Bad Home Cooking

Mommy's little helper: Basil Daiquiris

Not a day after I'd made a complete mess of my pesto attempt, I found this recipe and forwarded it onto my momterage. Kelli immediately emailed me back with the promise of concocting this for the next concert in the park. "I have another basket-full of basil," she wrote. "We'll have this ready for Wednesday."

In the charming Southern Californian town where I live, the municipal band has free concerts in the park every Wednesday night. Everybody goes. And I mean everybody. And their kids. It's a community love fest, with little tots running free, grade-school kids chasing each other over the green, middle school kids huddled in tight circles checking each other out, high school kids nervously flirting...and us grown ups dining al fresco and surreptitiously drinking behind the family picnic baskets. Alcohol is not allowed in the public park, but everybody drinks anyway. We're just better at hiding it than the teens.

These basil daiquiris weren't the clear green I'd hoped they'd be, but that's because Kelli used purple and green basil, which is an admirable use of resources. Nor did we have clever cocktail glasses or twists of lime to tart them up. Kelli and Christy smuggled them over in two soup containers hidden in a little red Radio Flyer wagon. And we drank them out of plain plastic cups. When officious sorts came around, we simply hid the cups underneath the wagon. Such is the subversiveness of moms.

But no matter. Even out of a brown paper bag, basil daiquiris are delicious. Sweet, refreshing, easy on the tastebuds...and delivering an easy, delightful rum buzz that sneaks up on you before you know it. A huge hit, soon consumed. Everybody remarked on the sweet, unusual taste...and came back for more. A giant hat's off to Jessie Bluejay, the San Francisco writer who sent her url about this cocktail to Slashfood, where I picked it up. 

Here's her recipe:

A handful of basil (20-30 leaves or so)
juice from two limes
6 Tablespoons of sugar syrup (see below for instructions)
Copious amounts of white rum (at least a cup)
Splash of water

Make your own syrup. It's a 1:1 ratio of sugar to water. Boil your water, add sugar, stir, and when the sugar dissolves, voila! syrup. Put the basil leaves and the lime juice in a shaker and muddle it up (note: I let Kelli the expert do all of this, so I can't really say what muddle means. Use your imagination.) Add the sugar syrup, the rum, the water, and a handful of ice. Shake it like the 5.4 quake here on Tuesday and pour it over ice. Consume.

Kelli and I are going to perfect this cocktail on Friday. Make it green. Use proper cocktail stems. And twists of lime. Everyone's invited. Come on down!

Pesto...Chango!

I didn't even know what pesto was until I was at least 25. I doubt my mother knows what pesto is to this day. That's the kind of kitchen I was brought up in: processed food from start to finish.

But I am trying to make up for lost time. Eventually I will learn how to dice an onion neatly. One day I will know how to make an aioli sauce that won't burn through people's stomachs. And some day soon I will figure out how to make my own pesto.

But probably not today.

Last week my cooking coach, Kelli, arrived at my door with her two children and a basket of freshly-picked basil from her garden. "I'm just showing up at people's houses asking if they can use any of this," she grinned, sounding like the green fairy. She shoved three great handfuls of green and purple basil at me. "Here," she said. "Make some fresh pesto."

My kitchen filled with earthy pungeance. "Pesto. So you grind this us with pine nuts and some kind of cheese and olive oil, right?" The best cooks I knew made their own pesto. It was a sign of savvy. A proof of skill. I had never even considered attempting it myself.

"Actually I make it without cheese or pine nuts, and it comes out just as good," she said. "Just make a paste out of six garlic cloves, add a little oil, then pack your food processor tight with the basil and chop it up."

"It's that easy?"

"It's that easy."

I wasted no time. I fished out the blender I hoped would substitute for a food processor and washed and chopped the basil as best I could. I peeled six cloves of garlic and threw them in with a dollop of olive oil. By happy coincidence they blended into a paste. Feeling optimistic, I then packed the rest of the basil leaves into the blender.

Nothing. What was ground and pasty on the bottom stayed on the bottom. What was leafy and grean (or purple) stayed on top, un-pureed. Typical. I couldn't bear to throw away all that fresh basil. Clearly I would need a plan B.

I had just thrown out my old mini food processor a few days before, in a fit of home organization, because it was found to have been cracked. Again, typical.

So I scraped everything out into a big Tupperware container and put it in the fridge, resolved to just buy myself another mini food processor later that day. Two days later, my kids fobbed off on Audge for three hours, I got my chance and ran to Target, only to find they didn't have the brand I wanted.

By the time I came home with the appropriate mini processor, the garlic paste had congealed around the leaves, so I tried tossing the whole mess together, like a salad, to spread it about. Maybe I should add more garlic, I wondered? But then the pesto might be too garlicky, and you know how squeamish I am about seasonings

Instead I stuffed the processor full of leaves, locked the lid and hoped for the best. I pressed the button and poured a little olive oil into the top because I'd seen people do this before. Presto! Chango!

Grainy green glop. And a kitchen that looked as if a bush had exploded within.

Dolloped over pasta for dinner later, it didn't taste like much, other than green. The girl didn't care for it. The boy wouldn't touch it. Again, I was left to consume my dish on principal.

OK. So pesto isn't that easy. There's a reason it's a showcase for skills. When I get those skills, I'll let you know. Meanwhile, I'm prepared to try again and repeat as necessary until I get it right. I think this will be my next cooking class. Kelli? Got any more basil?

How not to cut a birthday cake

There they sat, three kitchen muses, lounging on my couch and watching me with mirth in their eyes.

I glowered back at them. "Come on," I said. "You can't be serious. Of everyone in this room, and I'm counting the children, I am the least capable of cutting this birthday cake."

"But you're the birthday mom," said Audge. "You have to cut the cake. It's the law."

I looked around the room. "Lynne? Surely you'd like to cut the cake for me. Consider it a teachable moment."

Lynne shook her head slowly and smiled. "Nope."

"Joey?"

"I really think you should do it."

"Luke?!" I stared at the father of my children, who stood in the back, enjoying this mightily. "Back me up here, for God's sake..."

"Sorry. But I'll take pictures.."

So in the end, dear readers, thus abandoned by those who know better, there was nothing for me to do but dive in and hope for the best.

The ice-cream cake was a tidy little strawberry number from Baskin-Robbins (you think I'd make a cake for my kid's eighth birthday? I ain't Pru, you know..). I felt I was ahead of the game by remembering to take it out of the freezer 15 minutes before cutting it, and by having in my possession a cake-cutter once owned by my step-mother Barbara, who could cut a cake to make Martha jealous.

And I assumed that at least one of my skilled Mom-posse would step up to the plate and do the dirty work for me.

I was left to my own devices. Probably for the best there are no photos of the hack-job remains of the cake

At least kids don't care what form their cake comes in, as long as all the bits are there. Plus a good amount of frosting. And I don't think Barbara would mind too much that I bent her cake-cutter beyond repair making the first cut. She and Julia Childs are having a great laugh at my expense, I can feel it.