.: evil jungle prince :.

Hi, everyone! Some bolshoy appy-polly-loggies to you for the delay in posting these days, but with temperatures in the 110-120F range daily, even a heat-lover like me has had his energy zapped. But fret not, I'm still here and ready to do more tinkering the chemistry lab which is my kitchen.

Last night's dinner was an experimental use of available ingredients, which to my delight combined to form a super-yummy meal. With some leftover pumpkin seeds, fresh limes, a rather large Thai basil plant in my garden, garlic, and some good Greek olive oil, I came up with a Thai basil and roasted pumpkin seed pesto sauce which I used to season a freshly cooked batch of linguini noodles. This experiment far exceeded my expectations and will surely be prepared again in this household. So in the name of future replication, here's the recipe I used...

1. First I dry-roasted 3-4 tablespoons of pumpkin seeds in a pan until they became fragrant and began to pop. These were then placed into the food processor. Note: use the green pumpkin seeds known as pepitas, not the white ones.

2. To the food processor, I also added the following: 2-3 cloves fresh garlic, 1 tsp fresh lime juice, 1 cup fresh Thai basil leaves, 1 tsp honey, 2 small tsp salt, and about 8-10 heaping tsp of olive oil. (As always, I used Greek olive oil which is the only good olive oil in this world.) This mixture was pulsed until the mixture was semi-liquid but still a little coarse. (See photo above.)

3. Finally, I boiled the linguini until it was al dente, rinsed it with cold water. I then placed the pot on a low flame and combined the pesto with the linguini until mixed and slightly heated.

I served my Thai basil and pumpkin seed pesto linguini with grilled zucchini slices, which were pan fried on a grill pan with a very small amount of oil and salt only. Before serving, I also squeezed a little fresh lime juice on the slices as well as the pasta. I served the dish in a naengmyun bowl and cut the zucchini into slices, in the style of a Korean dish. I added the fresh tomato and basil for a splash of color.