Spinach Basil Pesto with Lemon and Almonds

23 Jun

Having a child who happens to absolutely love pesto is both a blessing and a curse.  On the one hand, it’s nice to have a child who will stick a toe in the pool of adventure and happily dig into a sauce that is not only bright green, but also more complex in flavor than the average preschooler’s preferred pasta dish of buttered noodles with cheese.  On the other hand, have you ever been driven to eating pesto three times a week because you live with a tiny person who is prone to bouts of tyrant-like behavior when it comes to food?  No matter what the food, if you are forced to eat it enough, its gloss will soon begin to fade.

Maybe it’s just the repeat performances wearing me down, but I’ve long felt that pesto, that much-maligned sauce of the ‘90s, is in dire need of a makeover. Being a sauce of few ingredients, there are as many ways to make pesto shine as there are ways to make it dull and unexciting, and, much to the world’s misfortune, most pesto ends up suffering the latter lot rather than the former.  It’s too oily.  It’s garlicky enough so as to be considered borderline caustic.  It’s bland.  It’s boring.  It’s predictable.

Guess what?  It doesn’t have to be any of those things.  Breaking apart the simple components of pesto and then dressing them up as you put them back together can yield some fantastic results, and the seemingly endless ways one can Frankenstein together a new type of pesto are limited by only what you may or may not have in your refrigerator on a given day.  Starting from a very basic level of pesto-making, just changing up one or two ingredients can provide your standard recipe with a nice bit of change.  Arugula can get swapped for basil.  A handful of fresh mint can join in.  Fresh tomatoes and walnuts can be tossed into the blend.

Though history may have proven that your kid will eschew spinach in its regular form, you can hide a ton of the vitamin and nutrient packed green in your sauce and, so long as you never let loose your secret, no child will ever be able to detect the difference between spinach pesto and regular pesto.  You know that as long as your pesto still looks like pesto, chances are your kid will never be the wiser.  To appease the adult palette, swapping out roasted almonds for pine nuts not only makes your frequent pesto consumption easier on the wallet, but the hearty taste of the almonds plays nicely off of the subtle nuttiness of the parmesan cheese.  Add in lemon zest for brightness, and you’re on your way to something reinvigorated and fantastic.

This is not pesto from a jar, or tired pesto from a restaurant that seemed to run out of menu ideas sometime during the Clinton administration.  This is pesto refreshed, yet still utterly recognizable as an old standby who you will always welcome, albeit now with a tad bit more enthusiasm.

Bonus information!

This pesto freezes extremely well.  I have been known to make several enormous batches of this pesto at the end of our gardening season when I harvest all our greens.  After I make a huge batch (or two) of the sauce, I pour it into individual serving sizes and freeze it.  Though I have absolutely no recollection where it came from, this silicone baking mold is great for portioning out pesto for freezing:

After the pesto has frozen (at least three hours, or up to overnight), I release the pesto from each cup (this process is super easy when using a silicone mold, by the way, because the silicone cups just peel back and pop the pesto right out), then place the pesto servings in a thick Ziploc freezer bag and toss them back into the freezer.

The pesto will last in the freezer for several months.  When you want to use a block of your pesto, just place one in a microwave safe bowl and defrost for about a minute on high heat.  Alternately, if you are good about planning ahead, you can just place one of your blocks in the refrigerator to defrost overnight for the next day’s meal.  The molds I have are able to hold just a smidge more than 2/3 of a cup of pesto each.  2/3 of a cup of pesto will coat a moderately dressed pound of pasta, or you can cook 3/4 of a pound of pasta and enjoy your pasta a bit more heavily dressed.

Spinach Basil Pesto with Lemon and Almonds

¼ cup slivered or sliced almonds

1 tightly packed cup of fresh basil leaves

2 tightly packed cups of fresh spinach leaves

2 large cloves of garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped

zest of 1 large lemon

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

½ cup shredded or grated Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

In a dry pan, toast almonds over medium high heat until they are golden brown.  Remove from heat and set aside.

In the bowl of a food processor or blender, combine basil, spinach, garlic, lemon zest, and olive oil.  Process or blend for 15-20 seconds to combine and chop.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add cooled almonds and Parmesan cheese.  Process or blend for another 20-30 seconds, scraping down as needed, until pesto is uniformly combined and no large chunks remain.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour sauce over your favorite pasta and toss to coat.  Taste for seasoning.

If desired, top with chopped tomatoes, more Parmesan cheese, and additional toasted nuts.

Makes 1 cup of pesto, enough for 1 pound of pasta.

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Other Places, Other Foods

18 Jun

In addition to happily publishing recipes and kitchen information on this site, I can also be found spreading the joys of cooking and eating via two additional outlets for whom I am a regular writer, Indie Fixx and Portland Farmers Market.

Indie Fixx, the great lifestyle and design website run by Jen Wallace, is a veritable cornucopia of information and inspiration.  My regular column on Indie Fixx is called Melting Pot, and it appears twice a month, on every other Friday.  Curious about some of the recipes I’ve created for that site?  Well, allow me to share some of the bounty with you (click the links to get to the full articles and recipes on Indie Fixx).

Fruit and Nut Granola Bars

Buttermilk Waffles with Bacon and Caramelized Pears 

Greens, Feta, and Phyllo Tart 

Orange Semolina Cake with Raspberry Coulis 

Pear, Ginger, and Brown Butter Scones 

Thai Mango and Chicken Salad 

For the Portland Farmers Market, I write a regular column that focuses on buying and cooking affordable, delicious food with seasonal ingredients that come directly from the farmers market.  Twice a month I head to the farmers market with $10 in my pocket, and my goal is to find enough food for that price that will allow me to make an entire meal for 2-4 people.  I know people often times think of farmers markets as being overpriced havens for out of touch food obsessives, but my column aims to change that perception. So far I’ve developed three meals, $10 and under, for the farmers market.  The most recent one, an Indian feast made from exactly $10 worth of produce, yielded enough food to last us through several heavenly days of leftovers.  It was like a farmers market magic trick.

The most enjoyable aspect of developing recipes for the farmers market is the fact that every market features different produce every week.  You really learn to eat with the seasons when you follow what’s fresh and available from local farms, so every visit ends up being a pleasant and inspiring challenge.  Below are my three most recent $10 meals for the Portland Farmers Market (again, click on the links to make your way to the complete articles and recipes).

Pea Shoot and Roasted Beet Salad with Sauteed Beet Greens and Breaded Chevre 

Roasted Fennel and Parsnips with Lemon Basil Bruschetta

An Indian Feast of Zucchini Pakoras (Indian Zucchini Fritters), Aloo Gobi (Indian Potatoes and Cauliflower), and Kachumber (Tomato, Cucumber, and Onion Salad)

Visit the recipes.  Try them out.  Tell me what you think.  Keep checking in and discovering what is new here, at Melting Pot, and at the Portland Farmers Market.  The recipes never stop coming.

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How to Make Smoked Salmon at Home

16 Jun

Meat and I, we have a complicated relationship.  The enjoyment I derive from testing out new meat-centric recipes and learning about various techniques and processes in regard to cooking meat tends to oftentimes far outweigh any desire I might have to actually eat what I am making.  Last winter I had a great time braising short ribs for four hours in a red wine and balsamic reduction, but when it came to actually eating the short ribs, I have to admit that I was decidedly lacking in enthusiasm.  Slow roasting a salt-crusted pork tenderloin on the grill is a fascinating operation, so long as I will not be made to actually eat the pork when I am done fussing with it.  Meats get stuffed, marinated, and rolled, and then I foist them on my husband.  Not that he minds.  More realistically, I do not foist them upon him so much as I generously heap them upon his willing plate.

This trend, however, might have just come to an end.  Please, everyone, let me introduce you all to my new best friend: whiskey soaked applewood smoked salmon.

First of all, allow me to admit that, up until last year, I was not aware of the fact that making smoked salmon at home was even a possibility.  I thought that smoking meats involved special canisters or barrels, or perhaps some sort of high-tech equipment that only very dedicated meat-eating people knew how to find.  Not surprisingly, I was dead wrong.  To smoke salmon at home, you need little more than an outdoor grill, some wood chips, salt, and sugar.  That’s it.

If you want to get a little fancier, you can briefly marinate your salmon in a bit of whiskey or bourbon, like we did here, or perhaps a bit of rum, if you’d prefer your salmon to be a bit sweeter.  No matter which you choose, after 4 hours of curing the salmon to draw out the liquid, it takes only 20 short minutes to smoke this salmon to a delicious and robust finish.

You can eat this smoked salmon on a salad, you can pile it on top of a bagel, or you can flake it into some pasta.  There is no wrong way to eat this, and the only known way to stop enjoying it is to eat it until it is gone.  You might want to immediately make more, but that’s all right.  If nothing else, you can just use my excuse, and tell people that you are making up for meats long ago left unenjoyed.

Whiskey Soaked Applewood Smoked Salmon

Adapted only slightly from Steven Raichlen’s How to Grill

1 salmon fillet, about 1 pound

½ cup whiskey, bourbon, or rum

½ cup firmly packed brown sugar

¼ cup coarse salt*

2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

2 cups wood chips, soaked in cold water for 1 hour, then drained (Raichlen recommends using alder wood chips, but we used apple wood because we had easy access to it, courtesy of a recently-felled apple tree and, man, don’t we sound all self sufficient and rustic right now?)

Skin the salmon fillet and remove any bones.  Rinse the salmon under cold running water, then blot dry.  Place the salmon in a baking dish just large enough to hold it, and pour the whiskey, bourbon, or rum over it.  Allow to marinate for 15 minutes, then drain the salmon and blot dry once more.  Wipe out the baking dish.

Combine the brown sugar, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl and mix well with your fingers.  Spread 1/3 of the mixture over the bottom of the baking dish.  Lay the salmon on top of the mixture, skinned-side down.  Cover salmon with remaining 2/3 of brown sugar mixture, patting it onto the fish with your fingertips.  Cover the salmon with plastic wrap and allow to cure in the refrigerator for 4 hours.  The salt in the cure will draw out the moisture in the salmon.

Set up your grill for indirect grilling.  If you have a two burner gas grill, this will mean setting one burner on medium high heat and leaving the other burner off.  If you have a three burner gas grill, it will mean setting the two outermost burners on medium high heat and leaving the middle burner off.  If you have a charcoal grill, you will be raking your hot coals into two piles on opposite sides of the grill, leaving an empty space in between.  After preparing whichever grill you have, place a drip pan in the portion of the grill that is not lit or covered with hot coals.

Thoroughly rinse the brown sugar mixture off of the salmon with cold running water, then blot dry once more.  Discard liquid that has been extracted from the salmon.

Toss the pre-soaked wood chips onto hot coals (if using a charcoal grill), or, if using a gas grill, place wood chips in a smoker box made specifically for gas grills (such as this one), or wrap your wood chips in a tight pouch of aluminum foil with holes punched in the top (as demonstrated here), then place the box or pouch of wood chips under the grill grate, directly on top of a burner.

Brush and oil grill grate.  Place the salmon in the center of the hot grate, over the drip pan that has been placed away from the heat.  Completely close the lid of the grill.  Smoke the fish until cooked through, about 20 minutes.  To test for doneness, press the top of the salmon with your finger and test for firmness.  The salmon should feel firm and break into clean flakes.

Cool the salmon, then wrap it in aluminum foil and refrigerate until cold.  Serve warm or at room temperature.  Tightly wrapped, the smoked salmon will keep in the refrigerator for 3-5 days.

*A note about coarse salt:  Coarse salt, which is often found in the form of kosher salt, comes in varying degrees of saltiness.  The two most widely found brands of kosher salt, Morton and Diamond, are no exception.  Morton kosher salt is known for being exceedingly salty, while Diamond kosher salt is decidedly less salty.  If using Diamond kosher salt, I recommend you go ahead and use the full amount of salt called for.  If you are using Morton kosher salt, reduce the amount of salt by one heaping tablespoon, then proceed with the recipe as usual.

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