Rubbishy Cookery

Hello again! Where did I go? I got a bit lazy and didn’t feel like blogging for a while, but then I discovered this recipe—did I invent it? Doubtful, but maybe?—and had to document it. Let’s face it. This blog is my personal recipe electronic notebook… Anyway, you need to try this, it’s so good! Ingredients: Directions: Melt a good chunk of salted butter in a nonstick pan on medium high heat until sizzling. Beat two eggs in a bowl until frothy. Get your mise en place ready with the other stuff. That means chop the tomatoes annd basil, and crumble the feta cheese. And giddy-up! Once the butter is sizzling, but before it browns, toss in the chopped cherry tomatoes and sauté: While the tomatoes heat up and cook in the hot buttery pan, chiffonade (I believe that’s the word for delicately chopping rolled up leaves to avoid bruising) the fresh basil leaves: Don’t abandon your tomatoes! Keep sautéing! And get your beaten eggs ready: I’m not adding any salt to the eggs, just pepper. Things are...

  Of course I did not invent pesto. I started my independent culinary life buying pre-made pesto to use as a sauce, a dip, a topping. I graduated to using official pesto recipes, buying and measuring and mixing ingredients to make pesto. And I evolved to finally making large batches of improv pesto.  Improv pesto sometimes means pesto with surprises. Some surprises are better than others, as we shall see. Ingredients: Note: the pine nuts can be replaced with walnuts, and the fresh basil with other herbs. Cilantro or arugula make surprisingly good substitutes for some or all of the basil. Note #2: improv pesto means not measuring anything but adding amounts as the spirit moves you. This almost always works out fine. Note #3: I literally, as I am typing up this blog post, just noticed I forgot garlic. Garlic is a very important ingredient in pesto. This is a big omission. Directions: Wash and spin dry the basil (or alternate) and stuff it into the food processor (hopefully you h...