Thank You For Being a Friend!

Is it just me, or do you get the Golden Girls theme song stuck in your head every single time someone invites you to a party? Imagine me belting out drunkenly and off-key:

Thank you for being a friend 
Traveled down the road and back again 
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidant. 
And if you threw a party 
Invited everyone you knew 
You would see the biggest gift would be from me 
And the card attached would say thank you for being a friend.


Although I suspect there would be more exclamation points in my version. Hey, why can't you do TV theme songs at karaoke? How about a KARAOKE THEME SONG PARTY?! Omg, I will have to throw this SOON! But for now my good friend CC hosted a housewarming party to show off her very modern new place close to Washington D.C.

The thing about CC is that she's better than me at everything. She has a very yummy cooking blog - Kitchen Konundrums  where she posts some of her creations. Although you can't tell from that how crafty she is, too. I spotted a home made spring yard wreath and some cool  homemade kitchen magnets at her house as well. And the lady can crochet rings around me without looking down. So when she invited us to her party and said I didn't need to bring anything, I knew I'd have to come up with something great!

Luckily there was an article in Wednesday's Washington Post by Jane Touzalin about her adventures in artisan cracker making. Now, I've made crackers before, but when she insisted, "The idea [to make crackers] struck me as brilliant, for several reasons. It would save me money. It would require no special equipment. It would let me customize my snacks to my taste. And a bag of rustic-looking crackers, tied with a pretty ribbon, would make a charming hostess gift, for the next time I had a hostess," I knew I had to dust off my rolling pin and do it again!

The crackers were simple (recipe follows) and I packaged them in a basket with jalapeno jelly made from last summer's harvest, some home grown cut sage tied into an approximation of a smudge stick, a bottle of bubbly, and some freshly cut herbs. I made matching labels for everything to match the basket, and had a cute gift to take to an equally cute friend!

The party was lots of fun and the food was A. MAZ.ING. (but you had me at home made bread and grilled squash!). For dessert, she made individual mousse cups with fresh whipped cream AND strawberry shortcake cups. WHO DOES THAT? Seriously, it was the best!

Crisp Rosemary Flatbread Crackers

from Jane Touzalin for the Washington Post

adapted from a recipe in the July 2008 issue of Gourmet

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups flour, plus more for the work surface
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup olive oil, plus more for brushing
Flaked sea salt, such as Maldon

Directions

• Place a heavy baking sheet on the middle rack of the oven; preheat to 450 degrees.
• Lightly flour a work surface.
• Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and 1 tablespoon of the chopped rosemary in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the center, then add the water and oil gradually stirring them into the flour until a soft, shaggy dough forms. Turn the dough out onto the work surface and knead gently 4 or 5 times to bring the dough together into a soft, smooth ball. 
• Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces. Work with one piece at a time and keep the remaining pieces covered with plastic wrap. Divide the first piece into 4 equal pieces; roll each one out on a sheet of parchment paper into a long oval shape, roughly two inches wide and nine inches long. Use the tines of a fork to prick the cracker several times. 
• Brush each cracker lightly with oil and scatter a little of the remaining chopped rosemary on top, then a little of the salt, pressing slightly to adhere.
• Bake until pale golden and browned in spots, 4 to 6 minutes. Transfer crackers to a rack to cool. 

If Basil always came back like this, things would have been much different for Dorian Grey

So you find that it's spring. The birds are chirping, green is returning to the lawn, and the garden center is finally stocked with things that will most likely die in an late frost scheduled by mother nature about six hours after you plant whatever it is you've just bought. This year, I tried to thwart this by using cloches and growing delicate starts, like basil, outside early. The result of this is that this year, instead of lovely petite basil plants that yield up a few leaves to my occasional caprese salad, I grew monstrous, towering shrubs that have to be fought back almost weekly. At first we didn't know this, and we picked delicately, only a few leaves at a time from the tips. Slowly I grew bolder, and cut large enough pieces to root in a jar on the kitchen window sill. Which went really well, so I planted it out and soon had at least half a dozen MORE towering basil plants. Which meant... well... it was time to start squirreling away pesto like garlic before an impending vampire attack.

Or do vampires even avoid garlic any more? I know they used to fear sunlight, but evidently now sunlight is like sexy-juice for vampires and it just makes them sparkle while oozing teenage-appropriate sex appeal. But I digress. The point was my kitchen, while smelling heavenly, was full of this:

Too bad this isn't scratch and sniff.

That's about 12 cups, loosely packed of washed and trimmed basil. I usually submerge the basil in cold water because we've kept a largely organic garden this year and sometimes you get a few hop-ons in the harvest. I also pick out any bits with eggs stuck to the underside of the leaves and pull off the woody stems. Then I rinse it all again in the basket of a salad spinner and spin to remove most of the water. With that prep done, the rest is smooth sailing.

There's a lot of debate over whether you have to use the classic pine nuts in pesto. To me it comes down to cost. At Sam's Club (which is where we buy most of our groceries), pine nuts are available in a 15 oz package for $9.93. If you've ever bought a tiny 8 oz package of pine nuts at the grocery store for $6, you know this is a great deal. However that's $10.59 per pound. That's a LOT. Walnuts, on the other hand, run $11.74 for 32 oz.  (again, at Sam's Club) for a total of $5.87 per pound. I use 1 cup of nuts per 12 cups of basil, so my total cost per batch (for the nuts) is $1.47 with walnuts. That would be $2.64 with pine nuts, calculating nuts at a 4 oz. cup per the nutritional info. Not a huge difference to some, but when you take into account that I made at least ten batches of pesto like this, it adds up. 

And I'm full of omega-3, too!

Whichever nut you choose,  I prefer to toast them before adding them to the pesto. I'm sure this is also the improper thing to do, but here's the thing about cooking - if it's "right" but doesn't taste good, it's not really right. You can toast them in a pan on the stove or on a microwave safe dish for a minute or two in the microwave, just be careful not to burn them. 

When it comes to garlic in the pesto, you definitely DON'T want it cooked. That raw garlic bite helps to balance the anise-y flavor of the basil. I use home grown garlic which tends to be both smaller and milder than what you'd buy at the store, so I added two full heads, peeled, to the bowl of the food processor.

A good food processor will change. your. life.

Add in the toasted nuts and a little bit of salt and pulse till it gets fairly smooth. Now you start stuffing in basil by the handful. If it gets hard to mix, drizzle in a little olive oil or lemon juice and keep going until all the basil is mixed in. While the processor is running, slowly add more oil - probably at least half a cup. Now comes the tricky part of seasoning. Obviously the more oil you add, the better it will be, but then you're eating a lot of oil and you're wasting freezer space to store a larger volume of oil (which is shelf stable) than basil (which isn't).

Cheese is also a big part of a classic pesto, however the cheese you would use such as Parmigiano Reggiano is, by definition made using calf rennet. I know a lot of people who won't eat veal because it kills baby cows, but have no problem with Parmesan or other cheeses made with animal products. As a vegetarian, I have mixed feelings about this, but on the whole I try to avoid cheese made with non-vegetarian rennet. And since I make this to freeze, I don't use cheese. It's fantastic, but cheese doesn't freeze as long and it's just as easy to add it fresh when the pesto is thawed. If you plan to eat it fresh and you don't have moral objections, then knock yourself out. You will probably need at least a teaspoon and a half of salt, probably more. If it tastes bland which can happen with basil as the season drags on, you might want to try adding lemon juice to brighten the flavor or garlic or onion powder to make it richer. I also like to add black pepper. There's really very little you can do wrong here, so just keep adding whatever you think will taste good. 

Would you believe me if I told you it tastes better than it looks?

Once it's yummy, spray ice cube trays with cooking spray and then spread in the pesto as best you can. Tap it on the counter a few times to work out air bubbles. Put these in the freezer a few hours or overnight until they harden. Once they do, pop the cubes out into a freezer-safe ziplock bag to store indefinitely.

Well, as it turns out, this is sort of like what happened to Basil Hallward after all. :-O 

If storing fresh pesto, put it in a air tight container covered with a layer of olive oil to protect it. To make the recipe slightly less vague, here it is.

Vegan Pesto

12 cups basil, washed and drained with thick stems removed.

1 cup walnuts or pine nuts, toasted.

2 heads garlic, separated into cloves and peeled

3/4 cup olive oil (adjust to taste)

1 1/2 tsp. salt (adjust to taste, you use more than you would in a pesto that includes cheese)

1 tbsp. lemon juice

freshly cracked black pepper, to taste.

Try throwing these cubes into anything and everything tomato-based. Soup, spaghetti sauce, ketchup... It's also great thawed and spread on pizza dough or used as a dip for home made baguettes. You could also just toss some pasta in it and call it a meal. Pesto tastes like summer all year long!