Garden Rocket Pesto x2

I remember watching Jamie Oliver years ago, always preparing salads and garnishing dishes with a magical green called rocket. It turns out, rocket is actually my favorite garden green. Otherwise known as arugula, this green packs in the most flavor per leaf in my opinion. It's not bitter like escarole or too bland like iceburg lettuce, instead it's rather peppery with a good bite. During the CSA days, I anticipated each bunch of arugula more than anything else.

Over the past weekend, I was assigned the job of cooking for a pack of 10 hungry friends (to keep them nourished before a big holiday party) and was lucky enough to have a cooking partner who also shares my love of rocket/arugula. Making pesto is extremely simple and quick if you have a food processor. I usually just eyeball my ingredients to taste and consistency as I've made pesto far too many times at this point.

As a rough guide...

• 4 cups of packed arugula leaves
  
• 1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
• 1/4 cup (packed) freshly grated parmesan or pecorino romano cheese
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Once your pesto has a smooth consistency, toss with your favorite cooked pasta. For added flavor and texture, we sauteed a pint of grape tomatoes and tossed them in as well. We served this with a side of focaccia and a small bonus portion of very tasty sage pumpkin pasta that was leftover from the night before.

It's quite safe to say that our plates were a smashing success as most people were looking for seconds and maybe even thirds. I think we provided enough energy to keep everyone going until 4 am so we could all sing in holiday cheer.

The next day: x2

So we had some left over arugula and made another batch the following night substituting toasted walnuts instead of pine nuts.


X2 was served with a Tuscan bread salad made with a nice crusty loaf of organic rustic Italian courtesy of Amy's in Chelsea Market. The main flavor component in this salad is the lemon garlic vinaigrette. We ran low on oil and the bread in the salad was slightly on the dry side but still tasty with tomatoes, onion and cucumber.


So much good food & good times.

Wilson Farm

Week 11 brought some excellent produce, maybe a little too good because we blew through the weeks share by Saturday. On a recommendation by our mom we hit up Wilson Farms in Lexington. We’ve known about this place for a while but for some reason or other have actually never been. Sure enough it is located conveniently about a mile of rt.2.

We’ve picked up a nice brandywine tomato for another caprese. No picture sorry.

We ended up picking up some San Marzano tomatoes, 2 Japanese eggplants, a zucchini, and 2 small summer squashes and 2 ears of corn and basil. We’ve made a fresh ratatouille of summer goodness. We even snuck in our last Parker onion into this batch. We baked this at 350 for just over an hour. We topped some fresh baked Italian bread which was grilled over the flame. The flavors screamed together and melted into the nice bread.

$1.98 for a huge bushel of basil! We actually had a random customer tell us we’d never use this much and it would go to waste. We made more pesto to freeze…

We also picked up a quart of fresh blackberries, 5 nectarines, shortcake and awesome homemade whip cream. We made a little blackberry sauce for the shortcake and topped this with a sprig of mint.

All in all we spent close to $40 for a 3 course meal for two. We are very happy we are part of a CSA program; they are a huge value and well worth it.

Here is our Share!Week 10

Starting at the top from left to right: carrots collards, baby bok choy, basil, corn, baby potato, green peppers, and zucchini.

Keep the carrots and potatoes coming! The carrots have been getting us through the work day, great snack. We used our potatoes again for an awesome Sunday breakfast. We can’t get enough of them.

Another batch of pesto is tucked away in my freezer for those chillier months. The Salted Cod is whipping through olive oil this summer. We need to start buying in bulk.

The baby bok choy was a great addition to a stir fry, it so fresh and tender.

It looks like it’s a two stir fry week, we sautéed down some green peppers, zucchini, and an onion from week 9. Put in a little but of soy, garlic, and hot sauce with a side of rice.

Good living.

Here is our Share!Week 6

Starting at the top from left to right: beets, cauliflower, cucumber, swiss chard, "superstar" spring onions, cilantro, lemon basil, arugula.

The Salted Cod was surprised to see so many herbs in this weeks delivery and quickly put them to work. This basil smelled a bit more fragrant than our own growing on the balcony because it was actually lemon basil. The Salted Cod was especially excited since we've never had it before.

After work we stopped by Dave's fresh pasta to get a pound of fresh cut tomato fettuccine for our lemon basil pesto which we are making tonight.

We used a basic pesto recipe which called for olive oil, toasted pine nuts, grated Parmesan, and the whole bunch of lemon basil. It's pretty basic, just keep adding the oil until you get a consistency that you like. We like it "sticky." Not too thick, not too runny. Enough to stick to the pasta (think of the three bears and their porridge). This pesto is in the middle and just right. We threw a little left over steamed cauliflower on there too for good measure. Between the lemony basil and tomato fettuccine this was a killer pasta. Steve promised more lemon basil is to come and we can't wait.