Category: Food

Pesto with sweet peppers and walnuts

This was a hard gardening year here. During midsummer there was a prolonged period of heat and drought. It was so bad that the deer ate tomato plants and the leaves of young oak trees, something I’ve never seen before. Gardens without irrigation were ruined. After the rain returned, the deer of course went back to their usual diets. In spite of the rough summer, the spring and fall hay crops were good, so the horses and cattle should eat well this winter, even though, like the deer, the pasture animals had a rough time of it during the summer.

After the rain from Hurricane Helene in late September, my basil plants rebounded. Today I pretty much clipped all the new growth. The first frost probably is not far off. Basil is precious.

I’ll be getting fresh vegetables through late November from my local young farmers, Brittany and Richard — broccolini, baby bok choi, sweet potatoes, sweet peppers, lettuces, beets, and such. Last week I got the last of the summer okra. I’ve been roasting it and tossing it into pasta dishes with parmesan.

Peppers in the garden continue to produce until frost. In fact they love the return of cool weather. A neighbor gave me some beautiful sweet red peppers. They’re not bell peppers. They look more like fresh pimento peppers — thick-skinned and sweet. I’ve used the heck out of them, because there are more where those came from.

Even if you make pimento cheese from scratch with good ingredients, you’re doing no favor for your lipid profile, what with the cheddar and the cream cheese. The New York Times ran a classic recipe for pimento cheese earlier this year. Yum.

I make a vegetarian version with mashed tofu and seasonings such as brewer’s yeast (also called food yeast) and turmeric or curry powder. There’s no substitute for the mayonnaise, though, I think.

Next time I’ll roast the pepper on the grill before I chop it.

I recently came across an Omega-3 factoid — that mackerel contains almost twice as much Omega-3 as sardines. The truth is, I don’t really like either of them but see them as medicine. With mackerel, probably the richest source of Omega-3, there is a sustainability question.

There are many types of mackerel, caught in many different places. The smaller the mackerel, the lower it is in the food chain, making it less likely to contain contaminants. King Oscar says that its skinless and boneless mackerel is caught in the North Atlantic between Norway and the Faroe Islands. That sounds like a place with pretty clean water. But, according to the Marine Conservation Society, overfishing has caused a decline in the populations of North Atlantic mackerel.

Walnuts are an excellent source of Omega-3, and I already eat a lot of them. Another way to boost one’s intake of Omega-3 from walnuts is to use a toasted walnut oil as a seasoning. La Tourangelle’s roasted walnut oil isn’t all that expensive, as premium oils go, and a tablespoon of it contains 1.4 grams of Omega-3. It’s made from California walnuts. It’s very good in homemade dressings. You can get it from Amazon.

Eventually I’ll use all of the six cans of King Oscar mackerel that I bought. Other than that, I think I’ll stick with walnuts and walnut oil.

⬆︎ Pasta salad with walnuts, celery, onion, cherry tomatoes, chopped dried figs, and raisins, with a dressing of roasted walnut oil, honey, and a dash of vinegar.

⬆︎ The mackerel looks kind of gross, doesn’t it? The pesto (with lots of garlic) helps mask the (to me) unpleasant taste of the mackerel.

A few weeks ago, I wrote here about my curiosity about the root vegetable celeriac, which I had never had. I was thrilled to find some yesterday at the Whole Foods store in Winston-Salem. I bought two of them.

I understand that celeriac can be prepared in many ways, raw or cooked, including roasting or making it into a slaw with apples. For my first experiment with celeriac, I decided to treat it like mashed potatoes. I boiled the celeriac for about 25 minutues, then mashed it with butter, cream, and salt. It was delicious.

Though the taste obviously can be compared with celery, I don’t think I can compare the texture with any other vegetable. Some online recipes suggest puréeing the celeriac in a food processor, because it doesn’t mash as smoothly as potatoes. To me that would be a mistake, because I like its texture.

The history of celeriac is fascinating. It was familiar to the ancient Greeks, and it was mentioned by Homer. It became very popular throughout the Mediterranean and made its way deeper into Europe. It’s new to most Americans, including me. We might think of it as occupying the potato niche in Europe before Spaniards brought potatoes to Europe in the 16th Century. When I took my first bite of my mashed celeriac, it seemed strangely familiar and ancient, as though, if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I had eaten it in past lives.

I hope that celeriac will become better known in the U.S. after the recent film “The Taste of Things,” in which celeriac appears twice — first in the garden, and later in the kitchen. There is a celeriac recipe in my 1948 edition of a Scottish cookbook that was first published in 1925. It’s called “celery root” or just “celery” in that cookbook, as though celery root was better known in Scotland than the above-ground celery stalks and leaves. They are different plants, though of course they are relatives.

I was able to find some celeriac seeds (on eBay), and Brittany and Richard, from whom I buy vegetables each week, are going to try to grow some for me. The seeds are tiny. According to the last report I had, after three weeks in their greenhouse, the seeds still had not sprouted. I still have some hope. Brittany and Richard say that they don’t think they can grow celeriac profitably, because it takes a long time to mature. But they’re growing some partly as an experiment, and partly for me. If celeriac was easy to find hereabouts, it would always be on my grocery list.

Recently a friend gave me a pound of California hazelnuts. What to do with them? I hit upon making no-bake hazelnut chocolate bombs.

Whiz equal parts (by volume) hazelnuts and dates in a food processor. I used about a cup of each. Add cocoa, and, if you have them, some chocolate chips. I added enough Grandma’s molasses to make them hold together into bombs. As the mixture becomes sticky, it will form up into a big ball in the food processor. Some brandy would have been a nice addition, but I didn’t have any. I rolled the bombs in date sugar to make them less sticky. I’m storing the dough in the refrigerator and will roll them into balls as needed.

You could use any kind of nuts. They take no time at all to make. They’re very high calorie — about the same as ice cream, I’d guess — but they’re more nutritious than ice cream and even have a lot of fiber. And, in spite of all the calories, they’re a better form of carbs than cookie-cookies.