I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.
I waited and waited for perfect tomatoes and juicy, ripe nectarines to arrive and for my own basil to grow. All those things came to be last weekend, and I was able to put together this lovely, summer salad. Once again, this is from the book My Favorite Ingredients. I wasn’t kidding when I said I marked several pages. As you see in the title, this salad is intended to include prosciutto, and Kurt’s portion did indeed have some in it. I don’t eat red meat, so I left it off my plate, but Kurt commented that having a little prosciutto is never a bad thing. For the cheese, I was torn between a very nice buffalo mozzarella and burrata. In the end, I used a little of both in the salads. The tomatoes, nectarines, and cheeses were drizzled with basil oil with garlic, and then everything was dotted with aged balsamic. Just the other day, I brought home an eighteen year aged balsamic from Con’Olio which is a locally-owned olive oil and balsamic vinegar shop with incredible varieties of both, and this was a perfect use for it. This is exactly the kind of dish in which quantities and exact ingredients don’t matter so much, but the quality of each item on the plate is everything.
I’ve made basil oil before, but this version was a little different. The basil wasn’t blanched this time, and the raw leaves were pureed with chopped garlic. Once they were minced, olive oil was added. For the salad, I used nectarines and an heirloom tomato which were simply cut into wedges, and I added yellow cherry tomatoes which were cut in half. The nectarines and tomatoes were tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper. The mozzarella and burrata were cut into big pieces and plated, the nectarine and tomatoes were spooned on and around the cheeses, the basil oil was spilled on top of it all, and the aged balsamic was dribbled here and there. I added a few basil leaves, and Kurt’s salad was adorned with prosciutto.
It is really just a caprese salad with added hits of sweet and salty from fruit and cured meat. But, when the ingredients are as good as they can be, it’s a salad that’s perfection. I couldn’t decide which cheese I preferred. Both were excellent with the mix of things on the plate. I did decide that this could be my dinner day in and day out for the rest of the summer.
Thanks to Heather at Flour Girl, there’s a new group that’s all about cooking with CSA goods. Since I’m always going on about my CSA, I had to join. My most recent pick-up from Hands of the Earth Farm included eggplant, cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, zucchini, pattypan squash, and yellow squash along with some chiles, onions, and edamame on the stem. There were two baby-sized Japanese eggplants and one small one of the Mediterranean variety. I had an idea of how I wanted to use them, but I wasn’t sure how well it would work given their diminutive size. This dish is found in Vegetable Harvest by Particia Wells. It’s a compacted mini-terrine of sorts with eggplant, roasted cherry tomatoes, goat cheese, fresh basil leaves, and basil oil, and it screams summer from the plate.
This recipe requires that a couple of items be prepared in advance. That adds to the overall time of an otherwise very simple dish, but these steps are well worth the additional effort. One of those items is basil oil, and this is the same basil oil I posted about last October. It’s a great use of abundant homegrown basil, and the oil can be kept refrigerated and used for 10 days. The other extra step is roasting cherry tomatoes, but if you know how delicious those are then you know this step is not only justified but necessary. So, once you have the basil oil and roasted cherry tomatoes, all you have to do is broil long, thin slices of eggplant and begin layering. The cooked eggplant pieces were used to line ramekins while partially overhanging the top edges. A few roasted cherry tomatoes were set on top of the eggplant in the ramekins, then a couple of basil leaves were placed on the tomatoes, then some goat cheese was pressed on the basil, more basil went on the cheese, and then the overhanging eggplant was folded in and pressed into place. The timbales could be prepared up to this point in advance. The ramekins were then placed under the broiler for a few minutes to heat through.
Thankfully, the timbales popped right out of the ramekins without any problems and were served with basil oil and some chopped basil leaves. It’s a simple combination that could be put together a thousand other ways, but the compacted timbales had a nice, presentable look about them for the most part. Mine were somewhat short and squat and lacked complete eggplant coverage in some spots due to the size of eggplant I used. I’d like to make this again with full-sized specimens now that I know how simple it is. There are only a few ingredients used here, but they combine perfectly into tasty, little savory packages with the added boosts of flavor from the roasted tomatoes and basil oil. I always try to make good use of everything from our CSA, and I was happy with this result. Next, I’ll be searching high and low through books and files for zucchini recipes for what’s sure to be a deluge.
The basil oil I mentioned on Friday was used in Saturday morning’s breakfast. I’ve been reading the October issue of Saveur, which is all about breakfast, and I was inspired to cook up a hash and top it with fried eggs. This dish doesn’t appear in the magazine, but all the breakfasts mentioned had me craving a big morning meal. Thinking about a hash, I wanted to create something with a varied mix of vegetables and not just a potato dish. Fennel and orange bell pepper were diced small and added to the potato and onion. I left the hash to cook over medium heat for about 20 minutes until it was very tender. The fennel, potato, onion, and pepper all took on a similar texture and the flavors were well-melded. I used a generous amount of Aleppo pepper which brought some good heat to the dish and balance to the sweetness of the onion and fennel. At the end of the cooking time, a big handful of chopped parsley brightened it all. The hash was served with a fried egg on top, a drizzling of basil oil, and some fennel fronds.
The basil oil was fresh-tasting as it enlivened the other items on the plate. The fennel was an especially good part of the hash, and it mingled very cordially with the basil flavor. I believe this is how the meal came together:
1 T butter 1 T extra virgin olive oil 1 t (or to taste) Aleppo pepper 1/4 cup red onion, minced 2 small, red potatoes, unpeeled and diced 1 fennel bulb, diced 1/2 orange bell pepper (or whatever color of bell pepper is in your refrigerator), diced 1 big handful parsley leaves, chopped salt and black pepper to taste fried eggs basil oil fennel fronds -melt butter with olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat -add aleppo pepper, onion, and potatoes, stir to combine, and allow to cook, stirring occasionally while dicing fennel and bell pepper -add fennel and bell pepper, continue cooking while stirring occasionally for about 20 minutes, season to taste with salt and black pepper -stir in parsley just before serving -fry eggs as you prefer and place on top of hash, drizzle with basil oil, sprinkle on fennel fronds -sit down to a delicious, big breakfast
I have decided to stop any and all complaints about there being no fall season in Austin. This is because I walked outside yesterday and found that my basil plants had reacted quite positively to the rain that finally fell the other day. And, thinking back to last year, my basil plants were still alive and kicking at Christmas time. For me, that’s an adequate tradeoff for the lack of fallness. This abundance of basil might have been used for a pesto, but I decided to go even simpler with it.
In Vegetable Harvest, by Patricia Wells, a few different herb oils are described and used in salad dressings, and the process for making them couldn’t be easier. Here, two cups of basil leaves are dropped into boiling, salted water for 15 seconds, then plunged into ice water, and then drained and dried in a towel. Placing the leaves in a sieve that will fit into the pan of boiling water and the bowl of ice water makes this procedure even simpler. Patricia Wells lists an exact amount of salt to be added to three quarts of boiling water because salted water helps set the color of the leaves. I note this because I often cook with less salt than is recommended, but in this case, there seems to be good evidence that the right amount matters. Once the basil leaves are dried in a towel, they join one cup of olive oil and a little sea salt in the blender. Wells suggests leaving the pureed oil as is while other herb oil recipes mention straining it. I don’t mind tiny bits of basil in the oil, so I left it unstrained.
In Vegetable Harvest, the basil oil is used in a lemon-basil dressing which is made by combining 1/4 cup of the oil with one tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice. That will be my first use of it, and I already have a few other ideas too.
. I wasn’t kidding when I said I marked several pages. As you see in the title, this salad is intended to include prosciutto, and Kurt’s portion did indeed have some in it. I don’t eat red meat, so I left it off my plate, but Kurt commented that having a little prosciutto is never a bad thing. For the cheese, I was torn between a very nice buffalo mozzarella and burrata. In the end, I used a little of both in the salads. The tomatoes, nectarines, and cheeses were drizzled with basil oil with garlic, and then everything was dotted with aged balsamic. Just the other day, I brought home an eighteen year aged balsamic from Con’Olio which is a locally-owned olive oil and balsamic vinegar shop with incredible varieties of both, and this was a perfect use for it. This is exactly the kind of dish in which quantities and exact ingredients don’t matter so much, but the quality of each item on the plate is everything.
by Particia Wells. It’s a compacted mini-terrine of sorts with eggplant, roasted cherry tomatoes, goat cheese, fresh basil leaves, and basil oil, and it screams summer from the plate.
Thankfully, the timbales popped right out of the ramekins without any problems and were served with basil oil and some chopped basil leaves. It’s a simple combination that could be put together a thousand other ways, but the compacted timbales had a nice, presentable look about them for the most part. Mine were somewhat short and squat and lacked complete eggplant coverage in some spots due to the size of eggplant I used. I’d like to make this again with full-sized specimens now that I know how simple it is. There are only a few ingredients used here, but they combine perfectly into tasty, little savory packages with the added boosts of flavor from the roasted tomatoes and basil oil. I always try to make good use of everything from our CSA, and I was happy with this result. Next, I’ll be searching high and low through books and files for zucchini recipes for what’s sure to be a deluge.
The basil oil was fresh-tasting as it enlivened the other items on the plate. The fennel was an especially good part of the hash, and it mingled very cordially with the basil flavor. I believe this is how the meal came together:
In 
In Vegetable Harvest, the basil oil is used in a lemon-basil dressing which is made by combining 1/4 cup of the oil with one tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice. That will be my first use of it, and I already have a few other ideas too.