Tag

basil

Appetizers Farmer's Market Snacks Vegetarian

Easy Tomato Bruschetta

written by Ali

I’ve been on an easy snack food kick all weekend long, which isn’t unusual for me in the summertime. We are starting to see an abundance of tomatoes in the farmer’s market and in the grocery stores finally, and I even think some of our home-grown tomatoes are considering ripening. This tomato bruschetta takes advantage of that summer abundance – it’s a great way to use up both tomatoes and basil.

My inspiration for this recipe comes from the movie Juile and Julia, which I admit to watching during a hotel stay recently. I particularly love the scenes in the movie in which the only reader of Julie’s blog is her mother – I’ve had my own moments starting out with my food blog when I’ve wondered if I have any other readers out there beside my mom and a couple of loyal friends. But I digress – what really stayed with me was a scene in which Julie is making bruschetta by toasting slices of bread in a pan in a lot of butter. The golden browned bread is then laden with tomatoes and basil – and dinner is served. The key here is the butter. Don’t skimp – it’s not worth it to try to be healthy on this recipe. The tomatoes are plenty healthy, anyway.

Pair with a light, fruity white wine. I finished off a bottle of Semillon with this. It would pair well with a Vinho Verde or similar.

Tomato Bruschetta
Serves 2

8 slices of a baguette or similar
2-3 tablespoons butter
1 heirloom tomato
1 small bunch basil (about 8 – 10 leaves)
Olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled and cut in half
Salt

Melt the butter in a non-stick or cast-iron pan over medium heat. When the butter is melted, add the bread and toast on each side until it is golden brown.

Meanwhile, chop the tomato into a small dice. Chop the basil finely and mix basil and tomato together. Drizzle with olive oil.

Rub the garlic clove half over each slice of toasted bread. Spoon the tomato and basil mixture on the bread, and sprinkle with a bit of salt. Enjoy!

July 26, 2016 1 comment

Farmer's Market Lunch Recipes Vegetarian

Pesto, Tomato, and Mozzarella Pasta Salad

written by Ali

I’m humming On the Road Again as I type. This week, I’ve only seen my desk for two days and next week will be the same. What I’ve seen instead are meeting rooms, the Capital Mall in Salem, and one of the most-overpriced hotel rooms I’ve stayed in in a long time. I’ve also seen a lot of my car, listened to four episodes of NPR’s Ask Me Another, one episode of This American Life, and one episode of Radio Lab. In short, I couldn’t wait to get home to see my husband, the dog, the cats, and my comfortable bed. I also couldn’t wait to get home to cook up some of the abundance that’s been developing in my little urban container garden.

I planted four tomato plants this year and three basil plants, two Sweet Basil plants (I’m guessing these are Genovese Basil plants – they are the ones that Trader Joe’s sells) and one Spicy Bush Basil plant. The basil took a while to warm up to the idea of growing, but now that it has, I have a plethora of basil on my hands. In past years, I’ve used my handy Cuisinart to create pesto cubes that I’ve frozen, but one of my Cuisinart parts didn’t survive the move to the new house, and I just haven’t gotten around to try to figure out if I can easily replace the part. So – lots of Basil, no food processor, and a serious longing for pesto. Fortunately, I ran across a recipe for How to Make Pesto Like an Italian Grandmother from 101 Cookbooks (one of my all-time favorite blogs – honestly, probably the first cooking blog I ever read regularly).

I decided last night to make two-days-worth of a simple pasta salad. After a long drive home from Bend, Oregon, I retreated to the garden, harvested several bunches of both the Spicy Bush Basil and the Genovese Basil and started chopping. Hand chopped pesto is a lot easier than I thought it would be. I don’t have a mezzaluna, so used our sharpest kitchen knife and just chopped, chopped, chopped. I skipped the garlic cloves (I had face-to-face meetings with people in the afternoon – didn’t want to offend anyone with raw garlic breath), used a little bit of parmesan cheese and a handful of pine nuts. I chopped and chopped some more. When I was finished, it wasn’t the prettiest pesto ever (basil oxidizes so quickly), but it was the best smelling and tasting basil I’ve ever made. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to creating a pesto that I ate on our honeymoon in Rome – and I have the fondest memories of that pesto: it came from a corner grocery store and we ate it with handmade ravioli in the kitchen of the weird little villa hotel room we were staying at in a tucked away corner of the city.

This is less recipe than more a few suggestions about how to make a very simple, but very delicious meal.

Pesto, Tomato, and Mozzarella Pasta Salad

Dried or fresh pasta
Several handfuls of basil
A handful of pine nuts
Several large pinches of freshly grated parmesan cheese
Tomatoes
Fresh mozzarella (in water, though you could also use regular mozzarella or even more parmesan or another cheese all together)
Olive oil

Boil a pasta of your choice using as much dried pasta as servings you are planning to prepare. I used bow tie pasta since it’s what I had on hand. Chop up a tomato or two. Make the pesto by chopping up basil leaves, adding pine nuts and chopping, adding parmesan and chopping (see Heidi Swanson’s lovely full recipe here). Add the pesto to your pasta. Add tomatoes and cheese. Drizzle with olive oil.

I heated this up for just a minute in the microwave at work, just to take the chill off the pasta and the pesto, but not so long to fully melt the mozzarella.

Enjoy!

July 14, 2016 2 comments

Uncategorized

Caprese Sandwich

written by Ali

Oh tomato season how I rapturously, enthusiastically, and happily enjoy you! Too many adverbs? Probably. I really do love tomato season though. Tomato season is finally here in the PNW. Despite some cooler temperatures, even my plants have started to ripen up a tomato or two (little ones, barely worth the mention, but still). Fortunately, the grocery stores and the farmer’s markets have tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, not the horrible off-season cardboard tasting ones that make me long for summer.

This week, I have a very short work week due to the holiday, vacation and traveling. It seemed worth it to make something quick and easy for work – particularly something that would celebrate tomatoes, as I had a full two pounds of heirloom tomatoes from Trader Joe’s. Half went into pico de gallo and the other half became lunch. I also have an abundance of very happy basil growing in my own backyard, and since I’m down a food processor (don’t ask), I feel compelled to start eating basil in everything I possibly can before fall creeps in.

Solution? Caprese sandwiches. Caprese is usually a salad – simply made of fresh mozzarella, tomato, basil and olive oil. These sandwiches are a simple variation layering bread, mayonnaise, fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil. The real genius here is the assembly at the desk (or picnic, or whatever venue in which you might eat these). This isn’t even really a recipe, but an easy idea.

Take two pieces of bread (I used regular wheat sandwich bread), and spread a thin layer of mayonnaise on both slices. Put them together with the mayonnaise sides facing inward and put them in a plastic sandwich bag or other container). Slice a tomato. Slice a ball of mozzarella. Gather some basil leaves. Put the tomato, mozzarella and basil in a separate container (separate from the bread). Leave in the refrigerator overnight (if preparing the night before). Assemble wherever you choose to eat lunch. Enjoy!

July 7, 2016 0 comment

Beverages

Blackberry Basil Gin and Tonic

written by Ali

As you can probably tell, I’m into herby cocktails this summer. This gin and tonic is no exception – blending the best of berry season with purple basil. Gin and tonics are one of my favorite cocktails, and while I like a very classic G&T, I don’t mind mixing things up a bit every now and then and adding other flavors to it. I especially enjoy drinking this while sitting on the patio on a hot summer day. I used purple basil for this, but would have used regular green basil, too if that’s all I had on hand.

Blackberry Basil Gin and Tonic
Makes 1

1 ounce gin
1/2 lime
3 basil leaves
5 blackberries
tonic water
ice

Muddle the basil leaves, three of the blackberries and half of the lime in a glass. Add the gin and the ice and top with tonic water. Garnish with the remaining lime and blackberries.

July 1, 2016 0 comment

Lunch Recipes Vegetarian

Roasted Tomato and Burrata Pasta Salad

written by Ali

When life gives you half an hour to make your lunch for the week, along with the first of the summer tomatoes and an abundant crop of basil, make Roasted Tomato and Burrata Bow Tie Pasta Salad. So if you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed a number of beach-focused posts this past weekend. One of the greatest parts of living in this part of the PNW is that the beach is only two hours away, and I was fortunate to happen to have a meeting along the coast on Friday, which led to a night’s stay in Bandon, Oregon, a small tourist town along the southern Oregon coast. I ate seafood, picked up rocks and shells, and wandered along the beach. This meant, however, that Saturday was consumed with beach-time and driving, leaving just one day to run errands and cook on Sunday. I also realized, belatedly, that the Vancouver Marathon was happening on Sunday, which meant virtually no parking for the farmer’s market in Vancouver. This gave me a great excuse for going to a different market across the river in Portland – the Montavilla neighborhood market, where I found the first cherry tomatoes of the season. After having also crammed in shopping, a father’s day phone call, and a haircut, I was left with little time to be super kitchen creative.

Thus, bow tie pasta salad with roasted tomatoes, basil and Burrata cheese. Burrata cheese looks like a large round chunk of mozzarella. The difference is that the exterior is very mozzarella like, while the interior is filled with creamy curds that melt very nicely. It’s divine. Burrata was a rarity when we lived in rural Oregon, but here in the Portland area, it’s much easier to find. This recipe comes together very quickly and makes a great lunch dish. It would hold up well for a picnic, too.

Roasted Tomato and Burrata Bow Tie Pasta Salad
Serves 4

8 ounces dried bow tie pasta
15-20 cherry tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic chopped finely
2 balls of burrata
10-15 leaves of basil, torn into bite-size pieces
Salt to taste
Ground pepper to taste
Olive oil to taste

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put the whole cherry tomatoes on a baking sheet or pie pan and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with the chopped garlic. Roast for 20 minutes or until the tomatoes are wrinkly and soft. Set aside and let cool.

Fill a saucepan about half way with water and bring to a boil. Add the pasta and cook according to package instructions. Drain the pasta.

Combine the drained pasta, the roasted tomatoes, and basil and toss. Tear the burrata into chunks and add to the pasta/tomato/basil combination. Add a pinch of salt and a few grinds of ground pepper and drizzle a little olive oil over the top.

This can be eaten as is, or left overnight in the fridge and reheated the next day – no more than a minute or two in the microwave.

June 21, 2016 0 comment

Beverages

Basil Berry Sangria

written by Ali

It’s Friday, it’s cooled down a bit here in the PNW, and it’s time to have some Basil Berry Sangria to celebrate! Last weekend, on one of the hottest of days, Clay and I went to my favorite cousin’s house for a BBQ. This cousin is a particularly amazing woman: she’s worked on cars, went to culinary school and worked as a sous chef, traveled the world, and just is a plan all around extraordinary person. One of the greatest parts about living in PNW is that we live closer to her and her significant other and can hang out on a regular basis, including finally being able to take her up on invitations for great parties, camping, fishing, etc. We’ll also be going wine tasting soon and I’m sure I’ll be posting photos and sharing some of our great wine finds. All of this is a long prelude to say that at the aforementioned BBQ, she made some amazing sangria that had just the faintest herby hint of basil. I was smitten and had to make some for myself.

Of course, the current food mantra around here is it is berry season – eat lots and lots of berries – in everything! So of course, I had to make a berry sangria. This combines both berries and basil and makes me think I need to make more dishes with both ingredients and quickly. For now, though, this sangria will suffice.

Basil Berry Sangria – Friday Happy Hour
Serves 4-6

¼ cup basil infused simple syrup (recipe below)
¼ cup orange curacao or Cointreau
2 cups mixed berries (blueberries, blackberries, marionberries, etc.)
1 bottle dry white wine (I used a dry Riesling, but other whites or even a rose would do)

Combine all ingredients in a pitcher or carafe and stir. Let sit in the refrigerator for at least two hours or longer for the flavors to blend.

Basil Infused Simple Syrup
6 basil leaves, washed and patted dry
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup water

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and heat over low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Take off the heat and let sit until cool. Remove the basil before using.

June 10, 2016 0 comment