.

Plated up with a little parm and basil garnish...
Oh, and Rudy was jealous b/c Dudley got featured in the last post, so here he is:

Panzanella

There are a million recipes for this bread and tomato salad, and here's how I do it:

Serving size 1, multiply as needed
Ingredients

• 1-2 good tomatoes, chopped
• salt and pepper 
• 1-1/2 clove garlic, grated or pressed
• good handful fresh basil leaves, chiffonade
• 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1-2 tsp balsamic or red wine vinegar
• 1-2 thick slices (1-1.5 oz) of good bread, cubed and toasted
• olive oil cooking spray
• 2-3 oz fresh mozzarella, cubed
• 1-2 tsp toasted pine nuts 
• optional: grated parmesan

Directions:

• Put chopped tomatoes and their juices in a bowl, add garlic, and salt and pepper to taste.  Add olive oil and vinegar.  Let sit a few minutes to draw out more juice from the tomatoes.
• Cube the bread, spread on baking sheet, spray lightly with olive oil and toast in toaster oven until golden brown.  Let cool.  
• Add mozzarella and basil to tomato mixture.
• Add toasted bread to tomato mixture, tossing until the bread soaks up all the juices
• Garnish with pine nuts and parmesan (if you remember, I did not in the bowl pictured below)
• eat!