In Portland, it is once again final basil harvest. Any basil that's left in the garden will go to seed or just wilt on the cold nights, so we turn it into two things to last the rest of the year: dried basil, and pesto.

This is a recipe for preparing large quantities of pesto in the food processor. There are other ways to make pesto -- mortar & pestle, blender, hard-core knife work -- but this one is for the FP, because it's really the best tool for making a gallon of pesto to freeze for the winter.

Now, I've written about making pesto before, but I thought that recipe could use a bit more quantity precision, as well as a photo essay on exactly how to prepare and store it. So, here goes.

First, harvest all your basil and strip the leaves off the stems. Some tender stems and blossoms are fine, since we're going to puree it, but no woody stems. This will take a while. If not making the pesto immediately, bag and refrigerate for up to 24 hours.

See how dirty your basil is. It's best to avoid washing if you can, because then you need to dry it. If the bottom leaves are dirty, I usally discard those instead of washing.

Now, here's the quantities of ingredients we're working with per 11-cup food processor batch. If you have a larger FP, you could try scaling up, but I recommend instead just having it slightly less full. Where weights are given, they are more precise than the volume measurements are.

food processor pesto batch

• 3.5oz or 1/2 cup pine nuts
• 3.5oz parmesan, parmigiano, or grana padano cheese
• 1oz or 6-8 cloves peeled garlic
• 4oz or 5-6 cups loosely packed basil leaves
• 1/2 cup good olive oil (plus more for storage)
• 1 tsp table salt
• 1/2 tsp fresh-ground black pepper
• 0 to 5 Tbs water

Equipment: 11cup or 14cup food processor, baking sheets, knife or grater, spatula, measuring cups and spoons, scale, and jar funnel.

First, toast the pine nuts and the garlic. You're looking here to bring out the nutty flavors in the pine nuts, and to tame the bite of the garlic (mostly so that you can add more of it). Heat your oven to 375F and put the peeled garlic cloves and the pine nuts on baking sheets, and toast for 6-12 minutes, checking periodically. You'll know they're ready when the nuts have turned a very pale brown, and the garlic is slightly spongey to the touch (and you can eat a clove without it blasting you). It's better to under-toast here than to burn anything.

Cut the cheese into small pieces, or grate it with the large holes of a grater. It's going to get ground down in the FP, but you want it to start in small pieces first or it won't grind as fast as the other ingredients. Put the cheese, pine nuts, and garlic into the FP.

Turn the FP on and grind them until they resemble a coarse meal, like bulgur wheat. Don't pulse, it won't work well, just run it continously for 30 to 90 seconds depending on your unit.

Now, add the basil. In my 11-cup FP, I add enough basil to fill it to the top. If yours is a different size, fill accordingly. You'll be adding some 5-6 cups of loosely packed basil, or 4oz if you want to do it by weight. Pour on the 1/2 cup olive oil, the salt, and the pepper.

Now, turn on the FP and run it until the leaves incorporate, 1-3 minutes. Have some patience here; at first it'll look like the FP is just blending the nuts and garlic and isn't grabbing any leaves, and then suddenly they'll all go. When all the leaves are being chopped, stop the FP and scrape down the sides for any stuck leaves or bits of cheese, and then finish your puree with around 20 seconds more.

Now, judgement call time: see how creamy your pesto looks. If you had to wash the leaves, it'll probably already be there. If they were dry, you might need to add a little water, anywhere from 1 tablespoon to 5. Pulse the FP one more time, and check the texture. It should look like this:

You just made 13fl.oz. to 17fl.oz. of pesto! That's enough for two family-sized bowls of pasta, or 4-5 individual servings, so you want to put some away. Which means freezing, because there's no way to make pesto shelf-stable without cooking it, which would then ruin the sauce.

So, time to jar up. I recommend using 4oz jars or plastic containers, because 4oz is the right size for a small pasta serving (first course for two), two personal-sized pizzas, or a 2lbs filet of halibut. And if you need to feed more people, you can combine 4oz jars. But if you put it away in 8oz jars or pints, you'll find yourself with a half-full jar in the fridge which will expire quickly. Pesto does not keep.

So get out your jar funnel and start filling jars. Leave 1/4" headroom in each jar for ice expansion. Tap down the pesto in each jar to drive out as many air bubbles as possible, and then add a protective layer of olive oil (around 1 tsp) on top of each. Seal, and put in the freezer as soon as you can.

Now, repeat that until your basil is all gone and you have too much pesto to fit in the freezer. Give some to the neighbors.

See my older version of the recipe for notes on the ingredients.

Variations and substitutions:

• you could probably make this with vegan cheese, but I'm not sure how well it would freeze. I'd be worried about the cheese separating.
• you can definitely substitute other hard grating cheeses for the parmesan, such as asiago, dry jack, piave vecchio, or even a very aged manchego or comte. Avoid salted cheeses like pecorino romano, though, as they will make the pesto too salty.
• walnuts are also traditional, and good pestos can be made with pistacios.
• punch it up a bit by adding some red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper.

Since Passover is now done with, we can get back to simple recipes to sustain you through self-isolation time. We're back with more "hot pasta tossed with stuff" this week, with a decidedly springtime twist.

Now, our last "tossed hot pasta" recipe was hot pasta & eggs. But "hot pasta & cheese" is also a big thing, as I'll show you. Overall, I can't overemphasize how useful it is to master the basic tossed hot pasta technique for being able to turn out a variety of tasty meals, with minimal ingredients, in a really short time.

There are four tricks to good hot tossed pasta recipes:

1. Use a large, insulating bowl (ceramic, glass or wood) at room temperature;
2. Make sure non-pasta ingredients are at room temperature or slightly warm;
3. Reserve some pasta water and use it later;
4. Get the pasta from boiling water into the bowl of ingredients quickly and toss vigorously.

This particular recipe has only six ingredients, including salt. That does mean, though, that you have to pay some attention to the ingredients.

First, like for other simple pasta recipes, buying somewhat better dried pasta pays off here. Even major supermarkets carry "bronze die" or other higher end pastas these days, and it's worth the extra $1 to $3 to get those for one of these simple recipes. For this one, we want a short, stubby pasta. I used strozzapreti (literally "priest stranglers"), but penne, fusilli, gemelli, or any short, straight, and not too big pasta shape will work here.

Second, the cheese I used is taleggio, which is a very soft and gooey, but pungent Italian cheese. There are a number of cheeses you could substitute, including robiola, cresenza, and teleme, or fancy gooey American cheeses like Red Hawk or Harbison. The key is that the cheese needs to be very soft, very moist, and yet have a pungent flavor, becuase there's not a lot of other seasoning in the recipe. Despite the similarity of texture, though, brie and camembert will not work -- they're too "chalky".

As a variant on this recipe, though, you could use chevre instead of the gooey cheese. I've done that before and it was also very tasty. It just required a bit more pasta water for texture.

Either way, this is a better "tossed hot pasta & cheese" recipe to start with than, say, cacio e pepe, which is a lot more sensitive to timing and temperature. Both taleggio and chevre are pretty forgiving if you maybe take too long or get things too hot.

Asparagus & Taleggio Pasta

1 lbs skinny asparagus
Salt
1 lbs short pasta, like penne rigate or strozzapreti
1 lbs taleggio, or substitute (see above)
Fresh oregano, basil, thyme or parsley, about 3 tbs minced, or 2 tsp dried oregano and/or basil
Fresh ground black pepper
Equipment: 4qt pot, large wide bowl, knife & cutting board, cheese wire

Set a 3-4qt pot of heavily salted water (2 tsp per quart) to boil on the stove. Stem the asparagus (i.e. cut off the bottom 2-3") and cut it into 1" lengths. Cook it in the boiling water for 2-3 minutes, depending on how skinny it is. Strain it out and set it aside. If you can do this without dumping out the water, using a spider or similar, you can immediately reuse that water for the pasta. Put the asparagus in a large, wide bowl.

Remove the rind from the cheese (losing 2-3 oz in the process). Using a wire or very thin knife and a lot of swearing, cut it into 1/4" cubes. If you don't have the tools for this, just pinch small blobs off with your fingers. Drop the cubes or blobs on top of the asparagus, together with the minced herbs, and some fresh-ground pepper. Try to spread these out evenly across the bottom of the bowl.

Put the pasta in the boiling water (either the water you used for the asparagus, or if you had to dump that, new salty water you just boiled). Cook until "al dente" which pretty much just means "done but not mushy", usually the time given on the package.

Strain the pasta, somehow reserving 1 cup of the pasta cooking water. Very quickly, before the pasta can cool at all, dump it into the bowl and start tossing it with the asparagus, herbs, and cheese. The cheese should melt and form a gooey sauce on the pasta; if it seems a bit dry, add the pasta water, 2-3 Tbs at a time, until it's creamy but not wet.

Serve right away, with a salad and wine. Makes 4-5 portions.

Here's a super-fast, tasty pasta recipe you may be able to make from ingredients you have in your pantry right now. Like other dishes I'm publishing for quarantine month, fresh ingredients in it are minimal. It's also a Good First Recipe.

The name of this dish comes from the mock-Latin aphorism "illegitimati non carborundum", which supposedly translates to "don't let the bastards grind you down" (this also appears in the Handmaid's Tale as "nolite te bastardes carborundorum"). It's an extra play on words, since the recipe started as a vegetarian variant of Pasta Carbonara that our family gradually modified to be more interesting. The sentiment is also perfect for the current world circumstances.

Like any of the many pasta dishes that depend on tossing hot pasta with eggs or dairy, the key to this dish is timing. You need to have the egg-and-cheese mixture beaten and waiting in a bowl, so that you can take the hot pasta directly from the boiling pot and drop it in the sauce, and then toss it immediately. Do not drain it in a colander in the sink. The elapsed time from the pasta being cooked to serving the dish should be less than two minutes.

If you master this, you can make dozens of easy pasta dishes, including Cacio e Pepe, alla Gricia, and Fettucine Alfredo. And, of course, traditional Spaghetti alla Carbonara. Since beaten-egg sauces are more forgiving than cheese, pork fat, or butter-and-cheese, I recommend starting with a recipe like this one.

So, some additional tips to help you in your mastery:

1. Grab a salad tossing set, two big serving forks, or salad or BBQ "hands" to toss the pasta. While TV chefs are fond of using metal tongs, I've found that it's extremely hard to toss pasta effectively using them.
2. You want a room-temperature, or slightly warm, bowl to toss the pasta with its sauce. If you toss it in the cooking pot, the sauce will overheat and become clumpy (this is the #1 cause of Cacio e Pepe failures). Ideally, this will be a large, heavy ceramic or glass bowl. To save dishes, this can/should be your serving bowl as well.
3. Each of the "tossed" pasta recipes has its own recommended pasta to use, and there's reasons for that that have to do with flexibility and heat retention. Substituting pastas may result in the sauce failing, so if you have it available you should try to use the recommended pasta. In the case of Pasta Non Carborundum, I strongly recommend linguine, because you want a thicker pasta than spaghetti to retain enough heat to cook the sauce ingredients.
4. Unless you have special equipment, these recipes scale up poorly. With too much pasta at once, the sauce will not emulsify. Instead of trying to make a quadruple batch for a crowd, set things up so that you can do multiple batches in a row.

pasta non carborundum

12oz linguine or similar
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup good olive oil
2-3 tbs lemon juice
1/2 cup finely grated pecorino romano, grana padano, or parmigiano cheese
2 oz sun-dried tomatoes, chopped or cut into slivers, around 3/4 cup
minced parsley, around 1/2 cup
salt "to taste" (see below)
fresh ground pepper, around 1/2 tsp

equipment: pasta pot, large heavy bowl, tossing forks, whisk, pasta strainer, tongs or fork

Heat up a 4qt or larger pot with well-salted water (1 tsp per liter of water), until it boils.

Beat the eggs with the olive oil and lemon juice in the large heavy bowl. Mix in the pepper, any salt, the cheese, and minced tomatoes and parsley. Set next to the stove.

In the boiling water, cook the pasta slightly past "al dente" according to the package instructions. For most linguine, this will be 10 to 11 minutes.

As soon as the pasta is done, grab it out of the pot and drop it in the bowl (or strain it, reserving some pasta water, and immediately dump it in before it cools). Toss the pasta with the sauce ingredients right away, scraping the bottom of the bowl to make sure that all ingredients are incorporated. If the pasta seems a little dry, add a little (1/4 to 1/2 cup) of pasta cooking water and toss again.

Serve immediately. Serves 2 as a main dish and 3-4 as a side dish. Do not save leftovers.

Notes on ingredients:

Dried Linguine is the ideal pasta for this dish, and it even works with whole wheat linguine. You can make it with spaghetti, but the thinner pasta requires faster, more determined tossing. It would probably work with fettucine or pappardelle too, but angel hair won't work, nor will short, "stubby" pastas like penne.

Cheese and Salt: if using pecorino romano, you'll want to add either no salt, or up to 1/4 tsp salt to the mix. If using parmigiano, you'll want a little more, maybe 1/2 to 3/4 tsp.

Parsley could be replaced with basil or cilantro, or even dried herbs (in which case use 2 tsp instead of the 1/2 cup).

This is another of my "easy baking" recipes, mostly because it doesn't require much kneading, and it's hard for it to fail on you. The oil makes sure it's tender, and the flat shape limits a lot of potential rising problems.

Depending on how much you use in the way of toppings, this bread can either be a side dish, or can be a lunch in itself, particularly with a small salad or a bowl of soup. Serves 6-10 people depending.

Giant Pan o' Focaccia

4 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves (subs. fresh sage, oregano or thyme)
1 cup boiling water, plus 1 cup warm water
2 tsp active dry yeast
1 tbs honey (subs. 2 tsp sugar)
2 tsp salt
1/3 to ½ cup virgin olive oil
2 ½ cups whole wheat flour
2 to 3 cups bread or all-purpose flour

Toppings, any/several of:

• ½ cup sun-dried tomatoes, partially rehydrated and cut into strips
• ½ cup sliced olives
• 1 cup grated Italian hard cheese, such as parmigiano, pecorino, or asiago
• 2 tbs large coarse salt crystals, such as fancy sea salt
• ½ red onion, thinly sliced

Equipment: Large rimmed baking sheet, parchment, large bowls

Chop half the rosemary roughly and bruise it in a mortar (or mince it). Put it in a large mixing bowl, and pour the cup of boiling water over it. Dissolve the honey in the water. Let sit 10 minutes. Add the cup of lukewarm water; the mixture should now be just warm. Be careful it's not warmer than 90F, which would kill the yeast -- test against your wrist to be sure. Add the yeast, stir to dissolve, and let sit another 5 minutes.

Stir in the salt and two tablespoons olive oil. Add the whole wheat flour, stirring in 1/2 cup at a time always in the same direction, until completely mixed. Add about 2 cups of bread flour in the same manner. Then add flour until the dough just holds together and can be kneaded. Knead gently for 5 minutes, adding just enough flour as necessary to keep it from sticking. Form into a ball, oil the ball on all sides, and put it in a rising container in a warm place for 1 to 1½ hours, or until doubled in size.

Line the bottom of the baking sheet with a sheet of parchment and oil it. Punch down the dough and turn it out onto the sheet; using your fingertips, press it out gradually until it covers the whole baking sheet (a rolling pin will not work). Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap, or a damp towel, and let rise for another 30 to 45 minutes.

While it's rising, heat the oven to 375F. Dimple the top of the focaccia all over with your fingers; drizzle it with 2 to 3 tablespoons oil, sprinkle on the remaining rosemary, and scatter optional toppings sparsely across the surface (this isn't pizza). Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, just until it turns golden brown. Cut into slices and serve.

I really like my Ooni Koda pizza oven, but as I said in the last post I wasn't quite getting the perfect pizza I wanted. Particularly:

1. The top and bottom of the pizza weren't getting done at quite the same rate;
2. The 300F temperature drop between the back and front of the oven meant that I either burned the back edge, or needed to spin the pizza the whole time it was cooking;
3. I had to do a lot of cranking the oven up and down to preheat it, then to lower the heat for actual cooking.

So, time for some pizza oven hacking. I was going to try a few things. But first, I had to replace the faulty gas regulator that came with the Koda, which required an Amazon order because, for some bizarre reason, no hardware store in Portland carries a gas regulator with more than 14" of hose (Ooni paid me back for the purchase).

My first thought was about the pizza stone. The corderite stone the Koda comes with is only 3/8" thick, and I was wondering if a thicker stone might both retain heat better, as well as conduct heat to the front of the oven. So I headed down to my local pottery store (Georgie's) and had them cut me a 12" x 12" x 3/4" kiln shelf.

Here it is in the oven. I realized after I inserted it that I should have gotten 13" x 13", but tried it anyway. You can see that doubling the stone thickness makes a big difference in how it looks in the oven.

My second hack had to do with spinning the pizza. I bought some of these:

These are "pizza spinners", which sounded like exactly what I needed to keep that pizza spinning if I can't even out the temperature. The idea was that you can grab the pizza with the two little claws, and spin it without taking it partway out of the oven, as you need to do with a spinning paddle.

So, how did it work? Pretty well.

The thicker stone did make a big difference in temperature retention. I didn't need to crank the heat up and down; I could leave it on a medium heat, get the stone nice and hot, and pop one pizza in after another.

Even better, raising the pizza 3/8" resulted in even top-and-bottom cooking. The position of the pizza on the thinner stone is just a little too low, and raising it one pizza thickness made all the difference.

You can see here that I got excellent blistering on the bottom of the pizza:

And pretty good loft in the crust, especially for a store-bought dough (from Zupan's):

Unfortunately, the thicker stone did nothing to even out the back-to-front temperature difference; corderite just isn't a good conductor. You can see that I still had crust burning issues whenever I didn't spin the pizza fast enough:

My next attempt for that will be using a pizza steel, which ought to have better conductivity and thus help even out the heat. Will it burn the crust, though? We'll find out.

The pizza spinners did make it easier to spin the pizza quickly, in place. Once, that is, I figured out to use them like claws and spin the pizza around by grabbing the sides of the crust, instead of by poking them into the center and spinning. The latter isn't very effective, and can tear the pizza. But, the results speak for themselves; look at the even cooking of the pizza at the top of this post.

Overall, I think I'm a lot closer to the gas-fired pizza of my dreams. Just a little more tweaking and trials to go. I recommend the spinners, for certain, and maybe the thicker stone if you can get one and don't want to try a pizza steel.

Oh, and I also made some strawberry-machego empanadas in the Koda: