Larry harvested basil and peppers from our garden today. I couldn’t help but use both – pesto made from just-picked basil can’t be beat. Larry is doing a great job cultivating the basil and it’s starting to take over the barrel it’s planted in. Everything was very good, even the squash. I usually don’t like squash if it’s cooked too much, so I sautéed it at very high heat.
– We ate these peppers at a tapas bar in Barcelona, Spain a few years ago. We were addicted, and were disappointed to find out that the peppers were only grown in the Galacia region of Spain. We were thrilled when we found a local farmer selling the peppers – Pimientos de Padron – at our farmer’s market. I believe Happy Quail Farms is still one of the few (if not the only) farmers growing these peppers. Picasso’s in San Jose buys the peppers from Happy Quail Farms as well and will serve them if you ask (in season). Yum! They are also available at Tienda.com. Lucky us, we found out that the plants were being sold at the Santa Clara County Master Gardner’s Tomato and Pepper sale this spring. We are now the proud owners of three thriving Pimientos de Padron plants. Tonight we picked our first crop – only eight or so. I fried them in hot olive oil and sprinkled them with kosher salt. So good! Just like in Spain. We got a few spicy ones too – usually about a quarter of them are spicy.
– I’m pretty picky about how I like my salmon. Grilled with our soy marinade, or pan-fried or broiled. I like it to have that caramelized crust on it. I liked this, though. The pesto was just so good. I was out of bread for the bread crumbs, so I used an english muffin instead. It came together pretty quickly.
– Berries are all over the farmer’s market right now. The raspberries I got were okay, but the blackberries and strawberries are fantastic. I had leftover blueberries from Costco (big and juicy), so I made these mixed berries for dessert instead of a blueberry pie like I had planned. This was a nice, refreshing dessert.

• Pimientos de Padron
• Pesto-Crusted Salmon (Fine Cooking #33, July 1999, p. 82)
• Summer Squash with Garlic and Herbs (Chez Panisse Vegetables, Alice Waters, p. 311)
• Haricots Verts with Lemon Brown Butter (Gourmet, November 2002)
• Mixed Berries with Vanilla Bean Syrup (Fine Cooking #65, July 2004, p. 52)

Wine: David Bruce 2001 Windsor Gardens Pinot Noir (Russian River Valley, California). When we first opened this, we weren’t sure about it. It was kind of closed and didn’t knock our socks off. However, it opened up nicely and was good with the salmon. Well-balanced.