Receta Pizza Pesto Rosso, picking beans
This is my favorite time of year…. The days are still warm but the nights are pleasantly cool.
Cool enough to use the oven.
Cool enough to make mini pizzas.
Little pizzas, made with prepared puff pastry, make an easy first course.
These were smothered in summer favorites.
Mon mari insisted I do them again the next night….
Pizza Pesto Rosso
Total time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
- puff pastry, 1/2 sheet
- 8 – 12 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
- 2oz (60gr) fresh mozzarella, torn into chunks
- 4 tbs pesto rosso or regular pesto
- lots of fresh basil, shredded
- 2 tsp olive oil
Instructions:
Thaw the puff pastry, if needed, and cut 2 equal squares or circles.
Lay pastry on baking sheet, either nonstick or lightly oiled.
With a knife lightly score a line around the edge of each pastry, about 1/3″ (.75 cm) from the edge. Do not cut through the pastry! (A butter knife works best.)
Divide the pesto rosso and spread within the scored lines.
Arrange the tomato halves, cut side up on the pesto rosso.
Top with the cheese.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 400F (200C) for 8 – 12 minutes, until sides of pastry have puffed around middle and are golden brown.
Remove, top with lost of basil and serve.
Picking beans is a lot like riding a bike – ample opportunity for the mind to wander.
Today my mind wandered back to my childhood.
I grew up in a very small town.
For those of you who did not grow up in a very small town, let me explain that in a small town everyone knows everything about everybody…. Sometimes even things that the person herself doesn’t know.
I had the paper route from the time I was 10 until I was about 15.
Note I said the paper route – not a paper route. There was only one.
I delivered papers to 75% of the people.
They knew me – or at least they thought they did.
They knew I hated canned pineapple but loved chocolate.
Every year for Christmas someone would give me a box of chocolate covered pineapple chunks (like chocolate covered cherries only awful).
They knew I loved big dogs.
They knew I loved green beans.
One year, a friend of my mother’s said that if I picked her beans while she was gone for a few days I could have them all. My mother, of course, would cook them for me.
I jumped at the chance.
I went to pick the beans..
I’d picked one or two when I noticed a spider – common enough in gardens, but, still, a spider.
I moved on to another plant.
There was another spider.
I moved on.
I ended getting a reasonable amount of beans.
I was happy.
I took them home to my mother…. There was more than enough for the family.
She was happy.
Because of all the spiders I didn’t go back.
My mother’s friend returned home a week later.
She was not happy.
It seems that I had picked about 10% of the beans, allowing all the rest, 90%, go to seed.
When beans go to seed the plant decides it’s work is done.
Bean production came to a screeching halt.
I explained about the spiders….. Perfectly logical excuse in my young opinion.
She didn’t understand.
They were just spiders and they were in the garden where they were supposed be and always were.
Everyone in town knew about what I had done, or, rather, not done within a few hours.
They were universal in their lack of understanding.
They knew and accepted that I loathed (canned) pineapple and loved chocolate but….
Fear of spiders?
That episode all came back to me today as I was picking beans….
And using a stick to knock the webs down and shoo the spiders out of my way so I could get all the beans.
If you want nutrition information, try this site: Calorie Count
Last Updated on August 21, 2013