Which meant I made it only out of Italian basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and olive oil. And I eschewed pestos made of other, untraditional herbs, cheeses and greens as being inferior copies of a perfect Italian sauce. Pesto was only made of Italian basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and olive oil, and just because someone ground up some green herbs, something cheesy and some garlic and olive oil together in a food processor did not mean they could or should call it pesto. It was really just some tasty green stuff that needed a name other than pesto, because it wasn’t pesto.

(You must forgive me for my rigidity–I’d been reading a lot of Marcella Hazan, and she really is a pesto purist.)

And then, I started adulterating it with heavy cream, because I found that the addition of cream slowed down the natural oxidation that causes the emerald green sauce to turn brown, and eventually black very soon after it’s added to hot pasta or whatever else you put it on. The addition of cream is not a method approved by Harold McGee, the great explainer of all questions culinary, but I found I liked it better than his suggestion to cook the pasta in acidulated water, which results in tart pasta (blech), or his belief that if you just use leaves and no stems or flowers bracts, the pesto will not darken (it still does, just more slowly), or his assertion that if you use pine nuts instead of walnuts, it doesn’t darken as much. The problem was that I used pine nuts in the first place and as soon as the oil is ground up with the basil leaves, the leaves oxidize and that’s just all there is to it.

So, I started adulterating the pesto. For some reason that I do not quite understand, except that perhaps the cream seals out the oxygen by coating the tiny basil leaf pieces, the addition of cream slows oxidation so much that it is essentially is no longer a problem. It keeps it brilliant green all through the length of an average meal.

But one adulteration leads to another, as most adventurous cooks already know.

I took to adding some raw spinach leaves to the food processor–about 1/10th of the total volume of the basil leaves–along with adding the reduced cream at the end. This resulted in a very green pesto that had a luxurious velvety mouthfeel thanks to the cream and still tasted of supremely fresh garlic and basil.

Then, I started reacting badly to tree nuts, and away the very expensive pine nuts went.

No one noticed. The pesto still tasted mighty amazing.

So, I took to adding some Aleppo chili flakes instead of black pepper and some Thai basil and lemon basil along with the regular Genovese basil that I had used for years.

At this point, I had dipped my toe into the heresies of unconventional pesto-making far enough, that I decided to jump in feet first and just go all the way.

What tipped me over the edge was a taste of some cilantro pesto that John Gutekanst of Avalanche Pizza had to dip some of his amazing bread he sells at the Athens Farmer’s Market on Saturdays. It was green, glorious and good, popping with fresh flavor that any cilantro and garlic lover would crave, but I still hated calling it pesto.

But what to call it? “I dunno, lad, but it’s green,” (Star Trek Geek points to the reader who knows who says this in what episode and in what context) is way too long of a name for a foodstuff, so I gave up and just call it Cilantro Pesto.

But mine is very different from John’s.

I figured if I was going off the chain and putting cilantro in pesto, I might as well just throw in whatever I felt like, and not be constrained by what other people might think was right and proper. Besides, I was already risking the wrath of Marcella Hazan, so I might as well go down with a happy tongue and a full stomach, right?

So, I added a few other herbs. Some basil. Thai basil. Some Italian parsley. A wee pinch of fresh spearmint. The greens of a scallion.

And, I put some other green things in–like a kale leaf for bitterness and some spinach leaves for color and vitamins.

And I left the Parmesan cheese out and replaced it with two year old super-sharp white cheddar made right her in Ohio.

And Aleppo pepper flakes. And, a smidge of black peppercorns.

Of course, garlic, but also a bit of scallion bottom–the white oniony bit.

And finally–olive oil.

No nuts. Sadly. I would have tossed in some black walnuts otherwise, because their assertive somewhat musky flavor and sweetness would have complimented the cilantro perfectly.

So, what did I use my wicked, subversive, heretical pesto on?

Well, I first used it as a condiment on a cheeseburger. And it was wonderful.

It’s also good on grilled chicken, as a bread dip and I bet it would make a great pizza sauce with toppings of fresh heirloom tomatoes, roasted red peppers and fried eggplant. It’s great mixed in scrambled eggs, though it does make them, well, a wee bit verdant-looking. So, if you are unlike Sam-I-Am and you do not like green eggs and ham, don’t put this pesto in your eggs.

But my favorite use has been to melt it on some just browned sauteed zucchini or yellow summer squash. Stirred up with the sweetly caramelized squash, it’s just rich, gooey, nummy and good.

Well, anyway, here’s the recipe. It’s super-easy and can be frozen for up to four months and thawed with no ill effects.

Oh, and unlike basil pesto–it doesn’t oxidize easily–so no need for the cream. (But, of course, you can add it to a cream sauce if you like…..)

Cilantro Pesto
Ingredients:

3 cups tightly packed fresh cilantro leaves and fine stems, washed and well dried
1 3″ sprig of Thai basil leaves, removed from stem, washed and well dried
1 crown of Italian basil leaves (just the leaves at the tip of a branch–works out to about four leaves) washed and well dried
1/8 cup Italian parsley leaves, washed and well dried
4 mint leaves
light and dark green top of 1 scallion
2 kale leaves, big vein removed, washed and well dried
1/4 cup packed fresh raw baby spinach leaves, washed and well dried, big stems removed
1/4 cup two year old (or older if you have it) very sharp cheddar
1/4 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes
1/2 of the white of 1 scallion
head of garlic, cloves peeled and cut into chunks
olive oil as needed to make a sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Put all ingredients up to and including the garlic cloves into the bowl of a food processor.

Put the lid on the food processor and start it running. Drizzle olive oil slowly into the feed tube and continue until the ingredients coalesce into a finely ground, thick barely pourable sauce.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and go to town figuring out your favorite way to use this gregariously green stuff.

Note: If you want to make this vegan, replace the cheese with one good tablespoonful of white or shiro miso. I like Miso Master brand. Be careful with your salt addition if you use the miso though.

I just grew shallots.

Lovely, delicious shallots.

Which, I am happy to report are even easier to grow than garlic which is easier to grow than onions, especially if you grow them from bulbs rather than seed. (Though in the years to come, I’m going to attempt to grow them from seed, too.)

Some people eschew shallots, swearing that people cannot tell the difference between their flavor and that of onions, but I disagree. Especially in Thai recipes, such as Thai Basil Chicken the flavor of shallots is necessary, for they are milder than onions with a lingering sweetness that really brings a depth to the sauce that is lacking from onions. (Though, I have found that if you are going to substitute onions for shallots, try using smaller younger onions–they have a bit more sugar in them and not as much of the sulfurous scent that gives onions their characteristic bite.)

Without shallots, the above recipe, which is Zak’s favorite dish of all time, I think, the dish lacks depth. The sugar in the shallots that caramelizes so quickly in the wok really is magical. And last night, when I made it for the first time with my own shallots, I found that freshly harvested shallots are even sweeter and more delectable than the ones found in the store.

Only one farm family that I know of grows shallots around here commercially (That would be Kim and Larry of Cowdery Farm), and they don’t have them very often, so I decided last fall to give shallots a try. I figured since I hate using the ones from the grocery store from who knows where grown who knows how, and I do have a community garden plot, it should be no trouble for me to experiment with a pound of shallot bulbs.

Territorial Seed Company carries shallot bulbs and seeds both, and they have an admirable selection of both. This year, I grew Sante shallots; next year I am growing them as well as some Dutch Yellow and Gray shallots.

They really are easy to grow.

In the fall, you plant shallots (round end down and pointed end up!) in soil rich in organic matter about six inches apart with the pointed end either at soil level or only slightly below. They are shallow rooted. Water them well, and then mulch well with straw or other organic matter. If the winter is mild, you might see some green sprouts unfurling about February, but they really look like they’re never going to grow until suddenly springy leaf-green shoots start popping up reliably where you planted them. It doesn’t take them long to really start growing like mad, so long as you keep them moderately moist (don’t over-water or under-water) and feed them now and again with some side dressings of compost, manure, worm castings or fish emulsion.

No pests bother shallots. Deer don’t think they’re tasty. Bugs don’t like them. slugs hate them. They can get a bit overly wet and catch a fungus or mold in the bulbs–in that case, if it’s raining too much, pull back the mulch to let the water evaporate a bit. If it isn’t raining enough, like this year, you’ll be happy for the mulch. (I used wheat straw. But chopped up fallen leaves are great, too, or grass clippings or what have you.)

They grow pretty fast to about three feet, and they set pretty white globular blossoms. (You can see in the picture here my shallots with their guardian gnome standing watch.) You harvest them when the tops start dying back, which happened here in July, though I am led to believe that this was early for them. You just pull them up and cut off the stalks about four inches up from the bulbs, and then set them in a dry, cool, airy place to dry out for a week or so.

You’ll find that they grow in clumps, with each bulb you planted having at least two, but most often three to five bulbs growing along side it, sometimes attached to it, and sometimes not. If they are attached, pry them apart, and dust off as much dirt as possible before setting them to dry.

And that’s it. That’s how to grow shallots.

Now, what do you do with them? Well, I suggest you try my Thai Basil Chicken recipe above, but shallots are great in other recipes, too. They classically used in vinaigrette and Bearnaise sauce in French cookery and I think they taste just stunning in a stir fry.

They’re good roasted and eaten just by themselves, too.

So, there we are–I’m a Lady of Shallots, and now, you can be one too.

Unless you’re a guy. Then, you get to be Lord of Shallots.

Now if I can just get someone to write a poem about me….

To all the mothers out there in the world, Happy Mother’s Day.

We celebrated here in the best way possible. I got to go plant shopping and then Kat and I planted flowers in the deck planters, my herb planter for the deck, bunches of mint in my yard, and my favorite mother’s day present–from Zak–three baby curry leaf plants.

We potted them in pretty pots and put them in the sun porch to stay until the nights warm up.

I am emboldened by my failure to kill my rosemary plants and my kaffir lime tree over the winter, so I decided to go all out and get the curry leaves. I even ordered lemongrass seeds.

Zak’s parents, Tessa and Karl gave me a gift certificate which I used to buy seed-starting equipment, gardening books, and a compost bin.

It was a very merry, foodielishious, gardener’s Mother’s Day.

Yeah, I made that up just now. I have a gift for making up alternate lyrics to popular tunes on the fly. It’s a pretty useless talent, but it is amusing.

It might even make my sickly friend Janis smile.

I hope so, because, Janis, this post’s for you.

See, Janis has an untimely cold. I mean, yeah, it’s cold season, but it’s also holiday season and who wants to be feeling like death on toast warmed over when there is all that festive fun to be had?

So, I offered to tell her how to make my “Chinese/Auyervedic/Appalachian White Chick Voodoo Priestess Tea” recipe and so many of her Facebook friends wanted the recipe, too, I figured I’d just haul off and put it up on the blog.

But, before we get into the recipe, I have to post the standard disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor or practitioner of any sort. I’m a chef and a writer and a mother, and so what I am dispensing here is not medical advice, it is just a little something that has helped my kitchen staff, my family and friends boot a cold out the door just a little bit faster than it might have faded on its own. And–it makes you feel better. A lot better. Or, at least, it makes myself, my staff, my family and friends all feel better when they take it, so I hope it will work for Janis and the rest of you, should you need it.

This concoction is a concatenation of folk remedies from all over the globe. I learned about the green tea and ginger from one of the Chinese line cooks I worked with back in the day. He also told me to add a tiny bit of chili pepper if I was really feeling bad. The black pepper, cinnamon and clove comes from rasam, a South Indian lentil broth that is spiced out of this world delicious, and which kills a cold before it can even think of becoming bronchitis. I added the cardamom because one of my personal chef clients’ mother told me that it had a soothing effect on the throat when it was sore. The mint is from my own self who figured that if menthol is in Vick’s Vaporub and is good for you, then plain old mint would work, too.

The honey, lemon and whiskey is straight up from Southern Appalachian tradition.

Now, about that whiskey–it’s optional. No, really, it is. All of the other stuff is pretty necessary, but the whiskey–that’s for the nights when you can neither sleep, nor stomach another swallow of Nyquil.

So, here’s how I make the tea. I used to make it for Morganna until she grew old enough to learn it, and now, she’s taught her friends and now I’m teaching it to you.

I sure hope it helps cure what ails you.

But if it doesn’t cure you, it certainly won’t kill you and it tastes mighty fine as it goes down.

Please note–all of the amounts are approximate. Voodoo tea is generally made by feel, but use your common sense. You know that a huge handful of peppercorns in your tea is not only going to taste bad, but will probably hurt you as well. so don’t put a handful in.

Oh, and one more thing–it doesn’t matter what phase the moon is in when you make this tea, nor do you need to use water gathered at the full moon from a mountain spring while you sing thirty-two verses of some holy chant or another. You just make it and take it when you need it, and that’s good enough.

Chinese/Auyervedic/Appalachian White Chick Voodoo Priestess Tea
Ingredients:

2 good, heaping teaspoons worth of jasmine-scented green tea (If you must use teabags, Numi’s Monkey King green jasmine will work perfectly well.)
1/2 teaspoon dried spearmint, or one sprig of fresh spearmint, bruised lightly
1/2-1″ cube fresh ginger, peeled and grated finely
1″ piece of cinnamon stick
3-5 whole cloves, lightly crushed
2-4 whole green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
3-5 whole black peppercorns
a pinch of Aleppo pepper flakes (optional, but it is very warming–and you CAN use hotter chili flakes if you want–but the Aleppo works more gently)
two or three good long, wide flakes of lemon zest–just use a vegetable peeler to remove it from the rind
3 1/2 cups water
juice of one lemon–about a 1/4 cup–fresh is best
honey to taste, but I suggest at least two tablespoons–honey is very soothing to sore throats–especially buckwheat honey–it works amazingly well on coughs
1 jigger whiskey–that’s for the whole pot–if you are using it–or you can do the whiskey to taste

Method:

Take the tea, and all of the other ingredients up to the water, and put them into the basket of either a press-style teapot or a French press coffee maker. (What? You don’t have either of those? Well, you can use a regular old tea ball, but then when it is done steeping, you have to play with pressing all the goodness out of the tea, herbs and spices with the back of a spoon into the pot, which is something truly bothersome to do while sick. Or, you can just throw it all loose in a pot and strain it as you pour it, but then you don’t get to squeeze the goodies out that way at all. So, suit yourself on this matter.)

Bring the water to a boil, and pour it over the ingredients in the basket and into the pot, cover with the lid and then pop a tea cozy or a towel over the pot to keep the liquid warm. (What? You don’t have a tea cozy? Well, don’t worry because neither do I. I always thought they were rather a bit twee for my taste, so I go with the towel method. There are always towels in varied states of cleanliness around the kitchen, but I doubt you will see a tea cozy any time soon. Oh, but be sure and pick the cleanest of your kitchen towels for this duty. No need to add anything odd to the tea when you are already feeling crappy.)

Allow to steep for a much longer time than you normally would for tea. About 5-8 minutes.

After the steeping time is done, press down the plunger on the pot, thus squeezing all of the essential oils, tannins, and flavors from the tea ingredients into the tea. Take out the basket if you are using a teapot, or pour off the tea into another vessel if you are using a French press coffeepot. (That’s the problem with using a French press. You get the squeeze out all the goodness, but you can’t add the lemon juice and honey to the pot unless you pour it into another pot, which is a pain in the tuckus, so I suggest not doing it that way. Just get a nice little teapot like mine–it will make your potion-making much easier.)

Now, add the juice of one lemon–about 1/4 cup, and stir well. Add the honey and stir to dissolve. Taste. If it isn’t sweet enough, add more honey. Too much honey isn’t really too much when you are talking about a sore throat and a cough.

Finally, add the whiskey if you are going to use it. I usually don’t use it unless the cough is truly horrific, but I am not opposed to using it either.

Drink this over the day–I prefer it hot, because I find its more soothing that way, but if you want, you can drink it lukewarm. And save those herbs, spices and other goodie bits in your tea basket, because you can make a second steeping from them, though you have to steep it for 8-10 minutes to get the same effect. And you have to add more lemon, honey and whiskey to it, too….

Well, that’s it. See–it was easy, wasn’t it? I hope that just reading it makes you feel better, Janis.
Hugs and love to you!

I am not always one for fusion dishes. Quite a few of them come across as less fusion and more like confusion, with muddled flavors and odd combinations of unrelated ingredients.
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But, as I was planting my Thai basil this spring, right next to a planter full of Italian and Greek basil, I thought, “I wonder what it would taste like if I took the idea of pesto and made it Thai? I couldn’t imagine it would be bad, and besides, pesto is similar in some respects to Thai curry pastes (and it is very similar to green cilantro chutney in Indian cuisine, but that is beside the point), so there is enough similarity going on that I thought it must be doable.

So, I got to thinking of the ingredients that are in traditional Genovese pesto: basil, garlic, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper.

And I thought, what are the cognates in Thai cuisine? Well, basil is simple–I’d just use Thai sweet basil instead of the Italian type. Garlic is garlic, all around the world, and it is always good. Instead of pine nuts, I could use peanuts. And I could replace olive oil, with fragrant cold pressed peanut oil. But what about the Parmesan cheese?

I was stuck there for a few minutes until I came at the problem from a different direction. Instead of worrying that there is no traditional cheese in Thailand, I thought about what function the Parmesan cheese serves in pesto. I pondered on the issue for a time and realized that while it adds some salt that isn’t the main function of the Parmesan. It isn’t in there to taste “cheesy” either–good pesto doesn’t ever have an overwhelming cheese flavor.

It is there to give the sauce that fifth taste–the jolt of umami–that savory “je-ne-sais-quoi” that you may not be able to identify in a dish, but if it is missing, you notice its lack.

Aha! I had it–what in Thai food is used to give the umami burst? Fish sauce is the most obvious answer, but I didn’t want to use it because I didn’t want to add more liquid to the sauce. Shrimp paste, which is used in many Thai curries is the obvious answer, and were I not possibly allergic to shrimp, that is what I would have used. (And that is what I suggest those who experiment with this recipe use, if they can get it and if they can eat shellfish with impunity, unlike myself. Lucky devils!)

What I ended up using was anchovy paste. Which, while it is an Italian ingredient, makes sense in a Thai context because fish sauce is made from anchovies. Voila!

My basic ingredients were set, but I decided to add some fresh Thai chilies, because I thought the sauce would taste better with them, and because I have been known to add chile flakes to my regular old Italian pesto. And, I decided to add a squeeze of lime juice at the end, after the noodles were tossed, to give a little sparkling finish to the flavors, as is done in many Thai recipes.

And, as I was grinding up the pesto itself in the food processor, I tasted it when it was about halfway there, and realized something about the physical properties of Thai basil vs. Italian basil. Firstly, the leaves are a bit drier in texture, so they don’t emulsify and puree quite so readily and secondly, they are a little bit stringier in texture as well.

I decided that the sauce would need something to help smooth it out and make it creamier. I could have added some water to the mix, in order to make up for the lack of water in the basil’s leaves, but I was afraid it would water down the flavor too much. Instead, I added about three good heaping tablespoons of nice, well-stirred coconut milk.

That was the ticket–when I finished pureeing the sauce and tasted it–it was perfect in texture, color and flavor. It was pesto, but it was Thai, and it was delicious.

Then, I had to figure out what I was going to stir my fragrant, verdant, silky-smooth sauce into.

I decided to make a dish of stir-fried rice rice noodles with thin slivers of chicken, julienne-cut carrots, diagonally sliced haricot vert, halved cherry tomatoes and julienned yellow bell pepper. The seasonings for this stir fry were simple: thinly sliced shallots, fish sauce, and a bit of sugar.

This set a fairly neutral stage for the Thai pesto which was tossed in along with a generous squeeze of lime juice after everything else was cooked and I had taken the wok off the heat. After that, I garnished each portion with a few lightly crushed bits of peanut and some shaggy, deep purple Thai basil flowers.

How did it turn out?

It was bright and sparkly–the lime juice finish really perks the dish up and makes it sing. The peanut oil, which really needs to be a good fragrant, barely refined cold-pressed oil like Loriva or Spectrum, gave the nutty base notes to the sauce, while the anise-like Thai sweet basil sang and danced out front, taking up all of the attention on the tongue until the garlic and chilies kicked in and made tingles shiver through the palate. The anchovy paste added that umami punch that you couldn’t quite put your finger on, but was there, and really tied the ensemble together.

Oh, wow. That is what everyone said as they took their first bites. Morganna’s first words after “Oh, wow,” were, “Mom, when you open your restaurant, I assume this is going on the menu?”

“Yeah,” was the one-word reply.

Brittney’s exclamation said it all: “Amen.”

Thai Pesto Noodles
Ingredients For The Pesto:

2-3 cups fresh Thai sweet basil leaves, all stemmy bits removed
2-5 cloves garlic–this depends on how garlicky your garlic is, and how garlicky you want your pesto to be
1/3 cup toasted unsalted peanuts–use the best peanuts you can find for this.
1-3 fresh Thai bird chilies–depending on how spicy you want your sauce to be
1/2 teaspoon anchovy paste or about 1/3 teaspoon Thai shrimp paste (if you are a vegetarian, use either red or white miso here instead)
1/3-1/2 cup really good cold pressed hardly refined, fragrant peanut oil–Loriva or Spectrum are my favored brands
2-3 good heaping tablespoons of thick coconut milk–i used Chaokoh brand here.
salt to taste

Method For Pesto:

Put the basil, garlic, peanuts, chilies and anchovy paste into the food processor and start grinding. While it is going, pour in the peanut oil. Stop grinding and scrape down workbowl. Add coconut milk, then finish processing the sauce into a thick, brilliant green paste. Do this -right before- you are going to cook the noodles–if you do it before you do all of your prep, the pesto will oxidize and turn from green to brown. As it is, the pesto turns quickly once you toss it with the rice noodles, but there is no sense in starting out with it already a dull greenish brown, is there?

Ingredients For The Noodles:

1 14 ounce package 1/4″ wide rice sticks or rice noodles
1 chicken breast, cut into 1″X!/4″X1/8″ strips
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon raw or palm sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
canola or peanut oil for stir frying (about 3 tablespoons should be sufficient)
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 cup julienne-cut carrots
1 cup topped and tailed then diagonally sliced haricot verts or very young stringless green beans
1/3 cup julienne-cut yellow bell pepper
1/2 cup halved cherry tomatoes (I used Sungold–yum!)
1/3-1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock or broth
juice of 1/2 lime or to taste
cilantro leaves, Thai basil flowers or leaves and lightly crushed unsalted peanuts for garnish

Method:

Soak the noodles in warm water until they are pliable and turn from translucent to opaque white. Drain well and allow to dry in the air slightly while you do the rest of your prep.

Toss the chicken with the fish sauce, sugar and cornstarch and set aside for at least twenty minutes.

When the noodles are drained and lightly dried, and the chicken is done marinating, the vegetables are cut and the peso is ground up, heat your wok over high heat until a thin ribbon of smoke rises from it. Add the peanut oil to the wok and allow it to heat briefly until it shimmers.

Add the shallots, and cook, stirring, until they take on a bit of golden brown color–about two to three minutes. Add the chicken and stir it into a single layer on the bottom fo the wok. Allow it to rest, undisturbed for about a minute or so to brown on the bottom, then start stirring.

Cook until most of the pink has turned to brown or white. Add the fish sauce and continue cooking, scraping any browned bits of marinade off the sides of the wok until most of the fish sauce has bubbled away.

Add the carrots and haricots verts and continue cooking until they brighten in color and are nearly properly crisp-tender. Add the pepper strips and cherry tomatoes, then the noodles, Cook, stirring, until the noodles soften slightly. Add the broth and continue cooking and stirring until the vegetables are done and the noodles are soft, yet still a bit chewy. Remove from heat and scrape the pesto into the wok and toss the noodles and pasta until they are thoroughly combined. Squeeze in the lime juice and toss to combine, then dish into warmed individual serving bowls.

Top each serving with the garnishes and serve immediately.