A Day in the Kitchen – Pesto

I’m going to do several posts because I really spent a lot of time in the kitchen today. Yesterday I got up and felt kinda wimpy. I went out to water and decided I was feeling worse so I went inside, got back in bed, took a long nap but never did really feel better. This morning I woke up and my first thought, even before getting out of bed, was . . I think I feel better today. I felt so much better and headed out to tend to the garden. While out there, I realized the basil really needed to be cut so after I finished watering, I cut the basil and headed back to the kitchen. We had a little bit of bread left from the bread I made on Friday so I made French toast and we had bacon. Got that all cleaned up and then it was time to start on the basil. I would have freeze dried it but there’s something already in the freeze dryer and this will be the last load before I leave for a few days. I’ve already planted three more of those long window box planters with basil. We use a lot of basil and I’m hoping to get enough freeze dried that I can share it with Chad and keep him stocked through the winter. I had 16 pints of freeze dried basil already this year but I gave him one when he was here last week. Chad doesn’t like clutter .. my house sends him over the edge . . so instead of saying “Here, take 8 pints of this basil”, I said “Here’s a pint of basil. When you need another one, let me know.”

I had 16 cups of fresh basil so it was time to get started making pesto . . lots of pesto. I will usually make pesto as I need it and the freeze dried works fine to rehydrate a bit and use in the pesto. But . . something had to be done with all this basil.

Even with my old 43 year old workhorse Cuisinart, I made the pesto in four batches, each using 4 cups of basil and four big cloves of garlic.

Look at that fresh garlic from the garden! This garlic is German Hardy and it’s great. The garlic I used for dinner was Music and it was HOT! I had planned to only plant the German Hardy next year but that Music garlic was interesting. OK . . I just ordered it for next year. I usually save some of my garlic to plant next year but this year, I won’t even have enough to get us through the year so I had already ordered the German Hardy. I do have elephant garlic that I’m going to plant. Guess I’ll use one of the 4′ x 4′ beds for that. I don’t miss much about Texas but I do miss my big 100′ x 100′ garden.

This year I planted one 4′ x 8′ raised bed with garlic. I pulled it out the end of May and planted okra. My plan for next year is to plant two 4′ x 8′ beds with the German Hardy and now I’ve decided to plant a third 4′ x 8′ bed with Music. I should be able to pull all the garlic by the end of May, plant okra in one bed, squash in one bed and sweet potatoes in one bed. I think planting squash later may help with the bug issues. If not, then I’m not planting squash again. Those bugs are about to end me over the edge.

This post isn’t about gardening but somewhere I read that planting nasturtiums with your tomatoes will help the bug issues. I did that and I have not had a single bug issue with any of my tomatoes. Now . . what can I plant to get rid of the groundhogs?

OK . . back to the pesto.

I knew we were having Pesto Chicken Pasta tonight for dinner. I don’t really use a recipe but I cut up a couple of chicken breasts, season those and brown them and cook them til they’re done. In a separate pot, I boil a pound of pasta (I use spaghetti mostly). Drain the pasta but save a cup or so of the cooking liquid.

I cut up a couple of tomatoes, added a bit of the spicy Music garlic, tossed that with olive oil, salt and pepper, stuck it in the oven and “air fried” it at 400 degrees til it was roasted and getting a bit brown on the outside.

Then, while pasta was hot, I tossed it with about a cup of Ricotta, about a cup of shredded fresh mozzarella, adding a bit of hot liquid from cooking the pasta, and stirring til the Ricotta and the mozzarella was almost melted. Added the tomatoes, garlic, about 1 cup of pesto and the chicken. It’s easy, really good and has leftovers for another meal.

The other thing I did was made pesto bread.

You can use any bread recipe that you love. The way I make it is roll out the dough after it has risen once . . kinda like you would if you were making cinnamon rolls. Spread the pesto on the dough. Roll it up again like you would a cinnamon roll but instead of cutting it into slices, cut the log lengthwise starting about 2″ from the top and go all the way to the bottom so you have two pieces connected at the top. Then kinda do those two pieces like you would a braid, tuck the end under, let it rise and bake it. Here’s what it looks like inside the loaf after baking.

If you like liverwurst, this bread, toasted lightly, smeared with a bit of spicy mustard, makes the best liverwurst sandwich!

I also made three loaves of Japanese Milk Bread but instead of using bread flour (which I never use because I don’t keep it), I used 1 cup of hard red wheat, 1-1/2 cups of hard white wheat and 2 cups of kamut. I measure after the wheat has been ground. Two loaves were just normal bread and on the third loaf, I added pesto to each of the three logs, then rolled them up like always.

I can look at the bottom of the loaves and see which one has pesto . . can’t tell from the top.

The remainder of the pesto got divided into 8 containers and frozen. Once it’s frozen solid . . or whenever I remember, I’ll remove it from the containers and vacuum seal it. Hopefully I’ll have fresh basil and won’t have to rely on what’s in the freezer but it will be nice to have it when I do need it.