One thing about me, with the exception of holidays, I rarely make a recipe twice, let alone 3 times in the span of a few weeks! This recipe is now a family favorite. I don’t know exactly what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t often use ground chicken. Ground turkey, all the time, so I may be a bit sick of ground turkey. Ground chicken seems to taste milder to me. It carries other flavors better. I don’t know, I’m just all about ground chicken right now. Then there’s the richness of the dish; cream cheese, Parmesan, mozzarella, pesto; all the good stuff! Give this a try and let me know if it becomes a part of your meal rotation.

Here’s another great appetizer for summer. If you don’t want to heat up the kitchen, use a grill basket and cook the shrimp outside.

Mixed Herb Pesto Shrimp Skewers

Pesto
3 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1 cup pine nuts, toasted
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley leaves, packed
1/4 cup fresh tarragon leaves
1/4 cup fresh mint leaves
4 garlic cloves, peeled
2/3 cup olive oil

Skewers
2 pounds frozen uncooked peeled and deveined medium shrimp, about 60 total, thawed
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Pesto: Place basil, pine nuts, Parmesan, parsley, tarragon, mint, and garlic in a food processor. Blend until herbs are finely chopped. Add oil with the machine running, through the feed tube, and blend to a coarse puree. Season pesto to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to a small bowl.

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On Wednesday night, Peggy, Anne, and I made a 6 PM date for an impromptu happy hour at my house.

I had planned to go to Trader Joe’s and pick up some nibbles and wine, but the day slipped away from me (hijacked actually) when something unexpected came up.

Sometimes, a girl’s gotta do what a girl has gotta do … with what she has on hand.

I raced through the door at 5:15; pulled a loaf of bread and a package of prosciutto from the freezer, chilled a couple of bottles of wine I had on hand, jumped in the shower, then threw together this quick appetizer… all before Anne rang the bell at 6:00.

Victory is Mine!

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Whenever I’m leaving town for more than a couple days, the first thing I think of, is how to use up all the fresh food in the refrigerator. The night before we leave, I usually make a big “garbage” pasta dish. “Garbage” as in, throwing any and every thing into it.

I’ll show you what that pasta dish looked like in a future post. Today, I’m showing you what I did with an unopened bag of arugula that would have been too much for the pasta.

I used it to make pesto and then I froze the pesto for later use.

Pesto is a sauce originating in Genoa, which is in the Liguria region of northern Italy (pesto genovese),and traditionally consists of crushed basil, garlic, and pine nuts that are blended with olive oil, Parmigiano Reggiano and Fiore Sardo (cheese made from sheep’s milk). The name is from the word pestâ (Italian: pestare), which means to pound, to crush, in reference to the original method of preparation, with marble mortar and a wooden pestle. The ingredients in a traditionally made pesto are ground with a circular motion of the pestle in the mortar. Nowadays it’s most commonly made in a food processor, at least in the States, it is.

Although basil, Parmesan, and pine nuts are the traditional pesto ingredients, feel free to use any variety and combination of greens or herbs, nuts, and cheese.  Here are just a few combinations to get your creative juices flowing. Mix and match to make your own signature pesto.

• Cilantro and Pepitas
• Parsley, Anchovy, and Capers
• Sage, Parsley, and Hazelnuts
• Spinach in place or in addition to the Basil
• Mixed Herb; Basil, Mint, Cilantro, Parsley, with Spinach and Asiago
• Dill, Lemon, Walnut, and Romano
• Fennel Fond

I’ve given this tip before, but it merits repeating. When you have a thick or sticky mixture in a food processor. Remove what you easily can with a rubber spatula, then put the bowl back on the machine and process for just a second or two. The stuff on the blade will be thrown off to the sides of the bowl by centrifugal force and you’ll be able to get all the mixture easily from the bowl.

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The remaining days of this weeks posts may end up all mentioning my beautiful friend and co-worker, Kim. And that would be a good thing, indeed! Last night Kim and I went out for a glass of wine, to catch up. Before leaving the house, I received a call from her asking if I could use some dill. Turns out her friend and neighbor has a garden and her dill runneth over. Of course, I’d love to have dill, or anything else from someone’s garden.

When Kim arrives to pick me up, she not only has a bag of dill but a huge head of purple cabbage too – look at that monster! Now, cabbage isn’t my favorite vegetable, I’ll eat it and I find it tolerable, but not on the top of my list. Not to worry, Kim has a recipe for a fabulous cabbage soup. OK, I trust her taste 100%, so I tell her to send me that cabbage soup recipe.

In the meantime, I used the dill to make a dill pesto as a garnish for a carrot soup that Dave and I enjoyed for dinner last night. I was so distracted by that head of cabbage, that I neglected to take a photo of the lovely pile of dill, but you’ll at least see it in the final product below.  As for the cabbage… that story will be continued tomorrow.

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For far too long, I have been discarding fennel fronds.  You know, those pretty dill-like leaves attached to the stalks of a funnel bulb.  Sure, I’d pick off a few fronds and use to garnish a dish, but then I’d toss out the remaining fronds still attached to the tough and inedible stalks. What a shame! I decided to see if the fronds could be made into a pesto, and sure enough, delicious! Use this vibrant pesto in a pasta, as a dip with crudités, or drizzled on a fennel salad.  Salad recipe to follow tomorrow. If the fennel you purchase does not have a full 2 cups of fronds, cut the recipe in half and use only 1 cup of fronds.

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Friday, January 7, 2011

7:30 AM – Awake, shower, dress, eat breakfast and put up a blog post for the day.

9:40 AM – Open email and find this gem:

Happy New Year Linda!
Been following your blog and your bumper crop of citrus. I bought an ACME years ago when our landscape included many prolific citrus trees. It juices at lightning speed! Would you like to borrow mine? Let me know and I’ll drop it by ; )
Jeanie

9:43 AM – Immediately Reply:

Oh, Jeanie, you are a lifesaver! YES, a thousand times, YES! Thank you so much, I was actually thinking of putting out a neighborhood search for a juicer I could borrow. I’ll have to show you the one I have, you will die laughing when you see it! Thank you! xoxo
Linda

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Happy New Year, wishing you and yours a happy, healthy, prosperous 2010!

To start the year out on a yummy note, why not combine two Italian favorites? This is a quick and easy lasagna, with no boiling of noodles or making of a time-consuming homemade sauce.

Just purchase the various items for the layers and go to town assembling a big old pan of goodness. To change to a vegetarian dish, substitute diced or sliced zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, and/or bell peppers for the sausage. Sauté the veggies in an additional tablespoon of olive oil and proceed as directed.

When it comes to nutmeg, there is no comparison between freshly ground and the already ground stuff you’ll find in the spice aisle. Purchase the whole nutmegs and use any of the tools above to grind it fresh when you need it.

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Do you know anyone who doesn’t like lasagna? I certainly don’t! It’s right up there with hamburgers, spaghetti, and mac and cheese as the all-time family favorites. All those classics have been posted here already, it is now lasagna’s turn.

Toasted and skinned hazelnuts are used in the pesto. To learn how to do this procedure, either go to the Tip Index at the left and look under “Hazelnuts” or click on this link.
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