On the weekend, Heather (@aftertheharvest) of the After The Harvest blog tweeted she and her sister were going to have a cooking challenge on their new venture blog, Little Foodies. Their challenge, adopt author and professor Michael Pollan's "don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food" mantra for a meal.

The Pollan quote comes from a piece he wrote for the New York Times Magazine, entitled "Unhappy Meals", January 28, 2007. In it, he surveys and chronicles the various rises and falls of thoughts on nutrition since the 19th century, drawing some common sense consistencies for the future: 1) Eat food (the grandmother quote); 2) Avoid products that come bearing health claims; 3) Avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, or number more than 5; 4) Get out of the supermarket whenever possible; 5) pay more, eat less; 6) Eat mostly plants; 7) Eat more like the French, Japanese, Italians, or the Greeks; 8) Cook and plant a garden; 9) Eat like an omnivore.

Unfortunately, both my grandmothers grew up in Asia during World War II, so much of western food would be unrecognizable to them (and their grandmothers for that matter). This includes asparagus, but it is familiar to me. I watched it growing in my parents' garden. That is, along with zucchini, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, lettuces, snow peas, string beans, and corn. To Pollan, I would respectfully like to point out "real food" did not necessarily skip a generation. My parents took us to ethnic and farmers' markets when they went grocery shopping. They imparted a healthy cynicism for "health claims" on food and taught us to read labels. They cooked. I learned to cook by watching my mother cook. If you like, I can knock on the door of my 82 year old neighbour and check with her before I eat something. A lovely lady, she was born in North America. I really want her pouding chômeur recipe, but I digress...

Here is my "real food" dinner.

Real Food Dinner
From left to right: bagel chips from the Ottawa Bagel Shop (sliced and toasted from leftover Montreal-Style bagels), asparagus and roasted pumpkin seed pesto, home cured and dried duck prosciutto.

While the duck prosciutto's recipe will have to wait for another post, it is real food. It was made with local duck breast from foie ducks. It was cured with kosher salt and whole spices. It hung, wrapped in muslin (cheese cloth) until it shed 30% of its weight from moisture loss. For me, this took two weeks and a sampling by the chef/owner of my favourite foodie shop, The Piggy Market. I should point out, the owner of my favourite fine food shop, Epicuria, gave me some direction on hang drying the duck as well.

Recipe:

Near 1 lb of Asparagus

Asparagus Cut Up into Pieces

Asparagus, Steamed and Draining

1.4 oz of raw milk Parmesan cheese

3 oz of Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin Seeds Roasted

Garlic Sauteing

Pesto, Post Blitzing

The reason there is 1.4 oz of Parmesan is because I needed only enough cheese for 2/3 of the blitzed pesto. I served 1/3 without cheese. Ever wonder why mass-based recipes are great? They scale up and down really easily!

What you'll need:

• 2 bunches of asparagus (1 may not yield the near 1 lb of asparagus required after you break off the inedible, but broth-able fibrous stems)
• water to steam the asparagus
• ice water and ice for an ice water bath
• 3 oz pumpkin seeds (preferably raw)
• 3 whole cloves of garlic
• high smoke point oil to sautee the garlic in (vegetable or canola are great)
• 2 oz Parmesan cheese (1 oz per 1/2 lb of asparagus)
• kosher salt to season

Prep:

1. Break off the fibrous stems of enough asparagus spears to make up 1 lb
2. Cut up the asparagus into 2 inch pieces, separating the tips.
3. Bring a steamer (dedicated steamer, pot with insert, or pot with trivet and metal plate) with water up to a rolling boil and reduce to medium-low.
4. Add and steam the asparagus stems for 3 minutes.
5. Add the tips to the steamed asparagus stems and continue steaming for another minute.
6. Immediately remove and submerge the asparagus pieces in the ice water bath to fix the colour and stop the cooking
7. When cool, drain the asparagus in a colander. Spinning it in a salad spinner wouldn't hurt.
8. Set aside the steamed asparagus pieces.
9. Finely shred the Parmesan and set it aside.
10. Roast the pumpkin seeds in a non-stick pan or skillet on medium heat until you smell "nuts." The pumpkin seeds will start popping. The heat is causing the seeds to split.
11. Set aside the roasted seeds. Buying the seeds pre-roasted works too, but I find them over seasoned, so roast my own. If you purchase pre-roasted pumpkin seeds, adjust the seasoning elsewhere.
12. Slice up the garlic length wise.
13. Pan roast the sliced garlic in non-stick pan and a splash of oil on medium heat until it colours.
14. Set the garlic aside.

Method:

1. Add the dried asparagus, roasted pumpkin seeds, and roasted garlic to a food processor and pulse until homogenized.
2. Remove the pesto and stir in the cheese.
3. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
4. For a little extra brightness to cut the savouriness of the parmesan, I suggest adding a squeeze of lemon juice, but it is entirely optional.

Serve the nutty, earthy, and yet fresh tasting pesto on cracker-like devices (e.g. bagel chips) or on toasted and sliced French or Italian bread to make crostini.

Asparagus pesto, part of a Real Food meal

The pesto also makes great pesto pasta.

Pesto Macaroni

Particulars:
Bagelshop & Deli
1321 Wellington Street
(613) 722-8753

The Piggy Market
400 Winston Avenue
(613)371-6124

Epicuria Fine Food Store and Catering
419 Mackay Street
(613) 745-7356

If ever there is a tell-tale sign that summer is at an end, it has to be the sea of frosh (aka: freshmen), swarming unsuspecting workers during an event called Shinerama. Each year, when downtown workers arrive for work after Labour day, they find newly minted university students strategically placed at every street corner and bus stop, canvasing donations to fund research into cystic fibrosis. Donors are handed colorful stickers. The goal is to sticker every downtown worker.

This year, I found that some enterprising students actually followed people going to and returning from coffee shops. This is because, if you're carrying a fresh cup of coffee, you often have a pocket full of change.

After the past two Shineramas, when I got home and removed my sticker, I headed straight to my balcony to harvest all my basil to make pistachio pesto. By the first week of September my homegrown basil plants are usually tall enough to reach my hip. This is when I know that they have grown enough leaves that I can make a big enough batch of pesto to cook with.

My recipe for pesto is pretty simple: 1) dump all the leaves I can strip off 2 stalks of mature basil into a food processor, 2) add a handful of unsalted roasted pistachios, 3) salt and pepper, 4) drizzle in about a 1/4 cup of olive oil, and 5) pulse until combined. Pesto has many uses.

This year, when I went out to fetch my basil, I found that it had invaded the other potted plants.

Basil with the Japanese Peonies

Basil with a Tomato Plant

Basil under the Lilly plant

One excellent use for pesto is pizza:

Lazy Man's Ready Made Pizza Crust

First Pizza

Second Pizza

First Pizza Baked

Maybe it'll become a tradition: Shinerama Pesto Pizza every September after Labour Day.

BTW, cold pesto pizza makes great breakfast food.

Cold Pesto Pizza

A non-pizza application follows after the jump:

More after the jump...

With more than a cup of pesto, my better half and I had to find ways to prepare more dishes with it, other than slather it on toast.

Though Jenn had prepared a single serving of it the day before, we decided to make a couple's-sized serving of pesto spaghetti for dinner. The preparation was quick and easy.

Cook up enough pasta for two to the super "al dente" stage. That is don't cook the pasta all the way through. It should be soft on the outside and pliable, but relatively under cooked on the inside. Drain, but do not rinse with cold water. Meanwhile, finely chop one red onion. Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil to a metal skillet, add the chopped onions, and place it on medium heat. Sprinkle the onions with salt and cook them until they colour. Remove the skillet from the heat, keeping the burner on. Add 4-5 heaping tablespoons of pesto to the pan. Swirl to heat. Add the pasta to the pan. Mix until combined. Return the skillet to the heat, pasta and all. Turn the burner down to medium-low and heat the mixture until the pasta reaches the desired doneness. Plate and enjoy. The herbal and nutty flavors are amazing on pasta.

Update:
The next evening, we made pesto pizza. All we did was brush a pre-baked pizza shell with olive oil and spread on a layer of pesto. Afterwards, we sprinkled on some processed mozzarella cheese. I added shredded Parmesan to my half. We baked the pizza at 400°F until the cheese browned and the crust crisped. Again, the herbal and nutty flavors made a wonderful base for a pizza.


Pesto Pizza before baking

Pesto Pizza after Baking

Delicious!

Some time ago, I caught an episode of celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis' Everyday Italian that focused on pesto. What surprised me was the sheer variety of pestos that could be made. The episode, aptly entitled "the Power of Pesto" included a spinach and pine nut pesto, a sun-dried tomato pesto, and a mushroom pesto.

The reason this episode's preparations surprised me was because I always thought that pesto had to be made with pine nuts, basil, garlic, olive oil, and parmesano reggiano. In other words, It had to be green. This is clearly not true. According to Wikipedia, while the sauce may have originated in the city of Genoa, Italy, pesto's etymology has more to do with the action of pounding or crushing herbs and garlic. As such, pesto can be made with just about everything from roasted red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes to mint and spinach. Alton Brown even made a pesto, replacing the expensive pine nuts with pistachios. It was high time that I made a pesto!

Given that it's now mid-summer and my herb trays are teaming with abundance, I figured the neighborhood Herb & Spice (1273 Wellington Street W) store would have the necessary ingredients for me to take an inaugural run. Before we go any further, let me point out that, to my knowledge, there are two Herb & Spice stores in Ottawa. One is in my neck of the woods, the Wellington Village. The other is in downtown Ottawa, at 375 Bank Street. Both stores specialize in selling organic produce. Their displays are lush with variety.

After a couple minutes' shopping, my better half and I picked up a bag of pistachios, a large bunch of fresh curly leaf parsley, and a basil plant. That's no typo. Herb and Spice was actually selling entire basil plants that looked like they were about to flower - roots and all. The cost: $1.79 each. In total, I paid approximately $6-$7 for the ingredients.

What came next was me playing with reckless abandon with the ingredients and my all-metal Hamilton Beach blender. After some rough chopping, poking, scraping, and pulsing, I somehow managed to produce a pesto. Later that evening, Jenn and I sat down to dinner with a fresh bowl of basil pesto and some toasted bread. It was wonderful.

Here's what ended up going into the pesto: juice of one orange, juice of one lemon, approximately 2 cups of packed basil leaves (aka: one plant's worth), approximately 3/4 cup of curly leaf parsley (aka: half of a large bunch), approximately 1/2 cup of olive oil, approximately 1/4 cup of vegetable oil, almost 2/3 cup of shelled pistachios, and two pinches of salt and pepper. The nuts and herbs contributed lovely textures and flavors. The acidic notes from the citrus juice topped everything off perfectly.

The next day, Jenn made herself a bowl of spaghetti with the pesto and proceeded to e-mail me about how incredible it tasted. Were it not for the fact that I was craving pastrami, I would have prepared the same thing for dinner...Oh well...

I guess I'll have to add cheese and garlic next time. There will definitely be a next time!

On a somewhat related note, according to Dr. Andrew Weil from Yahoo.com, pistachios can be a component of a heart healthy diet.