Chicagoist has been thinking a lot lately about our pantry and what makes it a good one. Often we go into it and stare at its shelves in awe of all the possible things we could make without having to leave our house for ingredients. For us there are a number of things we consider absolute necessities; among them are: cans of black olives (midnight snack or easy finger food), canned tomatoes (tomato sauce at a moment's notice), flour (you never know when you'll want to make a cake, cookies, gravy, bread or, well, so many other things), sugar, salt, chunk light tuna in water, canned black beans, pasta. Oh my, we could go on and on ... but we won't, though we would love to hear what you consider essential in your own cabinets. This past week we didn't quite get to the grocery store and had to dip into the pantry's stock numerous times. One thing we made, and quite enjoyed, involved another can't-do-without item: potatoes. The versatile tuber is a must for anyone who enjoys cooking. It especially comes in handy when you're craving a carbohydrate fix. You can mash 'em, fry 'em, bake 'em or boil 'em and they won't let you down. This time around we decided that we wanted to turn our small Yukon and red potatoes into hash browns. And that's exactly what we did. This recipe is perfect for when you don't have a lot of time to cook or shop, and it's extremely simple.

• We intended to write a post this week on making our own tomato sauce as something to do with all the tomatoes in our garden, but we never got around to it. As you can see, it's pretty easy to do, and if you click here you'll see the recipe we used. We ran the sauce through a food mill to give it a coarse texture and remove excess water with the intent of using it for pizza. 'Course, when we bake (or grill) one, we'll let you know.


• Thanks to Ann Flaharty (who gave us one of the June Reader's Choice "BotW" selections) for hipping us to this event to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation next Thursday. The CFF will be making their "Festive-Ale: A Celebration of Beer" an annual event. Although the list of beers is fairly cookie cutter, the proceeds are going toward a worthy cause.


• Odyssey and Mystic Blue Cruise Lines are offering a full slate of brunch, lunch, dinner, and moonlight cruises on Lake Michigan this weekend. The cruises leave from Navy Pier; check out the times and prices here. For more information, call Odyssey at 888-957-2322 and Mystic Blue at 877-299-7854.


• Violet Hour jefe Toby Maloney is getting reams of press these days, but he's neither the first nor last person in town to infuse spirits, rectify his own cordials and bitters, and create well-thought out, impeccably crafted cocktails. Adam Seger of Nacional 27 and Osteria via Stato fame sent us this recipe for baconcello, just in time for the harvest season. Bacon and vodka: enough said.

The plants we've been watching with worry in our garden have been our pepper plants. We got a late start to this whole project (most everything was planted around Memorial Day) and our natural inclination leans toward impatience, which isn't the temperament to have when were waiting for a garden to grow.
That impatience morphed to outright frustration as we watched the tomatoes explode with rich, vibrant fruit.

A month ago, when we noticed the beginnings of peppers beginning to sprout from the plants, we celebrated with tempered glee. Once they began to sprout our major concern was the flies. Liberal spraying of the plants with a mixture of cayenne pepper and warm water alleviates this somewhat. Tiki torches do a better job, but we can't burn those 24/7.

Anyway, take a look at some of the peppers on the vine. They've grown to bear some hardy fruit. The two we did pick had a sweetness to them that we absolutely enjoyed. We used one for some grilled vegetables; the other we diced and made a mint salsa with the fresh mint we planted in early July. That mint plant was another welcome surprise. We didn't think it would produce more leaves because we bought it so late in the season. But it's a perennial that responds best to moist climates. If anything, the August rains have certainly provided that.

A few weeks back Chicagoist shared our favorite recipe/technique for roasting a chicken. Since that time we have, yet again, impressed our dining guests with its result. We had assumed we would be feeding four people, but we ended up feeding just two (and ourselves). This smaller number led to a fair amount of leftover meat for us to deal with in the following days. We had ourselves a chicken sandwich, and we considered any number of ways to transmogrify our chicken into a new exciting meal, but in the end, we realized that there is no shame in making a good chicken soup with leftover chicken. It does make a fair amount of sense; you can make a wonderful stock from the carcass, and you'll be amazed by how much meat is on a chicken when you actually set your mind to picking it all off. We made this over the last few rainy days, and it was, at that time, quite a comfort. Of course, today seems to be drying out and heating up ... but keep this recipe in mind for future chicken endeavors.

While we've been bragging about the size of our tomatoes and the bountiful yield of our basil plant, we've let the necessary tasks of pruning and weeding our garden go untended. Just take a look at the creeper vines and other weeds surrounding our pepper plants.

We knew when we decided to plant a garden in our backyard that it would take more than some water and sun to get some yield from our plants and herbs. We just don't like weeding, and resorted to procrastination when our thoughts turned to the garden. Enjoying our morning coffee in the backyard last weekend, however, we became ashamed at how far we let our garden grow (out). Much like the haircuts we schedule every three months, the garden was due.

So we sucked it up, reached for the pruning shears and garden weasel, and set to work. Four-and-a-half hours later, with the shuffle play on our iPod alternating between Motörhead, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Ely Guerra, Chet Baker and some classic Stax, we had our garden looking good just before the rains hit. Unfortunately, in our zeal to remove all the weeds, our thyme plant became a casualty, while the oregano we planted was long overrun by creeper vines. Also, pruning and trussing all the tomato vines literally gave us green thumbs that required some effort to remove. Still, a small consolation was had as we checked out the quickly blossoming pepper plants (you'll see those on Thursday). We also harvested a large amount of plum tomatoes, some of which we'll stew, the rest we'll stuff with crab salad.

With all of the rain we’ve had recently, Chicagoist has been forced to abandon our nightly summer ritual of grilling for indoor cooking. While we don’t mind cooking indoors, it tends to heat up the whole Chicagoist pad no matter how high we turn up the air conditioning.
Thankfully, the rain has also helped our basil plant grow beyond our wildest expectations—and the best thing we can think of to do with a whole load of basil is to make pesto. We’re big fans of pesto in the summer because we usually have most of the ingredients in the house and it requires no heat to create it.

Pesto is easy to make, providing you have a food processor or blender. Without one of those, you’re sunk. You’ll also need enough fresh basil to fill a little over two cups of it when chopped. Take the larger leaves off the top of the plant and be prepared to take a lot of them. Additionally you’ll need a cup of extra virgin olive oil, lots of garlic, Parmesan cheese and pine nuts—however, walnuts will work, too. In short, mix it all together in the processor and you’re set.

Of course, boiling the fettuccini to go with it creates a bit of heat, but our air conditioner can still handle it. According to our friend’s Italian grandmother, it’s best to use dry pasta instead of the fresh stuff because it’ll hold the flavor better.

But what happens when we have a craving for homemade pesto around the first snowfall? Chicagoist’s basil plant is sure to be filled with icicles by then. This is one time when you’ll want to follow your mother’s advice and plan ahead. Pull one of those empty ice cube trays out of the freezer (how come no one ever refills them?) and fill it with pesto. All winter long, the fresh taste will remain frozen in convenient pesto cubes and ready for the next batch of fettuccini.

Photo by author.

When we wrote about the Gardenist project last week, we intimated that our basil "threatened to overrun all the other plants." It wasn't until we were in the midst of pruning the tomato plants yesterday that we realized just how much of an understatement that actually was.

Aside from our normal weeding and the occasional picking of cilantro, we've left most of the herbs alone. But we've got chicken breasts thawing out in the fridge, and we thought that what they really could use is a lemon basil marinade, served with grilled vegetables. Once we were done with the tomato plants we got down to the business of clipping the basil down to size.

As you can see from the picture, we brought in a sizable yield of the good stuff. Separating the leaves from the stems filled our kitchen with a sweet aroma that's still lingering and conjured dormant memories of our misspent youth. As much basil as we clipped from the garden, the plants are still huge. However, now that we've trimmed it somewhat, the rosemary, cilantro and dill weed we planted behind the basil have more sunlight in which to bathe. We've already used the cilantro for guacamole and a mango salsa, but the rosemary is what we're really looking forward to using. We have something special planned for that herb in a couple weeks with some cedar plank salmon. We'll be serving that up with homemade dill aioli.

As always, you can check out both our personal and the Chicagoist Photos Flickr streams for new photos from our garden project.

In the past two months Chicagoist has roasted three chickens. For us that's a record. We have managed to combine all our past roast chicken experiences with a bit of research and now, we believe, we have perfected our own favorite recipe and method for an absolutely succulent main course. In the past Chicagoist has cooked our chickens in the same way we cook our Thanksgiving turkeys: breast side up with constant basting and liberal amounts of cheese cloth draped over the white meat. Our turkeys have always turned out fine and, for that matter, so have our chickens. That being said, we'll admit that our white meat has always been a bit dryer than we would truly desire. Here comes the research. We consulted our favorite cookbook as well as The Joy of Cooking and spent a bit more time reading the small print. All meats have a minimum or optimal temperature at which they are cooked/all the possible bacteria is killed off. For a roasted chicken you have two temperatures to consider. In the case of white meat the temperature is 160 degrees while the dark meat has to get up to 170 degrees (and it doesn't hurt to let it get even a little above that). These differing temperatures leads one to a dilemma if they cook their chicken breast side up for the entire time … mainly that the you will be overcooking the white meat while waiting for the dark meat to come up to speed. As we mentioned earlier one way to combat this is to drape cheese cloth (or aluminum foil) over the breast meat in an attempt to slow down its cooking and preserve its moistness. But, inevitably, the breast meat suffers. So, in our last three preparations we have started to rotate the chicken as it cooks. Though a bit awkward and not without the risk of light finger-singeing, this new (to us anyway) method provides the entirely moist and cooked bird. Our addition of cilantro butter makes this a dish that can do no wrong.