My fingers are burning from a run-in I had with an extremely hot pepper this evening. It all started Friday. We expected a frost over night so we harvested basil that afternoon. The garden contains Thai basil, lemon basil, and sweet basil. Sweet basil is our favorite and we use it to make pesto… when I say pesto, I mean the kind of pesto that has you putting all five fingertips of your right hand together and bringing them to your lips, giving them a loud smacking kiss and then throwing it away with a grandiose gesture while exclaiming, “PESTO!” We make the good stuff. We grow the garlic and the basil, and we buy the best parmesan, romano, pine nuts, and olive oil we can find. Friday we loosely filled about half a 32 gallon plastic bag with the basil and we left it in the kitchen overnight. This afternoon I stripped leaves from the stems of about a quarter of the harvest, enough to fill a tightly packed two cup measure with leaves a couple of times.
We’re lucky we have a big kitchen. While I put the basil aside for later, Beth was starting a big pot of potato leek soup. This was one of those absurdities in home economics. We’d been to Whole foods for the parmesan and the pine nuts. While there we picked up some US$2.00/pound potatoes to go with our garden grown leeks. Who pays $2 a pound for potatoes? Sigh…
So the soup was bubbling on the stove and I was faced with prep work for some salsa. We had tomatillos and hot peppers from Luna Circle Farm, onions, cilantro and a big basket of tomatoes from out back. Beth asked me to make it hot but maybe not as hot as napalm, so I cut the seeds out of the peppers (cayennes?) before I started.
There are some lessons a person should only have to learn once and I remember a time in Berkeley maybe 25 years ago when I was making salsa barehanded and almost did myself permanent damage. But that was then and I was making a big batch. Who would have thought a few peppers from Luna Circle would, would… well — tonight when I bring my fingers to my lips and kiss them loudly before exclaiming “Pesto!” and throwing that kiss, I’m a fire hazard. I could light your cigarette with a snap of my fingers. You don’t even want to know how I hurt myself in the restroom.
Anyway, we have some incredibly delicious salsa now. One batch is green, tomatillo with onion, pepper and cilantro. One batch has some tomato added to the basic recipe. Both batches will light you right up.
We cleaned up after dinner and shifted into “Pesto!” mode. One hand crafted batch was all we managed. We’ll finish up tomorrow.
Tip to Aunt Hentic: When making large batches of “Pesto!” it is sometimes good to fill ice cube trays with the stuff and freeze it. When frozen, remove the green cubes to a plastic bag and store in the freezer as single serving sized lumps.
UPDATE: Beth has read this post and told me that she thinks it’s good except that it’s based on a lie… I’ve made it sound like we do the gardening when really all credit for growing our farm fresh produce must go to Kristen Kordet and the Blue Moon Community Farm CSA here at our place.  Sometimes we grow our own though, just not since Kristen’s been here. Why duplicate effort? We have been making “Pesto!” and salsa a lot longer than we’ve been hosting the CSA farm. So there, Beth.
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