Caprese Salad

I'm on a basil kick lately. One afternoon, Cancy went to Austin Homebrew and ended up coming back with a mozzarella cheese kit too. So, we made fresh mozzarella and had an easy dinner. We grilled some hot italian chicken sausages and made a great salad to go with it.

Caprese Salad

2 tomatoes per person, sliced
fresh mozzarella, cut into bite sized pieces
basil, chiffonade into strips
Balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper

Layer the tomato, mozzarella, and basil around the plate
Sprinkle with salt & pepper
Drizzle with a bit of Balsamic vinegar

Enjoy!

Bacon Wrapped Pesto Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

So, you've got a thing for pesto but you're not into the whole pasta thing... use pesto with meat. It's great with chicken, but tonight, we had a pork tenderloin that we decided to use instead.

Bacon Wrapped Pesto Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

1 small/medium pork tenderloin
6 slices of bacon ( nitrate free is best if you can find it )
pesto ( see the recipe here )

Set oven @ 400.
Butterfly the tenderloin. ( Basically, slice it almost in half, but leaving enough so that you can lay it open )
Pound the tenderloin until about 1/2" thin.
Lay the bacon strips out and set the butterflied tenderloin on top.
Spread a generous amount of pesto over the tenderloin and then roll everything together.
* The bacon should keep it all together, but you can also use cooking twine or skewers if you need to

Bake at 400 for 30/35 minutes.

This goes great with roast asparagus.

Basil Pesto

So far, my favorite thing about our garden is all of the basil. Our basil plants are both out of control and harvesting the basil only makes it come back fuller. Sooo.... One of the easiest things you can do with basil is make pesto. This is sort of a non-recipe but will give you some super tasty pesto.

Basil Pesto


About 2 Cups of basil leaves plucked from the stem
about 3/4 Cup of shredded Parmesan Cheese
about 1/4 Cup of raw pine nuts
3 or 4 cloves of garlic
salt & pepper to taste
Olive Oil

Add all but the olive oil into a food processor and pulse until blended. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil until you have the consistency you want. About 3/4 to 1 Cup should do it.