July 2020 – I Thought There Would Be Free Food

Parsley, cilantro, green onions, and jalapenos on a wooden cutting board.

I am a city girl through and through, but during the summer the suburbs sing a one-note siren song that has nothing to do with escaping the teeming masses or the asphalt-aggravated heat and everything to do with grilling. Where I live, apartment buildings are not allowed to have grills, no matter how petite, and every summer that regulation fills me with wistfulness for my misspent Midwestern youth, when grilling was the default cooking method from March to October.

Since I’m unwilling, at least for now, to trade the privileges of city living for suburbia—or the country, despite my occasional Green Acres-style fantasies—summer turns into one long “how little can we turn on the oven” competition. (Answer: not quite as little as I would like.) The season is a steady parade of dishes that require minimal cooking, one that could quickly get tedious if not for condiments like this cilantro-jalapeno pesto. It takes no more than 10 minutes to put together, and can be put to a myriad of uses: scrambled into eggs, an accompaniment to broiled fish, or our favorite—slathered onto whole-wheat ciabatta and loaded up with roasted veggies. If you’re lucky enough to have a grill, this pesto is still your friend; it goes equally well on virtually anything that comes off of a grill, no suburbs required.

Cilantro-Jalapeno Pesto

Sources: Inspired by Dirty Gourmet

Makes ~2 cups

Total time: ~10 minutes

Ingredients:

1 large bunch flat-leaf parsley
1 large bunch cilantro
12 green onions
1–2 jalapenos, depending on how spicy you like it
1 cup unroasted, unsalted cashews
Olive oil
Salt

Directions:

Trim the bottom 1″ of stems off your parsley and cilantro and discard. Roughly chop the rest of the herbs, stems and all, and put them in the bowl of your food processor.
Trim the root ends off of the green onions, and the top 1″ or so off the top. Roughly chop the onions and add them to the food processor bowl.
Finally, chop the stem end off of the jalapeno(s). De-seed them, if you prefer less heat, or just roughly chop them and add them to the food processor.
Add the cashews and a drizzle of olive oil to the food processor, then process until you get a paste. Stop, scrape down the bowl, and add salt to taste. Process again, adding a bit more oil if needed to make the contents into a paste.
Use immediately or refrigerate until ready to eat.

A small box of strawberries sits on a wood plank deck. Strawberries are spilling out of the box, onto the deck and a piece of white cloth in the upper-left corner of the photo.

A few weeks ago, my Chief Recipe Taster and I decamped from our small city flat to visit my family in the house and the state where I grew up. Going “home” is always mostly wonderful and a little bit difficult. Wonderful: spending time with my family and enjoying the sublime beauty that is Michigan in the summer. Difficult: seeing the city and state I grew up in seem to get a bit poorer every time I visit; wrestling with the same tangle of love for the place/deep desire to GTFO and see something new that I’ve wrestled with since childhood.

“Home” might be emotionally complicated, but it’s worth it, food-wise. In many ways, Michigan is still an agricultural state, and you see that most in the summer when the farm stands are full of crisp-tender, pencil-thin asparagus, spring onions, and lettuces. And the strawberries! We happily picked and ate them by the handful, but I wanted something more, something that took a few of the ingredients I grew up with and turned them into something more than the sum of their parts.

That’s where this cake was born, a moistly decadent, almond paste-enriched batter that wraps around berries made even more flavorful by a brief stint in the oven. If that description doesn’t tantalize you, perhaps the fact that this cake requires almost no effort will—the batter is made entirely in the food processor. It’s quintessential summer effortlessness, but good enough to merit turning on your oven. Emotions notwithstanding, what could be simpler?

A slice of cake has been cut and is being lifted from golden brown cake, studded with ruby-red strawberries and slivered almonds.

Strawberry-Almond Cake

Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food

Makes one 8-inch round cake, serving ~8 people

Active time: ~20 minutes; total time: ~50 minutes

1/2 cup sugar
4 ounces almond paste
1 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 cup strawberries, washed, hulled, and halved or quartered, if very large
Slivered almonds, to garnish

Directions:

Position a rack in the middle of your oven, then preheat it to 375°F. While you’re at it, butter and flour—or otherwise grease—an 8-inch cake plate or springform pan. This is also an excellent time to do a little mise-en-place, so get out and measure all of your other ingredients.
Cube the almond paste and add it, along with the sugar, to the bowl of a food processor. Process the paste and sugar until the paste is finely ground.
Add the dry ingredients—flour, baking powder, and salt—to the food processor and pulse to combine.
Add the wet ingredients—milk, oil, vanilla extract, and egg—and pulse until well combined. If the batter is very thick, you can add a little extra milk, one tablespoon at a time, until the batter is just thin enough to spread easily.
Scrape the batter into the prepared cake plate. Dot with strawberries and then scatter on the almonds.
Slide the cake into the oven and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the top of the cake is lightly browned and a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out with just a few crumbs clinging to it. Serve plain, or gild the lily with a dollop of fresh whipped cream or scoop of vanilla ice cream.