OMG I Love Basil

One of my favorite summer foods is basil. Basil is culinary ganja. I love to take a moment when I'm picking it to just breathe it in. It smells so pungent and rich and luscious.

One of my least favorite summer foods to pay for is basil. If you plant it early (we plant it from seeds), put it in a sunny spot, and water it frequently, you can have all the basil your heart desires. This summer, the hubs planted several pots of basil ('cuz he knows I like plentiful, generous amounts basil), including some Thai basil (see the copper planter in front), which is a bit more savory.

My favorite dishes with fresh basil are caprese salads--I make a little vinaigrette with balslamic, olive oil (usually regular as the extra virgin is strong tasting) some fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper--pasta with pesto, and any (preferable spicy) thai dish. But you can also sprinkle fresh basil on pizza, on pasta with marinara sauce, or on any pasta dish. If I only have a small serving of pesto leftover, I'l use it to make a pesto-mozzarella-tomato sandwich, or I'll whisk it into some eggs before I scramble them for a yummy breakfast or brunch.

I'll leave you with the recipe (my mother's) I use for pesto. I am a pesto purist. I don't generally get adventurous and add herbs other than basil and parsley. I always make this recipe. It is easily doubled or tripled. The amounts needn't be exact--if you have a little more or less of any ingredient, it won't matter. Just make sure you have plenty of basil. Frankly, I have never included the butter (my husband is lactose intolerant and even so I don't add butter to dishes when I can use olive oil instead). And I don't measure out the olive oil. I just keep mixing it in until the texture is right. I also sometimes use regular olive oil and I sometimes use extra virgin. I only use fresh parmesan. I am not that familiar with Sardo and I hate to admit it but I do not care too much for pecorino cheese. With the exception of Pyrennes Brebis, I am not a fan of sheep cheese. It's too sheepy tasting. Finally, I sometimes roast or sautee the garlic first (and in that case add more than two small cloves) because otherwise, the taste can be too sharp and linger longer than I'd like it to.

2 cups fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley
2 small cloves of garlic
2 Tb pine nuts
1/2 - 3/4 grated Sardo, pecorino, or Parmesan cheese
3 Tbs butter
1/2 cup olive oil
salt to taste

Directions are simple:
1. In a blender or food processor, whirl together all ingredients EXCEPT the oil.
2. Add oil in at a slow trickle.
3. Enjoy!

If I Had a Salad, I'd Dress It All Over This Land

When I was growing up, my mom, my dad, my sister, and I had dinner as a family almost every night. Usually my mom cooked and included a protein, a starch, and a vegetable in each dinnertime meal. The vegetable was almost never salad; she's simply not a big fan of it. I, on the other hand, love salad, especially the dressing. When my mom does make salad, she prefers it undressed or maybe with just lemon juice. Fortunately, she made dressing for the rest of us on the rare occasions that she did make salad. When I started cooking dinner once a week for the family, when I was about seven-years-old, I wanted to make salad. My mom gave me this simple recipe for vinaigrette:

3 Tb olive oil
1 Tb red wine vinegar
juice squeezed from a wedge of lemon 1
(peeled) garlic clove (which should be removed before the dressing is poured)
1/4 tsp mustard
1/4 tsp thyme
freshly ground pepper

According to Michael Ruhlman, author of The Elements of Cooking and the recent Ratio, which was a recent housewarming gift to me from my mother, the ratio for basic vinaigrette should be three parts oil and one part vinegar. Mom taught me well. I use the recipe she gave to me as a base for other recipes. I almost always use olive oil or extra virgin olive oil. I have discovered that if I leave the garlic clove whole that the dressing is not garlicky enough, but if mince the garlic, the flavor is too garlicky. So I cut the clove into four pieces and let it sit in the vinaigrette and then press it with the back of a fork to release some of the "garlic juice." And I almost always add a pinch or two of salt and sugar. Ultimately, how I make the vinaigrette usually depends on what kind of salad I'm making.

For a standard french vinaigrette, which I usually use with a simple green salad, I use extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, a garlic clove cut in four (as described above), salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

For potato salad, I use the french vinaigrette plus a dollop or two of mayonnaise (low-fat is fine) and a couple of dashes of paprika. Sometimes I do mince and keep in the garlic because the potatoes can absorb it. The longer the garlic can sit in the vinaigrette, though, the more it cooks and the milder the flavor.

If I am making a spinach salad, I'll often use (regular) olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard, a drop of honey, salt, and pepper. Because the balsamic vinegar adds a heavier and sweeter flavor, I'll often omit the honey, but it depends on how sweet the particular vinegar is. I'll dress this salad a bit in advance to let the vinegar cook the spinach a bit.

With tender, tasty greens, such as arugula, I'll make a very simple dressing either with just extra virgin olive oil and lemon, or extra virgin olive oil and sherry vinegar, and sometimes a dash of mustard if I'm going with the sherry vinegar. My favorite arugula salad involves arugula, caramelized onions and finely chopped hard-boiled eggs that have been slightly undercooked. Greens like arugula are also often tasty with a nut-based oil rather then olive, like walnut oil.

For a Greek Salad, I'll use olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon, dill, and a dash of mustard and a pinch of sugar.

For an Asian slaw, cucumber salad (I scoop out the seeds first), or even a green or spinach salad with julienned carrots, red peppers and cucumbers, I'll use sesame or peanut oil, rice vinegar, a couple dashes of soy sauce, fresh ginger, and some brown or white sugar, The fresh ginger should be minced. If you don't want a strong ginger flavor, let it sit in the vinaigrette a while and then remove it before pouring over the sald.

I adore Caesar Salad. (This is an aside, but the best and most affordable Caesar Salad I've ever had and I've had lots, is the one at Bodo's Bagels in Charlottesville, although be forewarned that sometimes they overdress or underdress, but they'll give you extra dressing when they underdress.) I use The Joy of Cooking's recipe as a base for my own Caesar dressing. The only difference is I use only extra-virgin olive oil and no butter and I don't add eggs and I change the ratios a bit to make it less oily and I add a dash or two of red wine vinegar. I do include anchovies, but use paste from a tube.

I don't usually go for creamy dressings, the exceptions being creamy cilantro-lime dressing and blue cheese dressing. I don't make blue dressing myself because my husband is lactose intolerant, but I may try this recipe soon. The cilantro-lime dressing I managed to eke out using my food processor was inspired by the creamy cilantro-lime dressing they serve up at Sticks Kebob Shop in Charlottesville (but also in Richmond now, I just found out!!!) Unfortunately, I don't recall the specific recipe I used (probably because there wasn't one), but it included the following ingredients: freshly squeezed lime juice, red wine or apple cider vinegar, fresh cilantro, reduced-fat or no-fat sour cream, olive oil, a bit of mayonnaise, one or two cloves of garlic, paprika, fresh jalapeno, and some honey. I know the amounts of ingredients that I would put in as I was preparing the dressing, but I wouldn't measure them or anything. I would use relatively small amounts to start and limit the stronger-flavored ingredients, like the vinegar and honey to just a dash. Once I mixed them all up, I would taste it and see what it needed. This dressing can be used on salad, to accompany grilled meats or vegetables, or as a dip.

As for bottled dressings, most I don't care for, but there are a few I swear by:

1. Newman's Own Olive Oil and Vinegar Dressing, but I make sure to shake it thoroughly before pouring.

2. Newman's Own Lighten Up Sesame Ginger Dressing, but I add a dash of rice vinegar with it because I like vinegar like that.

3. Goddess Dressing. I had this stuff for the first time at a twin-twin play date in Oakland and I was hooked! Annie's Naturals makes this in a natural or organic version (not quite sure what the difference is), but Trader Joe's version is just as tasty and about half the price. I'll soon try the Full Circle brand version of it that I found at Ukrop's here in Ashland.

4. When I do have a hankering for blue cheese dressing, I shell out the extra few bucks for Marie's.

Enjoy!

I'm just in it for the honey cake

I don't remember ever having honey cake for Rosh Hashanah when I was growing up or even round challah with raisins. In fact, I don't remember any culinary traditions associated with the high holidays except for, of course, apples and honey and pigging out during the break-fast after Yom Kippur. Once I had my own children and became part of the Jewish community where we lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, I became aware of the honey cake tradition as well as many other traditions I had either forgotten about or never really known about or understood. Being a lover of food and cooking, especially seasonal dishes, I was happy to latch onto the honey cake ritual. At the high holiday kid-friendly gatherings we attended in Charlottesville, I was introduced to the honey cake from Albemarle Baking Company, the royalty of bakeries in Charlottesville. My friends raved about it and there was nothing wrong with it, but I normally gush over Albemarle Baking Company, so I was disappointed, although to their credit I rarely stray from chocolate-less desserts.

This year, I decided to make my own honey cake. I wanted something traditional but with a twist. I didn't want anything meant to be low fat a la Cooking Light or anything too hippie-ish (like encrusted in sunflower seeds and sweetened with bark from maple trees). I posted a call for recipes on facebook and got the following three interesting suggestions:

1) an old-fashioned oatmeal honey cake from Cooking Light. I usually avoid desserts in Cooking Light because they seem to replace fat with excess sugar, which just turns into fat later and gives their desserts a overly-sugary taste. They also hack away at their fat levels with processed products like Cool Whip (I'd rather have the pure cream). This recipe does look decent, though, and I'm sure it's worth a try.

2) a recipe for Polish honey cake from Michael Symon of the Food Network (see, Michael Pollan, I told you some people get actual cooking recipes from the food network). This one looks fabulous and with the twist I was looking for, but it wasn't quite traditional enough and I didn't feel like dealing with making bread crumbs.

3) a recipe for classic honey cake. This one seemed too traditional and like it might be a bit dry.

Next, I found a recipe in the Food Bible, a.k.a., The Joy of Cooking, which looked pretty good and which I probably would have made had I not found exactly what I was looking for: a traditional honey cake with whiskey-soaked apples. This recipe came from another blog which took it from another blog which took it from a cookbook. I'm not sure what this proves except for maybe that in this era of food blogs for every three recipes posted there is one original recipe. Or something like that.

One thing the blogger forgets to tell the reader in this receipe is what to do with the apples once they've been soaked. My mother and I were frantic (well, Mary Levy-style frantic) as we searched through my cookbooks to see what other cooks do with their apple cakes. So, I made each cake a different way. In one, I nudged in the apple slices, arranging them over the top after the batter had been poured into the loaf pan. With the other, I stirred the apples into the batter before I poured it into the loaf pan. Each one turned out well, but the downside of placing the apples on top is that the cake doesn't cook as evenly. The downside of mixing them in is that the apples are not necessarily evenly distributed. I changed one other thing: I replaced the cup of strongly brewed coffee or black tea with a cherry-cinnamon herbal tea. Given all of the spices, I thought this might make the cake a bit lighter tasting and I thought the cherry flavor would complement the apples nicely. I also made some mini-cakes (in mini-bundt pans) for the kids with the leftover batter and plain apple slices.

Happy New Year, Happy Fall, or just, Happy Honey Cake Day. Enjoy.