Using up basil bonanza, one course at a time

Leaving a few flowering heads on some of the basil keeps the pollinators happy. This bumble bee was one of many that paid a visit to the basil, and then to my flowering vine crops nearby.

This year was a stellar basil year for us, both in the planters close to the house and the monster plant out in the raised beds that's among the largest basil plants I've ever seen in our northern climate. So obviously we've been enjoying our share of pesto and caprese salads. But given that prime basil season will soon fade during fall weather, I've been turning to recipes to use up copious quantities while it's in its full glory. Here are some basil-intensive recipes across a range of courses.

Creamy lemon basil pasta

From Food & Wine June 2026, adapted from "The Pasta Book" by Marc Vetri and David Joachim. Serves 4.

Ingredients
¾ cup butter, cut into chunks
1 pound fresh tonnarelli pasta (or dried bucatini or thick spaghetti)
1 cup fresh basil leaves, plus more for garnish
2½ tablespoons poppy seeds
2½-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
¾ cup finely grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
8 thin prosciutto slices, torn (about 4 ounces)

Method

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

In a deep large pot, melt butter over medium low. Add 2 cups of the hot salted water to the pot. Bring to a boil and cook until slightly reduced.

When the water in the pot boils, add pasta and cook until just tender. Drain, reserving liquid in case you need it. Transfer pasta to butter mixture in the pot and cook 2 to 3 minutes to coat pasta. Add basil, poppy seeds and 2½ tablespoons lemon juice. If needed to make a creamy sauce, add some of the reserved pasta water. Taste and adjust seasoning with lemon as needed. Stir in ¾ cup grated Parmesan. At this point, the original recipe called for plating the pasta in 4 bowls and then folding in the prosciutto to each serving, but that was annoying, so I recommend adding it to the main pasta pot and distributing it well. Garnish with grated Parmesan and more fresh basil leaves.

Rating: Hard to go wrong with those ingredients of lemon, butter, basil and prosciutto. Substantial, thanks to the bucatini we used, and well, that's a lot of butter. A fairly fast fix.

Gin basil smash

We enjoyed a trip to the Minnesota Beethoven Festival this year in Winona and had this perfect drink for a muggy hot day at Muddled Thyme, a craft cocktail and brick oven pizza joint downtown that I would haunt if I lived there. Highly recommend, both the restaurant and the drink. (Also, don't sleep on the Marine Art Museum while you're in town.) We found this recipe from Difford's Guide when we got home to try to re-create that cocktail.

Ingredients

12 basil leaves, divided
2 ounces gin
¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
⅓ ounce rich simple syrup (made with a 2-to-1 sugar to water ratio)
Seltzer water (optional)

Method

Set aside three basil leaves for garnish. Muddle remaining basil leaves in a cocktail shaker. Add gin, lemon juice and simple syrup and shake with ice. Strain into a Collins glass and top with seltzer if desired. (The recipe didn't call for it, but the restaurant's website lists it as an ingredient and it did seem to have a bit of fizz to it.) Garnish with basil leaves.

Rating: I'm not sure if it's exactly like the one we had, but it's close, and very refreshing.

Basil parsley garlic sea salt

From Healthy Eats by Elena on Instagram. There are other similar variations out there that use basil and no parsley, and some of which call for blanching the basil briefly to set its color.

Ingredients

1 cup basil leaves
1 cup parsley leaves
1 cup sea salt
3 cloves garlic, chopped

Method

Preheat oven to 225. Place ingredients in a food processor and pulse until fine. Spread on a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet, Bake for 35-40 minutes until dried. Remove from oven and let cool completely. Transfer mixture to the food processor to process until smooth (the baked mixture sets up a bit into chunks so this restores it to salt consistency). Store at room temperature.

Drying the salt mixture in the oven extends its shelf life, but it makes it clump up, so it gets a second blending once it's cool.

Rating: It brings something more to the party than simple salt. Pack some into a small jar for presents, since it keeps for about a year at room temperature.

Tomato basil butter

From Salt Coast Kitchen on instagram. The quantities weren't specified, so this is a guess based on the video.

Ingredients
1 pint cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
A generous handful of fresh basil
2 garlic cloves
¾ cup butter, room temperature

Method
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Place cherry tomatoes in a small baking dish. Drizzle lightly with some of the olive oil and a sprinkling of coarse salt. Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool slightly.

Put roasted tomatoes, remaining olive oil, basil leaves, garlic and butter in a food processor or blender and blend well. Transfer to a dish, cover and chill until set. 

Rating: Tasty as a sandwich spread. Also works as a topping for grilled chicken or as a pasta sauce. The basil flavor comes through nicely.

Lemon basil dressing

From May.Eighty.Five on Instagram. 

Ingredients

3 tablespoons basil leaves
1 garlic clove, chopped
4 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ cup olive oil
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon honey or maple syrup
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Combine all ingredients except salt and pepper in a food processor or blender. Blend until combined and emulsified. Season to taste with salt and pepper. 

Rating: Tasty, versatile. Stays blended while stored.

Basil quick bread

From Hello Canola, a Canadian site showcasing recipes involving canola oil. 

Ingredients
3 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons dry mustard powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves
3 large eggs
1½ cups milk
⅓ cup canola oil

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a bread pan.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, mustard and salt. Stir in basil leaves.

Combine eggs, milk and canola oil. Stir into dry ingredients just to combine. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool for 15 minutes before removing from pan to cool completely. 

Rating: An admirable, well-behaved loaf. Nice just with a smear of butter. Makes a reasonable toasted cheese sandwich base.

More options

That by no means exhausts your options for sneaking in some of the bounty of seasonal basil. I'm thinking basil blueberry muffins for breakfast and lemon basil poke cake for dessert. Or basil sugar pound cake or basil oil.

A rose by any other name

Nope, not one of mine. 

A few weeks we escaped our routine and played hooky. We got a takeout lunch, found a shady bench facing the Lake Harriet rose garden and strolled around the garden and fountains after our picnic. The roses have a pretty spread-out bloom time, so there's still plenty to see and smell.  Peak bloom times are said to be mid-June to early October.

The roses all seem to be Zone 5, so I'm not likely to try to plant any of them at home because I'm still sticking with at least Zone 4 hardiness ratings. I wish I could replicate the rose garden's terra cotta rope edging, but a brief search showed me a flat of terra cotta rope edging costs and weighs 400 £/pounds, so that's right out. They do sell molds to make your own tinted concrete versions, but since I have a hard enough time making myself weed along our crumbling edging, taking the time to make new edging seems most unlikely.

I've grown roses a time or two, but the only thing that's stayed bought for more than about five years is a miniature rose in a hanging pot, duking it out with tree seedlings in its clothes-line perch. It overwinters in the basement and comes back from twig form in late winter.

Lisianthus make fabulous, long-lasting cut flowers.

The closest thing I've got to looking like a rose planted in the ground this year are lisianthus, aka prairie gentian. I ordered 12 of them from Burpee this year, and waited and waited. (They are very slow growing, and hence, slow to ship.) They chose to ship them in early June when we were up north, so I had to ask a neighbor to intercept the package and tend to them. We hustled them into the ground on our return, and then we've waited and waited for them to bloom. Last week some of them finally did. Next year I might try growing them from seed, but it takes five to six months lead time for blooms so I better put it on my calendar for January.

While I won't say they are now thriving, they're doing better than the boulevard elm, which last week got tagged by the city for removal. I won't miss all the tree seedlings it drops throughout the garden, but we'll certainly miss that welcome shade. It's the second elm we've lost since moving in and the fourth big tree to go down on this end of the block.

Bye bye, elm. This is never a sign you want to see on your property.

If it's not clear by now that I go down food rabbit holes, you haven't been picking up on trends. The strangest things can provoke a deep dive. In this case, I got into flavored or infused waters because when I was pondering how to style my coffee table before a gathering on a very hot, smoky summer night, it struck me that a carafe or two of flavored waters would both look well and potentially hit the spot.  You know, the kind of artfully infused waters that are proffered to you in the sort of salon I no longer frequent. And then you find yourself with four carafes clearly in need of regular use and it's off in search of ideas to fill them.

The good news was that it seemed the simplest recipes yielded the best results. Just slice, pour and wait a few hours.

Strawberry lemon basil water 

Adapted from a number of inspiration sites, including Culinary Hill and That Salad Lady. I tried a number of variations, but I'm focusing here on my two favorites of those I tried.

Simple flavored waters

Strawberry lemon basil water

Ingredients

1 lemon, sliced crosswise
5 fresh basil leaves
½ cup strawberry halves
Filtered water

Method

Place lemon, basil leaves and strawberries in a quart pitcher or one-liter carafe.  Pour over enough water to mostly fill, leaving room for some ice at the top if desired later. Refrigerate for at least a few hours or overnight for best flavor. Shake it up a bit to even out the pinkish tone from the berries.

Rating: This was among the prettier variations I tried so if you're looking for guest presentation, this might be the winner. Pretty pink liquid color in a glass, and the lemon and basil flavors are refreshing. The original recipe indicated not to leave the infusing ingredients in longer than 24 hours but I blithely ignored that. I will say that if you refill this to get a second use, the strawberries will start to look mushy by the second day or so, so you only get so many pours out of the ingredients.

Blueberry rosemary lemon water

Ingredients

1 lemon, sliced crosswise
4 sprigs fresh rosemary (tender stems are best for this purpose rather than woody)
½ cup blueberries
Filtered water

Method

Place lemon, rosemary and blueberries in a quart pitcher or one-liter carafe.  Pour over enough water to mostly fill, leaving room for some ice at the top if desired for serving later. Refrigerate for at least a few hours or overnight for best flavor. Shake up to spread out the blue color evenly through the water before serving.

Rating: This one hits the sweet spot for a combination of flavor, looks and comparative longevity. The blue color is a little more subtle than the pink of the strawberry version, but the flavors of rosemary and lemon really come through and are a nicely refreshing combo pack. Since the blueberries are left whole, this one can last a bit longer and get more refills out of it, although with each refill the ingredients will deliver slightly less potent flavor. 

A few others to try: 1 sliced orange, 4 thyme sprigs, halved red grapes; 1 sliced lime, ½ sliced cucumbers, lemon grass sprigs to taste (or lemon balm is also interesting). Those are nicely flavored, but don't seem to lend themselves to multiple refills.

Cucumber agua fresca

From "Put 'em Up" by Sherri Brooks Vinton.

Note: If you're looking to avoid adding sugar, you can leave it out. It's still refreshing, but if you're including it in the martini recipe option, the sugar helps.

Ingredients

4 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 cup water
2 tablespoons sugar
Juice of 1 lime

Method

Puree cucumber chunks in a food processor or blender. Drain well through a fine mesh strainer, pushing  to remove juice. Compost the solids.

Combine cucumber juice, water, sugar and lime juice in a pitcher and stir to dissolve the sugar. Serve over ice with a splash of seltzer if desired, or try in the cucumber martini, below.

Rating: If you've got a ton of cucumbers to figure out how to preserve, this can be useful, since you can freeze it. But if you're just looking to use up cucumbers in something refreshing, putting slices with limes in water is a lot faster and has a cleaner taste.

Cucumber martini

3 ounces cucumber agua fresca
1½ ounces vodka
Ice
Cucumber slice for garnish

Combine agua fresca, vodka and ice in a shaker. Shake to chill and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with cucumber slice.

Rating: I wouldn't go out of my way to make the aqua fresca just for this, but if you've got it on hand, this might be its highest use case; the vodka cuts through any off-putting texture.

Not just your regular joe

Gochujang gives this sloppy joe an extra bit of flavor.

Warmed ground beef and sauce on a bun? Or shredded beef with not much sauce? Or some combination in between? Everyone seems to have grown up with their own definition of sloppy joes, loose meats, Maid Rites or taverns. In my family, we had taverns, which is how we referred to the same sauced ground meat sandwich other families around home called sloppy joes. We attributed this to our mother growing up in Des Moines, but I also see references to others thinking of taverns as being more like what I'm told Maid Rites were like, but never having been exposed to the chain, I couldn't verify that. I saw one claim that the tavern name came from a local restaurant named the Tavern, but given that my mother's childhood predated that restaurant's existence, I'm a tad skeptical. 

At any rate, whatever you call them and however you choose to prepare them, at heart they are a simple way to fix a warm meal for a crowd, and easy to make ahead and keep warm in a slow cooker, making them a busy mom's uncomplicated way to get a kid-approved meal that could keep until whenever practice was over. 

They are an unpretentious comfort food it there ever was one, and really don't need to be messed with. Of course, cooks gotta tinker, so  I thought I'd explore some variations as an excuse to have a bite of nostalgia. All four of these are way better than school cafeteria sloppy joes, although that was comparatively edible as school meals went.

Gochujang sloppy joes

From Bon Appetit by Hana Asbrink in February 2023. They allege it serves 4. I would say it serves 10. See takeaway below.

This recipe smacks to me of how I used to approach making meatloaf when my mother put it on the menu. It showed up on the menu a lot, since we raised cattle, and it was not my favorite dish since the basic recipe seemed so very, very bland. So I would try to dump the contents of various condiments into the meat mixture in hopes of spicing it up. I can't say as it accomplished that, but it didn't make it any worse, at any rate. I was limited to the spice rack offerings and condiments of a Midwestern farm kitchen in the 1970s, so there was a limit to what I could get up to. No gochujang in sight.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 pound ground beef
Kosher salt, divided
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
6 to 8 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons gochujang
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon yellow mustard
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
¼ cup water
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Buns for serving

Method

Heat oil in a large deep pot. Add ground beef and brown until mostly cooked. Push to the side of the pot and add green pepper, onion and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat until vegetables are softened. Add gochujang, ketchup, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, mustard, tomato sauce and water. Cook, uncovered, until mixture tightens to a thick sauce; you don't want this runny. Remove from heat and add balsamic vinegar. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Serve on hamburger buns or potato rolls.

Rating: I still say this list of ingredients looks like the result of a condiment dump or cleanup, but it's a perfectly tasty one. Not spicy, but flavorful. Better than the taverns/sloppy joes I remember from school days. There are definitely worse ways to use up the condiments lurking in the door of your refrigerator. I froze the leftovers in the one-cup portion silicon freezer trays and thaw one of the cups when we want a no-fuss lunch.

Veggie sloppy joes

From Better Homes & Gardens, July/August 2024 issue. Serves 10 quite amply, maybe even 12.  I actually made this recipe before the other three which led me down the sloppy joe rabbit hole to refresh my memory of the meaty version to see how they compared.

Ingredients
1½ cups brown lentils, rinsed  and drained
½ brown rice
1 cup chopped carrot
½ cup chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
1 tablespoon molasses
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon salt 
4 cups chicken broth
8 ounces cremini mushrooms, chopped
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
10 hamburger buns, toasted
Pickled unions and lettuce for optional toppings

Method

Combine lentils, rice, carrot, onion, garlic, mustard, molasses, cayenne, salt and chicken broth in a large slow cooker. Heat on high for 3½ to 4 hours or on low for 6 to 7 hours. Add tomato sauce, mushrooms and vinegar and cook for another half hour. Serve on toasted buns.

Rating: Well, it's certainly got the sloppy part nailed. Definitely not a good candidate for finger food, since so much of it escapes. Dave refers to these as faux joes or loose lentils. He liked the flavor, but found them a challenge to consume since so much sploots out the sides. It's one of those sandwiches you really can't put down once you pick it up because of structural integrity concerns. The problem was eased a bit when I dialed back the filling to bun ratio with the leftovers to what I considered to be a more normal amount; they're plenty filling. 

They don't taste that much like meat sloppy joes, but they are reasonably tasty, and apparently smell that way too. I opted to make these on high so we could have a lunch that didn't require much kitchen prep time while we had workers in the house finally repairing a plumbing disaster. When they departed, they said they were going to have to get it written into their next contract that there should be no crock pot meals being made while they're on the job site so they aren't tortured by smelling warm food. I wonder if they would have felt that way if they'd known it was lentils.

Definitely sloppy.

Leftover notes: It reheats just fine. I opted to store some of the leftovers in some souper cubes so we can opt for some warm comfort food on short notice. Just remember to provide lots of napkins or else a spoon. Having since made the gochujang version, I'm curious to know if adding some of that to this lentil version would amp up the flavor to the point where it would be a more fair fight in a taste comparison between the meaty-but-meatless lentil version and standard meat versions. I did find that mashing up some of the lentils helped it bind together a bit more.

Sloppy Janes

I wanted to try another meatless version just to give it another chance, to see if the reason the meat version was so much better than the lentil-based version was the meat itself or the spice profile. This version from "Vegetarian Heartland" by Shelly Westerhausen seemed like a decent bet.

Note: If you opt to make the pickles, you'll need to start this days ahead. I'm not going to say they're required, but I will report that you won't mind if you do, even though the need to take the very simple steps to make them delayed me making these for far too long. It's so unpredictable when I'll feel lazy in the kitchen.

Ingredients

1 24-ounce jar dill pickle spears
2 cups sugar
2 cinnamon sticks

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 cups broth or water
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon tamari
2 teaspoons seasoned rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1 6-ounce container tomato paste
½ cup finely chopped walnuts
1 15-ounce can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-ounce can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
Hamburger buns (figure on 8 to 10, depending on how full you fill them, we used 10)

Method
Drain the pickles and cut into bite-size chunks. Place back in the same jar and cover with water. Let soak for 24 hours, then drain and place into a large jar. Combine sugar and 1 cup of water until dissolved and pour mixture over the pickles. Tuck in the cinnamon sticks. Cover and refrigerate at least 48 hours to allow the flavors to blend. The recipe notes that they'll keep up to 6 months, but once you try them, you'll pretty quickly find uses for them.

For the filling, heat olive oil in a large deep pan. Cook onion, celery and carrots over medium heat until very soft. Add garlic and cumin and cook for 1 minute. Add oregano, broth, red pepper flakes, tamari, vinegar, honey, tomato paste, walnuts and beans and simmer until it thickens into serving consistency. Season with salt and pepper if desired. Serve on buns and top with the pickles.

Rating: OK, so these work on a lot of levels. It's kind of like going to a place that you know has a good bean burger when that's what you're in the market for; it's not a meat burger, but it's good at being what it is. It definitely brings the flavor profile. And those pickles add an interesting touch. I'm not super into sweet pickles, but this kind of splits the difference, and the cinnamon pairs with the sloppy joe spices for a nice effect. Would definitely consider making this one again.

Sloppy Ottos

And then there's Sloppy Joe's cousin, Sloppy Otto. I ran across this one online and found a number of variations. They didn't always agree on the meat, but there seemed to be a greater tendency to use pork sausage. Sauerkraut and pretzel buns seemed to be a constant, but they varied on whether you added cheese to the assembled bun and melted it. There was wide variation in the ratio of kraut to meat. Sour cream crept in, or didn't. One suspects there are as many recipes for this as there are German great-grandmothers.

Here's where I landed. It's probably closest to the Taste of Home version as any other. 

Ingredients
1 pound bulk spicy pork sausage
1½ cups sauerkraut, well drained
2 medium bell peppers of the color of your choice, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
Pretzel buns for serving (8 to 10 depending on meat serving size of choice)
Sliced Muenster cheese 

Method

Preheat oven to 350. 

In a large pan, brown sausage. Add sauerkraut, peppers and onion. Cook over medium heat until vegetables are tender.

Dish meat onto buns. Top with a cheese slice. Bake for 4 minutes or so or until cheese is melted.

Rating: The addition of cheese to this version makes them much less sloppy since the melted cheese helps hold the mixture in place. The flavor is going to depend on the spiciness of your sausage, and I would avoid a bland cheese. These weren't bad, or anything, but they do fall into the category of worth trying but not worth repeating unless you had that German great-grandmother who made these.

Takeaway

I'd kind of written taverns/sloppy joes permanently off my menu as kid food, and we no longer eat much in the way of beef, but maybe I was a bit hasty. Given that each recipe yields a lot of servings that you can freeze to pull out later, they count as a pretty good meal prep option. 

And whatever you call them, there seems to be one other point of contention: how much they serve. Ordinarily I quibble with the number of servings in a recipe in the other direction: that they're way too stingy, but the original specified serving amount in these recipes were off wildly in the other direction from my perspective. If you tried to pile on that much meat it would immediately squelch out when you pick it up and result in a soggy sandwich that instantly loses integrity. Dave remembers being served the same quantity per bun as I do, so perhaps it was a Midwestern church basement standard serving size we were used to. It was farm country, so it's not like people were always trying to stretch the meat since that was one thing for which you didn't have to pay retail. I don't know how to account for that disconnect, but it was consistent across all the recipes.

Three apps I'm apt to make again

 

I'm always in the market for fresh appetizer options to stave off food boredom, but some bear repeating. Here are three likely suspects I tried recently.

Cucumber rounds with roasted red pepper hummus and Boursin

Adapted from Fine Cooking's Weekend Cooking 2006. The section was labeled "when you need to bring the hors d'oevre," and I did, so I did. It called for making a more basic hummus, but I thought the red pepper would make it more colorful. It called for a small dollop of plain yogurt on top of the hummus, but I worried a bit about it staying put on a day when we were invited to a porch gathering while there was a heat advisory in play, so I went with the cheese instead. The original recipe says it makes 40 or so. I just stopped slicing once I'd filled up the size tray I wanted to.

Ingredients

1 large seedless cucumber 
Roasted red pepper hummus (purchased, or see recipe below)
Boursin cheese
Toasted white sesame seeds or black

Method

Slice the ends off the cucumber, then use a fork to score the outside of the cucumber vertically to make ridges. (Alternatively, the original recipe called for using a peeler at ¼-inch intervals to create a vertical striped pattern, but I really doubted I would pull that off.) Slice ¼-inch thick horizontally and place on serving dish. Salt very lightly. Top with a teaspoon of hummus and then a small ball of cheese or dollop of yogurt. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

Rating: Dave said they looked like the summer version of Christmas cookies. These were just as cute as could be, and just fine for a really hot day when you don't want to heat up the kitchen. My nit: I didn't find a large enough cucumber at the market so these were really small. That makes them both a tad harder for people to pick up as finger food and also meant those Boursin cheese balls on the top had to be super tiny, which was a bit of a logistical feat. Also, being that small made it hard to get very much of the roasted red pepper hummus on top, so that flavor was a little more muted than I would have liked, because that recipe is the bomb. I've purchased a variety of prepared roasted red pepper hummus from stores, but this was awesome. Definitely would make that part again.

Roasted red pepper hummus

Adapted very slightly from immigrantstable.com. The only change was swapping out the lemon juice for lime.

Ingredients

1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3 roasted red peppers
¼ cup tahini
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine chickpeas, roasted peppers, tahini, olive oil, lime juice, cumin, paprika and cayenne in a food processor or blender until very smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and adjust thickness with additional olive oil if you need a less thick mixture.

Rating: Really nicely balanced spice. Definite keeper.

Creamy cilantro sauce (or dip, or spread)

Adapted from Bon Appetit, Summer 2006. This sauce was part of a recipe that called for putting it over tofu that had been marinated and grilled, an adaptation of a Peruvian chicken recipe. It called for a serrano chile but I didn't have one on hand, so it would be much hotter with that swap. And it called for half an avocado and adding ¼ cup of water, which would make it a runnier sauce.

Ingredients

1 bunch of cilantro, bottom stems removed
6 scallions, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 pitted, peeled avocado
1 jalapeño chile
¼ cup fresh lime juice
¼ cup mayonnaise
½ teaspoon ground cumin

Method
Combine all ingredients in a food processor until mostly smooth. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Rating: We first served this over baked chicken, and it was a delight. Then we used it as a spread for a club sandwich and for BLTs, and it was heaven. Great on fish tacos. We made another batch to serve as a chip dip, and it was dandy there too. Super fast to make, and if you cover it well it retains its color when made ahead. An absolute keeper.

Smoked salmon and caper spread

From "Wine Bites" by Barbara Scott-Goodman. The book is subtitled "Simple morsels that pair perfectly with wine" and it's filled with lots of likely looking recipes. I can attest that in this case, the morsel also paired perfectly with gin and tonics.

Ingredients

1 8-ounce container cream cheese, softened a bit
4 ounces smoked salmon, divided
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon drained capers
Dash of hot pepper sauce
Grated black pepper
Sliced red onion, sliced tomatoes and bread for serving

Method
Combine cream cheese, ¾ of the smoked salmon, parsley, lemon juice, milk, capers and hot pepper sauce in a food processor and process until smooth. Mix in remaining salmon and black pepper. Serve as a spread for toasted bread or crackers. Top with red onions and sliced tomatoes if desired. Spread can be made ahead; bring to room temperature before serving so it's spreadable.

Rating: Not bad. I might like to add dill and/or lemon zest if I make it again, and I might well, because it's just so fast to make and doesn't heat up the kitchen. I just served it with gluten-free crackers rather than the bread route to accommodate dietary considerations, but if serving on bread I think some pickled red onions as a topper would be dandy. At any rate, our hosts' cat was pretty darn sure this dip was worth exploring and had to be continually dissuaded, so the salmon clearly comes through.

Leftover notes: This also worked well as a sandwich filling along with cucumber slices, tomatoes and lettuce.

Rhubarb muffins

Conventional garden wisdom is that you shouldn't do a heavy harvest of rhubarb after mid-July-ish, and many people mark the cut-off point as July 4. The theory is that the plant needs a lot of those big leaves to harvest energy to store in roots to get through our winters.

So I may be pushing it, but we really do have several months before frost that should allow the plants to rest up. Plus, a friend brought me three bunches of rhubarb stems so it's time for one last burst of rhubarb recipes.

At any rate, farmers markets still have some reasonable looking bunches if you still need to get your annual fix without fretting about root energy in your own patch.

Rhubarb pecan muffins

These were apparently available at a rhubarb festival in Aledo, Ill., visited by Midwest Living as published in June 2006. The recipe comes from Betty Erickson's grandmother.

Note: This recipe makes 16 muffins, so you'll either need two muffin pans or bake these in batches.

Ingredients

2 cups flour
¾ cup sugar, plus more for topping
1¾ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup pecans
¼ cup vegetable oil
¾ cup orange juice
1 beaten egg
2 teaspoons orange zest
1¼ cups finely chopped rhubarb

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line or grease 16 muffin tins.

Combine flour, ¾ cup sugar, baking powder, salt, soda and pecans in a large bowl.

In a medium bowl, combine oil, orange juice, egg and orange zest. Stir in rhubarb. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and mix in wet ingredients just enough to combine. Fill muffin tins about ⅔ of the way full; a ¼-cup measuring scoop is a good starting point. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 20 minutes.

Note: The original recipe called for a total of ¼ cup of sugar spread over the 16 muffins, but that seemed like a lot to me so I used 2 tablespoons instead and thought that was plenty. Some of the sugar will disappear into the dough while baking, so if you want a really pronounced sugar topping, you might want the full original amount. They seemed plenty sweet to me with half the specified amount.

Rating: Fine enough flavorwise. Good texture and releases well from the tins.

Honey-rhubarb muffins

From Midwest Living magazine, June 1995, a recipe from Bernie Brand of Shoreview, who was a honey producer/vendor at the Lowertown market in St. Paul.  Since I don't make it over to the St. Paul market, I googled to see if he was still there. He is not, but his obituary after his long life included the charming fact that his parents gave him honey bees as a high school graduation present and he sold honey at the market for some 70 years. 

Note: This recipe indicated it makes 21 muffins, filled ⅔ cup full, but I found it made 23, so results may vary.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 cup packed brown sugar
½ cup cooking oil
½ cup honey
½ teaspoon vanilla
2½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup sour milk (measure 1 tablespoon vinegar and add milk to make ¾ cup)
1½ cups chopped rhubarb
½ cup chopped nuts

Method
Preheat oven to 325. Line muffin tins.

Cut butter into ½ cup sugar to make topping and set aside.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Combine egg, brown sugar, oil, honey and vanilla in a mixing bowl. Add flour mixture alternatively with sour milk until just combined. Fold in nuts and rhubarb. 

Spoon into prepared muffin tins. Sprinkle with butter-sugar mixture. Bake 35 to 40 minutes until golden.

(The original recipe called for making a whipped honey butter of ½ cup softened butter, ¼ teaspoon lemon zest and ¼ honey. I didn't feel the muffins needed lily-gilding, but if you want to take it to the next level, it would be worth trying.)

Rating: Good flavor; that honey really comes through. Not so good at releasing cleanly from the liners. I had happened to notice that the photo accompanying the recipe in the magazine still had the liners on and just sort of mentally noted that that was unusual for magazine photography, but now suspect there was a practical reason. Spoons came into play, but it was worth getting the last bits out. I'd give this one the flavor edge because of the honey, but probably would make the other ones or else rhubarb sour cream muffins if I had company for the sake of ease of eating. 

Although, really, I'd just make one of the many rhubarb scone recipes I've tried because they're all better than the muffins. (I would not say this about blueberry muffins vs. scones, for some reason.) That's not to say the muffins are bad; they just aren't as killer as the scones, and those you can form and freeze ahead. So I'll have to keep trying rhubarb muffin recipes until I find one I label killer. I suspect Sarah Kieffer's rhubarb cream cheese swirl muffins might well qualify.

In the scone department, Rhubarb mango scones are nice.

Rhubarb vanilla scones are very nice indeed.

Rhubarb buttermilk scones are superb.

And I'm going to reserve 1½ cups (about 4 stalks) for rhubarb bread, because it's so darn tasty.

But rhubarb isn't just for baking:

The resident cat obliged with a photo bomb seen a bit blurry through the screen at our usual cabin. 

If you need an end-of-the day rhubarb option to use up some rhubarb, I recommend these two choices: 

Rhubarb gin and tonic fixings went to the cabin with us this year. It can easily work as a mocktail as well.

Rhubarb martinis are another excellent make-ahead choice and a great way to toast the short-lived rhubarb season.

Watermelon cornbread panzanella salad and two more cucumber summer salads

My lone cucumber plant is verging on yielding fodder for tiny pickles, but Minnesota growers are ahead of me so there are plenty at farmers markets. If you've got a bumper crop of salad cucumbers, here are three recipes to consider.

I love a good tomato and bread salad in the summer time. That and some fruit and you've got a fantastic lunch that uses up copious tomatoes and bread cubes. But it turns out you don't need to have either on hand to make this variation.

Cornbread panzanella with watermelon, cucumber and za’atar vinaigrette

Adapted from “It’s Always Freezer Season,” by Ashley Christensen and Kaitlyn Goalen. A salad recipe from a book about exploiting the wonders of a well-stocked freezer? Sure thing, when one of the salad ingredients is cornbread. This book isn't the standard cook-ahead freezer-food tome that's heavy on casseroles, although there are some. Think Boulevardier slushies, parcooked risotto and herbed bechamel — all stuff I would not have thought to freeze and now want to.

Note: That vinaigrette makes a generous quantity. You will have leftovers. This isn’t a bad thing; it works great as a recipe for a multi-bean salad, for instance. But if you don’t want to deal with/store leftovers, I suggest cutting the vinaigrette ingredients in half.

Ingredients

4 squares of cornbread (out of 9 squares in a standard cornbread recipe)
4 tablespoons butter, melted

⅔ cup olive oil
⅓ canola oil
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons za’atar
2 tablespoons dried oregano
1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 English cucumber, cut into quarters lengthwise and then into ½-inch pieces
2 cups cubed watermelon
¼ red onion, thinly sliced
4 ounces feta, crumbled
2 tablespoons fresh basil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon balm
1 tablespoon fresh dill

Method

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cut cornbread into 1-inch cubes. Toss with melted butter in a large bowl. Spread on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown and toasted, flipping once part way through. Set aside to cool.

Combine olive oil, canola oil, vinegar, mustard, za’atar, oregano and salt.  Set aside. (Can be made ahead and brought to room temperature before using; it’s a broken vinaigrette anyway.)

In a large serving bowl, combine cucumber, watermelon and onion. Drizzle with ¼ cup of the vinaigrette and season with salt and pepper. Fold in toasted cornbread cubes. Sprinkle with feta, basil, lemon balm and dill. Drizzle with 2 to 4 more tablespoons of dressing as desired.

Rating: Fabulous flavors together, and nice textures. And like tomato-bread salad, it feels like a lunch main course without adding protein. My only nit as this was originally written (aside for the mint for which I substituted lemon balm), was the copious quantities of za’atar called for. It wanted ½ cup, and not only did I only have half that amount on hand, I didn’t think it needed that much. I was not wrong. Even cutting that in half resulted in a sort of gritty roughage. The recipe as written above cuts it back even further reflecting my second try. There’s still plenty of flavor, but it now no longer seems like you’re consuming silage along with an otherwise delightful salad. I'd definitely put this one into the rotation.

Cucumber, radish, olive and dill salad

Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens magazine. This one is more of a side salad, but if you wanted to make it more of a main dish, some cooked chickpeas would seem to fit right in. 

Ingredients

½ cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 medium cucumbers, thinly sliced
5 small radishes, thinly sliced
½ cup red onion, thinly sliced
½ cup sliced pitted Kalamata olives

Method

Whisk together vinegar, dill, olive oil, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Add cucumbers, radishes, red onion and olives. Chill well before serving.

Rating: Fine. Fast. Crunchy.

Cucumber and carrot salad with tahini-ginger dressing

Adapted from Bon Appetit, Summer 2006. The original recipe calls for zucchini that's been salted and gently smashed, an approach that did not appeal to me. The theory is that it mimics the effect of a light cooking and gives it crannies for the zucchini to absorb the dressing. That theory sounds good, but all I could think of was that the nature of zucchini would not be improved by making it mushier, where as cucumber and carrot could deliver the crispness I was after.

Ingredients

3 small cucumbers, thinly sliced
2 medium carrots, thinly sliced
5 tablespoons tahini
¼ cup tamari or soy sauce
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sriracha
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1 garlic clove, finely grated
1 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
Toasted white sesame seeds and fresh cilantro leaves for garnish

Method

Place sliced cucumbers and carrots in a serving bowl.

In a small bowl, combine tahini, tamari, brown sugar, rice vinegar, sriracha, sesame oil, garlic and ginger. Mix well and toss as much as desired with the vegetables in the bowl. Garnish with sesame seeds and cilantro leaves. 

Rating: The tahini makes this dressing slightly sludgy and not the most attractive color, but it is flavorful and pairs well with the crisp veggies. Fast to fix with mostly shelf stable ingredients. (Obviously cucumbers don't count as shelf stable; those suckers turn to mush in the frig the minute you turn your back on them.)