Summer is definitely over so I cut all of the basil from the garden and made a pesto sauce. According to Marcella Hazan in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking:
“When serving pesto on spaghetti or noodles, the full Genoese treatment calls for the addition of boiled new potatoes and green beans. When all its components are right, there is no single dish more delicious in the entire Italian pasta repertory.”
Maybe a bit of an overstatement since I am very partial to Bucatini all’Amatriciana. Never the less, this was sensational.
What started out as a plan to use up some leftovers or expiring food turned out to be a real feast:
And I made a split-pea soup from the Moosewood cookbook, but needed to make a correction to the obvious omission by throwing in a big chunk of leftover smoked ham shank.
Just put a bunch of peaches into the dehydrator. Wet spring and summer has produced a bumper crop.
Basil is doing really well in the garden, so I cut off a bunch and pounded it in the mortar with pine nuts, olive oil, parmesan, pecorino romano, etc.
These little cherry tomatoes (Sweet 100 variety) are the first of what promises to be a very abundant season. Sweet, yes, but with several layers of other flavors that I just never find in supermarket or even farmers’ market tomatoes. We just ate these as is.
Whew. That was intense, but I was anxious to take advantage of this harvest, the first in 4 or 5 years. IIRC, Here is the tally
Pretty good from a single, small tree under avian assault. The image I have in my mind right now is of me at the table with my wife on a cold and snowy winter day, enjoying a piece of freshly-baked bread, slathered with cultured butter and some of this cherry jam and wondering how our owl friends are faring outside. The guys you see in the photo above offered to make sure nothing untoward would befall our cherries. They did a great job!
Tart cherries from our garden have all been picked and I’m working on ways of using them aside from the traditional and terrific pies, cobblers, etc. These are from a Paula Wolfert recipe for an accompaniment to be used with pâtés, confits, braised meat, etc. They are supposed to pickle for 3 months in a cool place; I’ll try the wine cooler. They are said to be ready to eat when they lose their bright color. To me, they taste ready to eat! Stay tuned.
The cherry tree is still pumping out delicious tart cherries. Today I made a clafoutis using a recipe from Paula Wolfert’s terrific Cooking of Southwest France. A shot of Armagnac makes a world of difference. I used an ancient cast-iron skillet that I think I bought at a garage sale in a previous life.
I hope I learned my lesson. Last year by the time I noticed my tomato plants were infested with horned caterpillars, quite a bit of damage had been done. So this year I’m applying BT every week, just in case.
The year before, an enormous June hailstorm ripped many blossoms and leaves off the plants, so now I have screens over the containers.
I wonder what disaster is awaits this year? No! Wrong attitude. Farmers have to be optimists.