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Lemon Balm Pesto Recipe
In the summer, I participate in a CSA share, or Community Supported Agriculture. This means that I pay a local farm – in my case Heaven’s Harvest Farm in New Braintree, MA – a set amount for the season, and each week I receive several pounds of whatever vegetables and fruit the farm is producing that week. My favorite part of a CSA share is that I get to learn about – and learn how to cook with – new and interesting veggies and herbs that I never would have picked up at the grocery store. I had never heard of Lemon Balm before it arrived unannounced in my CSA share last year. This herb imparts a delicious lemon flavor into your cooking and makes an especially summery pesto sauce! You can find it at the grocery store, but it abounds in New England and will be at many of your local farmer’s markets, too. Here’s my own recipe for Lemon Balm Pesto. Enjoy!
Start with fresh lemon balm. This is the plant we have growing in a pot on our back porch, but you can also find it in the grocery store.
Ingredients:
2 cups cooked pasta
1/2 large onion, sliced
1 cup of fresh lemon balm, rinsed and dried
1 small garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
2 T Parmesan Cheese
1/4 cup raisins
Directions:
First cook your pasta (you should know how to do that.) Meanwhile, heat a frying pan over low heat and add the onions. Stir often (you don’t want them to burn!) until they have a nice caramel color and taste slightly sweet (about 15-20 minutes for our purposes – longer if you want them truly caramelized). Drain and cool the pasta. Remove the onions from the heat.
While the pasta and onions are cooling, make your pesto. In a food processor or blender, combine the garlic, olive oil, lemon balm and cheese until well blended. Add 1/4 cup of the carmelized onions and blend well. In a large bowl, combine the cooked pasta with your prepared lemon balm pesto. Mix in the remaining caramelized onions and the raisins. Chill the pasta before serving and serve with some crusty bread, a glass of white wine, and follow it up with raspberry sorbet. The perfect summer meal!
Sushi for Lunch!
Today my friend Laura, who is completing her certificate at a local culinary school, came over to make me lunch and let me take some pictures. She made delicious and colorful Tempeh Sushi with Spicy Edamame on the side.
Sushi ingredients: avocado, green onion sesame seeds
Boston food photography – documenting how food is made
Edamame photographed for fun in Boston
Boston food photographer – sushi
Visual Impact Photo
In addition to doing a LOT more food photography in the coming months (thanks to a new regular gig with Bostonchefs.com) I am also going to be doing much more photography for non-profit organizations. Another photographer and I have teamed up to create “Visual Impact Photography” which is a project of ours to help non-profit groups build portfolios of excellent, high quality images they can use in all of their communications materials. My partner on this is Ilene Perlman, a veteran photojournalist and fellow JP resident. She has worked with such illustrious organizations as Habitat for Humanity and Save the Children. I, on the other hand, had an illustrious career behind-the-scenes at non-profit groups for many years. We think this combination, together with my photography experience and her network of activists and friends in JP, gives us a great advantage. Here are some images from my portfolio of work for non-profit organizations.
Some of the groups I have shot for in the past include The Kavod House, the Haley House Bakery and Cafe, the Jewish Labor Committee, Red Fire Farm and others. And there’s a long list of groups we hope to work for soon. Here’s to making sales calls!
Also posted in Boston, Non-Profit Groups
Tagged non-profit groups, photography business
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The Brandywine River Museum
Today we visited the Brandywine River Museum in Chads Ford, PA. In addition to looking at beautiful paintings, marveling at model train sets and being fascinated with spooky doll collections, I noticed some beautiful light coming through the large windows. Made for some fun pictures of reflections and shadows, two of the easiest and most entertaining things I like to photograph.
Slideshow on Grist.com
My project chronicling the reconstruction of the JP Greenhouse, which will ultimately be one of the most energy efficient homes in Massachusetts, has continued through the fall. I haven’t been there as much as I would have liked, thanks to other commitments, bad weather and other factors, but every time I go I am amazed by the beauty of the place, the speed of the progress and the peaceful concentration with which the carpenters go about their work.
A set of my images have gone on display at Grist.com, an online environmental magazine that has been following the JP Greenhouse Project as well. Click here to see the slideshow.
To construct this slideshow I narrowed my images down from about 75 to about 20. It wasn’t an easy process and the editing continues. Feedback is welcome!
