Zucchini stew with pesto – I am waiting for you, basil, again…

(It is actually főzelék in Hungarian: it is a special category in Hungarian cuisine, thicker than a soup, and thinner than a stew.)

Some time ago I prepared an Italian zucchini soup with pesto from a popular magazine. I also took a photo of the soup – as an enthusiastic food photographer would normally do – and I uploaded the photo to my Facebook page and I got loads of comments instantly – unfortunately, not about my photo, but comments praising the soup! Well! That recipe was not my creation; I didn’t even post it on my blog, so I had to send the recipe to everybody in private e-mails.

Since autumn has started to overtake my basils on the balcony, I wanted to prepare something for my blog using them. But now I will show every freak of magazines and pesto that we will need no soup or pasta, I will use all my basil notwithstanding. And I managed! And now this is my own recipe!

Of course now I am waiting for the comments, because this recipe has surely appeared somewhere else, while I believe that it was my own idea. (Of course I don’t believe it, because it is now quite impossible to come up with something completely new, only something which is horrible: for example pesto with coke – it is surely something that has never been published!)

And I would be very grateful if you wrote to me if it is still true that you cannot taste anything for three days after eating Chinese pine nuts, because I only dare to buy the extremely expensive Portuguese pine nuts!

Zucchini stew with pesto

- 1000 g zucchini, sliced with a mandoline slicer

- salt

- 2 tbsp. olive oil

- 1 onion, chopped finely

- 50 ml whipping cream

 

For the pesto:

- 40 g fresh basil

- 100 ml olive oil

- 2 cloves of garlic, mashed

- 20 g pine nuts, toasted

- 20 gr parmesan, freshly grated

- salt and freshly ground pepper

For the top:

- 10 g pine nuts, toasted

For the parmesan chips:

- 50 g parmesan, freshly grated

Preparation:

1. For the parmesan chips preheat the oven to 190°C. Grease a large baking sheet with butter and sprinkle it with flour. Put a round cookie cutter on it; sprinkle some parmesan in the cutter sot that it would cover the baking sheet in the cutter in an even layer. Repeat this until the parmesan runs out. Bake the chips for some minutes until they turn golden brown and crunchy.

2. Blend the ingredients of the pesto in a food processor.

3. Sprinkle the salt on the zucchini and wait for 10 minutes to draw out the excess water.

4. Fry the onion on the olive oil, add the zucchini and steam it until it remains crunchy only in the middle, but it turns otherwise soft.

5. Add the whipping cream to the pesto and mix it to the steamed zucchini. Sprinkle with pine nuts on the top.

We had buckwheat bread with it.

 

Chicken with grapes, honey and garlic – The recurrent autumn lunch

It is one of our favourite dishes! We don’t have many recurrent dishes in our menu, but this one always returns to the top of the wish list when autumn arrives. Regardless of the white wine, the kids also eat it usually, but we can also choose meat stock instead of the wine for choosier kids.

Chicken with grapes, honey and garlic

Ingredients:

- 1 whole chicken, with skin (preferably home-grown), cut into 4-6 pieces

- salt and freshly ground pepper

- 1 tbsp. oil

- 2 tbsp. butter

- 1 bunch of spring onion, sliced

- 250 ml whipping cream

- 150 ml dry white wine

- 1 tsp. mustard

- 2 cloves garlic, mashed

- 1.5 tbsp. honey

- 1 generous tbsp. tarragon, smashed

- 1 tbsp. corn-starch

- 300 g grapes, cut into halves and seeds removed

Preparation:

1. In the hot oil fry both sides of the chicken breasts for 2 minutes per side (start with the side with the skin on), then add the butter, cover the pan, and braise them on medium heat for 8-12 minutes depending on their size. Remove them from the pan.

2. On the remaining fat fry the onions.

3. Whisk together the whipping cream, wine, mustard, garlic, honey, tarragon and corn-starch, and cook together with the onion slices on moderate heat until it becomes thick. In the end add the grapes, as well.

Mashed potatoes, particularly baked mashed potatoes are a good match for this dish.