Pesto

Eastside Road, —

AS YOU SEE, fusilli tonight, with pesto. When did I make that pesto? Really, August 11? Well, it's certainly held well…

Then a couple of weeks ago some folks were up for lunch and I'd happened to pick up a pine cone: time to demonstrate the home-grown pine nuts. These are labor-intensive: you pull out the nuts from between the scales using long-nosed pliers; you wipe the soot off them lest it pollute the taste of the kernel; you crack the nut using the pliers, being careful not to pinch the skin of your fingers; you extract the kernel and divest it of its husk…

Our guests amused themselves so for a few minutes. I saved the results in a little plastic container, and it's been decorating a corner of the kitchen island ever since. Tonight I tossed them into a mortar and ground them to a paste, adding some of the pesto to clean the result out of the mortar, then combining the whole with the rest of the pesto. Nice texture, richer flavor.

Green salad afterward, and a plate of sliced tomatoes. And then dessert, oh boy:


Fruit from the garden — Bosc pears, peaches (well, from Dry Creek; ours are much earlier in the season); and those absolutely delicious Yellow Transparent plums, picked at twilight today, sweet, soft, translucent, incomparable. The chocolate? Half a truffle Lindsey came into today, a gift from someone out in Sonoma…

Rosé, Château de Guilhem, 2011; Carignane, Preston of Dry Creek, 2009