Spinach Arugula Pesto

This is our first year growing arugula, and I have to say I’m impressed with how easy it is to grow. We planted it a box in early September, and within three days we had sprouts. It required little maintenance, just watering. One thing we’ve learned in the process is that arugula gets more peppery as it matures. The leaves had a mild peppery flavor early on, but now some of the larger leaves are downright bitter, so balancing the feisty flavor with spinach seemed the way to go for this pesto. The original recipe at Epicurious.com calls for serving on top of grilled hamburgers, which we did, and the combination of the peppery arugula, garlic, and crushed red pepper makes a great topping for hamburgers or vegan burgers paired with grilled onions and Swiss cheese.

The original recipe calls for quickly wilting the spinach in the microwave, though you could do it in a steamer basket, too. For a time saver, I think the recipe still tastes good when using raw baby spinach.

This is my contribution to Grow Your Own, a blogging event that celebrates the dishes we create from foods we’ve grown, raised, foraged, or hunted ourselves. If you are new to the event, you can read more about the rules for participating at the Grow Your Own page. Submissions for this round are due on October 30, and you can send your information and photo to me at andreasrecipesgyo AT gmail DOT com. Read more

Chimichurri

My fondness for chimichurri started back in the early 90s when I was teaching in Colombia. There’s this great restaurant called Andres Carne de Res north of Bogota, and I remember having chimichurri with a steak there. First of all, the steak was one of the best I’d ever tasted (still), the stuffed grilled tomato on the side was fabulous, and the chimichurri just seemed to bring it all together. I seem to remember plenty of cilantro in their chimichurri, which is probably what drew me to it.

Chimichurri has it’s origins in Argentina but is popular throughout South America. The basic ingredients are herbs, garlic, olive oil, paprika, and vinegar, but there many variations and it seems that no two families make it the same way. Some people like to use just parsley, or combine parsley with cilantro or oregano, and the amounts of garlic and liquid ingredients vary. Some recipes have a little heat in the form of pepper flakes, and I’ll toss in a few every now and then. Roasting the garlic is another delightful variation that lends a subtle buttery flavor.

It’s a great all-purpose sauce that goes well with beef, chicken, and fish. Chimichurri is quick and easy and quite healthy with all the vitamins and minerals from the herbs and garlic. The parsley provides loads of vitamin C, which helps our bodies to absorb the iron in meat. We enjoy the freshness of the parsley and oregano from our garden. I usually add cilantro, but my plants are very slow in producing right now, so no cilantro this time.

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No-Cook Tomato Sauce (Grow Your Own)

In my view, fresh, ripe tomatoes are meant to be enjoyed in their natural state, and nothing beats the taste of a tomato straight off the vine. When I start gathering the tomatoes from my garden, I’ll often stand near the plants and just enjoy inhaling the wonderful smell. I follow my family’s tradition and eat lightly salted slices or I just bite into one and add a pinch of salt with each bite. Little grape or sungold tomatoes adorn our salads and the boys eat them by the handful. Read more

Classic Spaghetti Carbonara

I’m certainly not the first food blogger to reference Marcella Hazan, and I think I can safely predict that I will not be the last. She is considered one of the foremost authorities on Italian cuisine, and her book Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is one that I constantly turn to when cooking Italian dishes. The book was originally published over thirty years ago as two separate volumes, The Classic Italian Cook Book and More Classic Italian Cooking, and the combined volume has been revised, updated, and expanded. Of her first book, British food writer Roy Andries de Groot wrote, “Marcella’s book is the most authentic guide to Italian food ever written in the U.S.” No small compliment, to be sure.

According to Essentials, carbonara sauce has it’s roots in Rome during the last days of World War II when American soldiers brought eggs and bacon to local families to make into a pasta sauce. Pancetta is the preferred meat in this dish, Read more

Ann’s Spaghetti Sauce

This is Michael’s mom’s spaghetti sauce, the one he grew up with. His mom has quite a sense of humor. She jokes that she isn’t Italian so she can’t make Italian spaghetti, but she’s Polish so she can make “Polish spaghetti.” Authentic or not, it’s a good, easy multi-purpose sauce that you can use for spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, or other baked pasta dishes, and you can cook it all day in the slow cooker or in a couple hours on the stove.

Equipment

6-quart slow cooker or 6-quart pot with a lid

Ingredients

1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes Read more

Basic Basil Pesto

At the risk of jinxing things, I have to say that our garden is really doing well this year. We have tons of tomatoes that will be ready for picking next week. The herbs are going crazy. The Italian parsley and the dill are about three feet tall with lots of leaves, the oregano and sage are threatening to take over, and the basil is getting taller and bushier. If I can just keep the june bugs from devouring all of those tasty basil leaves, then we’ll have a bumper crop this year.

Michael and I grow lots of basil each year. Throughout the summer we cut the leaves and use them in pesto, other pasta sauces, or as a layer in lasagna. Even with frequent use, we often have many plants left over at the end of the season. So we cut them all down and spend an afternoon making pesto and freezing it. You can freeze small blocks of it in ice cube trays Read more

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