From Farm to Pesto

Hello, VOH Buddies!

We’re excited to share a delicious new culinary adventure from View of Heaven! We recently had the opportunity to partner with an amazing author and food writer whose cookbooks have inspired our family to step into the kitchen and try something new. My family purchased The Pesto Cookbook by Olwen Woodier, a local and talented author and food writer with more than 25 years of experience. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Gourmet, Woman’s Day, and Family Circle. She also teaches cooking classes at her farm in Leesburg, Virginia. If you’re looking for fresh inspiration in the kitchen, we hope you’ll give one of Olwen’s cookbooks a try. Her recipes are exquisite, creative, and filled with wonderful ideas for bringing new flavors to the table. We have learned about different pesto recipes to use in oil, dipping sauces, marinating, vinaigrettes, salads, soups, main entrees and desserts. You can purchase her cookbooks through VOH and discover something delicious for yourself!

After purchasing The Pesto Cookbook, my family decided to try the Moroccan Chermoula recipe and what an adventure it was! Chermoula is a traditional Moroccan herb-and-spice paste celebrated for its vibrant flavor, fresh herbs, and wonderful kick. It’s incredibly versatile and can be used as a marinade, a rub, a sauce, or a flavorful accompaniment to a variety of dishes. Chermoula pairs beautifully with lamb and chicken, but it can also complement pork, tuna, shrimp, and many other dishes. For our family meal, we served the chermoula with a chicken burger—without the bun—alongside a fresh VOH salad. We added plenty of chermoula sauce and even made our own chermoula aioli (we mixed it with mayonnaise). And, of course, we couldn’t resist adding it to our VOH yellow potatoes ! We used the chermoula sauce to marinate our VOH potatoes before cooking them in the air fryer.

The result was absolutely delicious!

The combination of fresh herbs, warm spices, garlic, and olive oil created a wonderfully flavorful dish. My family completely devoured it!

Moroccan Chermoula (The Pesto Cookbook by Owen Woodier)

If you’d like to bring a little taste of North Africa into your own kitchen, here’s the recipe we tried.

You’ll Need:

1 cup cilantro leaves and tender stems

½ cup parsley leaves

½ cup mint leaves

3 large cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon coriander seeds

1 tablespoon toasted cumin seeds, or 1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon red pepper flakes and seeds, or 1 dried red chile, stemmed and crumbled

½ teaspoon sea salt

¾ cup olive oil

Directions:

Place all the ingredients in a mini food processor and process until smooth, or until you reach your desired consistency. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. If your food processor won’t fully pulverize the coriander and cumin seeds, grind them in a spice grinder first before adding them to the mixture. And there you have it—a vibrant, aromatic, and flavorful chermoula ready to enjoy! One of our favorite things about this recipe is just how versatile it is. As you can see from the photos we took, chermoula can be enjoyed in so many different ways. Use it as a marinade for chicken or vegetables, a rub for meat and seafood, a dip for your favorite foods, or a flavorful sauce to drizzle over potatoes and other dishes. You can even mix it with a little mayonnaise to create a delicious chermoula aioli. Try it with fries, burgers, potatoes, sandwiches, or anything else that could use an extra burst of flavor!

That’s what makes recipes like this so much fun, they give you a starting point and let you get creative. And if you enjoyed this recipe, don’t miss the opportunity to explore more of Olwen Woodier’s cookbooks. Her collection offers plenty of approachable recipes and simple ideas that can inspire both longtime home cooks and families looking to try something new. Olwen Woodier also has a wonderful Peaches and Other Juicy Fruits cookbook (which we just purchased) and The Apple Cookbook too. So stay tuned as we taste test some of her amazing recipes. There’s something especially wonderful about gathering around the table and watching everyone enjoy a meal you created together. With recipes like these, your next family-favorite dish might be just a cookbook away! We hope our little Moroccan chermoula adventure inspires you to experiment, cook with confidence, and bring a little more flavor to your own kitchen.

Don’t forget to check out the photos from our chermoula adventure! That’s all for now, everybody! Enjoy the rest of this hot summer, keep cooking, and keep enjoying the goodness that comes from our farm.

Stay great, my VOH Buddies!

Love,

Your Farm Writer,

Victoria