Basil and purslane pesto

Pesto is a stable of summer. Some people make theirs the same every time; basil, pine nuts, garlic, oil, and salt. I like to be wild, really crazy here, and use whatever unusual greens and herbs I have got from the market. They always taste good, because with fresh beautiful ingredients, how could it not. This week I found succulent, vitamin C laden purslane from Heaven's Harvest Farm. This is how to turn this usual garden weed into a gourmet worthy sauce.

freshly washed purslane greens

If you have never had it, purslane is a low growing plant with juicy stems. The leaves feel water filled and crunchy, but look like a california succulent. 

some fresh washed basil leaves

Purslane is good mixed in with other salad greens, or cooked into soups. It looks a little crazy, here while about to go to flower, I think. It is all good to eat, especially when ground up to bits by my best kitchen friend: Cuisenart food processor! 

Lots of olive oil and some salt. I used big grains of French gray salt. 

This made 2 cups of pesto. It seems to keep indefinitely in the fridge with an olive oil slick on the top, although we do tend to eat it up before 2 weeks is through. Sometimes, if I have made a lot, I will put some into the freezer, and thaw it slowly in the fridge in the deep dark winter months. Thinking of the joy of pesto in January, I will go put a jar in the freezer right now!

Purslane and basil PESTO!

Purslane and Basil Pesto
These measurements are a guide, the oil is added in stages, so you may end up needing less. Or more!

4 cups mixed purslane and basil
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon sea salt, or more.
1/3 cup toasted sunflower seeds or pine nuts (optional)

Wash and dry the greens and herbs. Jam half of it into your food processor. Pulse several times to make more space for the remaining greens. Stuff in the rest of the greens, garlic, salt, some of the olive oil, and sunflower seeds if you are using them. Turn the processor ON, let it chop away.

At some point, when looks more choppy than saucy in there, pour more of the olive oil through the feed tube while it is running. I usually let my pesto puree in the processor for about 1 full minute. Olive oil is inherent to the drizzly quality that we love about it. The desired consistency is a thick and spoonable sauce.

With the processor OFF, taste the pesto for enough salt. If it tastes flat or bitter (this can happen if the greens were more mature) squeeze in half a lemon. (The acid of citrus fruits counteracts bitter flavors.)

Use a spatula to tip it into a a storage container. Enjoy on everything from your morning eggs (pictured here) to sandwiches or pasta.

Perfectly poached egg with pesto and lettuces.

Chive Blossom Vinegar

When faced with thousands of beautiful chive blossoms I think, what do we do with them? They make pretty garnishes on plates, and whimsical additions to salad when torn up.

The couple who run Maitland Mountain Farm in Salem have a lot of chives. They are sold at markets, used in flower arrangements. Chives also act as practical landscaping on the farm, maybe keeping away some insects or bunny rabbits, and most definitely serving as erosion prevention where they are planted. 

In the spring they come up with loads of spherical purple blossoms. 

We made a large batch of infused vinegar, nice to make oniony salad dressings for fresh greens. And, it's bright pink.

Chive Blossom Vinegar

Chive blossoms

White vinegar 

A wide container with a lid

A fine strainer

Nice clean jars to store the vinegar. 

Pick blossoms by spreading your fingers and running them through the chives, catching the blossoms. They will pop off the stalks to be caught in a fist. 

Wash the blossoms gently, bobbing up and down in a bowl of water. Or in my case, a huge sink. 

Strain blossoms, drip dry or spin in a lettuce spinner. 

Put the clean blossoms in a container where they fill up roughly 2/3 of the volume. Pour white vinegar in, to the top. Float a plate, or something, atop the flowers to keep them submerged, they will try to rise up and escape. Or, just put the lid on. 

Leave vinegar and chive blossoms together for 4 days to steep. It will turn bright pink and then a deeper magenta hue will develop. Keep covered well or you kitchen will smell strongly of onions. 

When the time has come to strain the entire project set up your fine strainer over a vessel to catch the strained vinegar. Use a funnel if you need to. I had to strain mine twice because the first strainer I chose filtered out the blossoms but not the tiny white seeds which float around. And the seeds look like wee insects if you didn't know what they were...so it's worth getting out a cheesecloth or a tea strainer for this case. 

Now you have plenty of jewel colored vinegar which is crystal clear. Put in pretty jars or mix up into salad dressing with olive oil. I'll put a recipe on here soon. 

The Rum Rhubarb Collins

I love rhubarb, ill say it again! For a sour vegetable stalk it is so versatile. The season is begining to ebb as we are at the solstice and these hot days favor berries over rhubarb stalks. Eat up while we can.

I seem to love pink drinks too. Rhubarb makes a refreshing drink, which could replace pink lemonade. After the rhubarb juice is made, a cocktail is the next logical step.

Rum Rhubarb Collins 

Tested by many friends this week, it evoked comments like "It's so refreshing!", "You can really taste the rhubarb-ness", "...so pretty!"And me the bartender says, "...so easy!"

You might at first wonder why add more sour citrus juice to an already tart situation. People are always trying to sweeten it up. But lemon and lime add to the flavor pop of rhubarb, when I make pie I always add some lemon to the rhubarb, it gives it more dimension. 

The amounts given in the rhubarb juice are a guide, it is impossible to predict how much sugar it will take to get your batch to taste nice. So it tastes like tart lemonade, sugary, sour, and drinkable.

Rum Rhubarb Collins

1/4 of a organic lime

1 1/2 ounces white rum

3 ounces rhubarb juice (recipe below)

1 ounce seltzer water

small rhubarb stalk, sliced narrow, for garnish

Fill a glass with ice.

Squeeze lime well, over ice. Drop lime into glass.

Pour white rum and rhubarb juice over ice. stir.

Top glass off with seltzer water.

Garnish with trimmed stick of rhubarb and trendy or metal straw.

(Making a pincher of drinks would be a great idea if having many people over.)

Making Rhubarb juice

Rhubarb Juice

2 pints rhubarb chopped into 2 inch sections

3 pints water 

1 cup organic white sugar

Wash and chop the rhubarb into 2 inch sections. Place into a soup pot. Pour water over, it should cover the rhubarb by a few inches. Turn heat on high to bring to a boil. 

Lower the heat to medium low and keep it simmering. 

After roughly 10 minutes the rhubarb will fall apart when poked with a spoon. Turn off the heat now.

Let cool, more flavor will steep out while it cools down. If you want to go away and run errands, now is the time, don't worry about it.

When cool, set a mesh strainer over another vessel large enough to hold all the liquid. And have an extra bowl nearby. Pour or ladle the pink rhubarb pulp and juice into the strainer, catching all the gorgeous pink juice. Briefly press down on the pulp to extract a bit more liquid. (It is a strange consistency.) Dump the pulp into the extra empty bowl. Repeat until all the liquid is strained.

The juice may look pretty, but it is still sour. Stir in some of the sugar, allowing time for it to dissolve. Pop the liquid back on the stove and heat it for under 5 minutes to warm it up enough for the sugar to melt well. Taste and add more sugar, creating it to your liking.

Cool, pour into jars. Will save for 2 weeks in the fridge. It freezes well in plastic containers, to be used later in the summer.

Rum Rhubarb Collins

Ultimate Pizza Quest

900° The best pizza made at home

I have discovered the secret to utterly amazing perfect pizza at home.

It's in the heat. Obviously. But we solved it

My siblings and I got the pizza oven for our parents as a Christmas gift. It took months to hook up to the gas line (It seemed very simple however the plumber is full of drama.) It was the perfect gift to solve our parents quest for the "ultimate" pizza which had been an obsession all summer and fall.

There were pizza experiments where the oven was preheated for an hour before cooking. Where the stone was super preheated and then the pizza was broiled (that worked pretty good.) Variations on the gas grill.

It became a joke after pizza was tried in the BigGreenEgg (a sort of hot smoker) lots of thought was put into it by all. One was soggy and the next one looked good from the top, the bottom charred beyond what could be called food. It had become a 1/4 inch of solid carbon. Black and hard as a rock. The science behind that one still boggles us. There were lots of laughs, but a feeling that perfect pizza was out of reach. We feared it might get to the point of a big project building an outdoor oven.

Then I found this amazing machine. Pizzaria Pronto. It promised 900° and pizza cooked in 5 minutes. Did I mention it heats to the max temperature in 10 minutes. It seemed too good to be true, maybe it would be chintzy. Well its not. It is amazing. I promise I'm not working for this company, although I would be happy to, its an amazing oven.


I've made good pizza in my oven before, very good. But there is always some part not as good as the rest. Sometimes a soggy middle. An unlucky tough dried out crust. And it is impossible to get those black bubbles and well caramelized cheese which the pizza places have.

Usually I crank my oven to 500 degrees and a pizza takes about 15 minutes to cook.

This contraption cooks a pizza in 5 minutes. Perfectly. Im going to camp out next to it.

Ive even begun to fantasize about making sweet fruit dessert pizzas in there. What do you think?

This one was mushroom and onion on a thin tomato and pesto sauce with parmesan and a cheese which was between gruyere and cheddar.

You don't even have to cook the mushrooms before they go on the pizza. Ok, i'm done raving. The quest is over, we can stuff ourselves happily with pizza from the Pronto oven.

Almond Flax Crackers

I make a lot of homemade nut milk in this house. Which means lots of leftover ground up almonds and hazelnuts. Sometimes I bake it into cakes and muffins or put it on cereal. I read a few blog posts about crackers made with almond meal and eggs, they seem pretty hard to mess up, and are very versatile so this is my take.





2 Cups almond meal
1 cup ground flax seed
2 eggs
2 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp basil

- Pre-heat oven to 350°
- Mix everything together in a bowl with a fork. It will look crumbly but will stick to itself if pressed.
- Dump it all onto parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
- Place another parchment paper on top. Roll with a pin or smash with your hands until it is about a 1/4 of an inch thick or less.
- Lightly score the dough into your cracker shapes, I used a pizza wheel, very easy!
- Bake in 350° oven for 15 to 20 min.



They turned out very savory, satisfying chewy and crunchy!

Paleo Vegan hot cocoa

After a serious session of snow shoveling, fingers and ears tingling from the cold wind that permeates all clothing, the obvious craving is hot cocoa.

When I was small and still building igloos and snow-women, my mother used to make hot chocolate in a big aluminum pot on the stove. She served it up with a ladle, enough for all of us and extra friends. I think she used half milk and half water with squares of baking chocolate, probably sugar too. It was warm and rich. 

My first encounter of French hot chocolate...chocolat chaud, I was an impressionable 13 years old. At a corner café, sitting outside pressed up against the window, I was ordered a chocolat chaud. Paris zooming by, trucks and petit cars, chic ladies skipping along the streets, a dressed up waiter set in front of me, a tea cup with a little black pool of chocolate, a pitcher of steaming hot milk, a little spoon and sugar cubes. He poured the milk into the night black of the cup, it frothed and made couds, dinner theatre for a young American girl. 

Perhaps the theatre made it taste better, but it is ingrained in my memory as the cup which all cups or hot cocoa are measured against. It changed my tastes and expectations for good. I have had the chance to travel to France many times since, and now it seems, modernization has affected the service of chocolat chaud, I couldn't find a place that serves it in such a way. Most come out pre-mixed, however, they do serve chocolate nice and bitter, with sugar on the side, unlike in the states. 

With the holy grail of Parisian chocolat in mind, how do I go about making it at home? (Without milk, because it makes my tummy hurt so badly.) A key to recent success is using fresh homemade hazelnut milk. It is richer tasting and more frothy. Refer to my recipe here. (if you are using store bought milk, thicker and richer is better like: Hemp milk, hazelnut, soy or almond.) This is a recipe for hot chocolate for two. Two intense cups. Scale up as needed.

straining fresh nut milk

1.5 cups fresh hazelnut milk
2 HEAPING Tablespoons of pure cocoa powder
Taza chocolate, 86% dark.
 Stevia "in the raw", 1 packet.

1 Tablespoon organic unrefined coconut palm sugar
**A drizzle of agave syrup, if you like.

(Optional but wonderful add ins are: vanilla bean, coffee/espresso powder, "mexican chocolate" spices, or mint! Have fun!)

place on a low heat to melt everything without boiling, or it will burn! A whisk is a good tool. Make sure it is nice a hot before serving in your most cozy mugs.
** The sugar is "to taste", and I find if I use a little bit of several types of alternative sweeteners (instead of all one type) the undesirable qualities of them are washed out. Stevia can have a strange aftertaste, but with the coconut sugar, it is virtually none.

*For a party pick-me-up, add a dash of whiskey to your cup ;)

Making Mustard at Home

Ha, I made my own mustard! My fiancée was disappointed we had no mustard in the fridge at ALL, and specifically was dreaming of spicy mustard.

Spicy mustard you ask for, spicy mustard you shall have!

How hard could it be?
Brand new mortar and pestle from Ikea, mustard seeds I had left over from a chutney recipe, apple cider vinegar,  olive oil, salt and ground mustard.

I will leave out a decided recipe here because I think it needs work, but essentially, it was simple: crush up mustard seeds, add oil and vinegar and mustard powder and mix around. Mustard is an emulsifier between oil and water, it is often added to salad dressings for that reason... so it turned into a paste like...mustard. Weird and fun.

He liked it- it did start off a sneezing watery-eye "wasabi-like" reaction. Ill tweak the homemade mustard and get back to you.