Birthday pesto!

Erik labored away on Saturday afternoon to make two different pestos for my birthday party: classic basil-cheese, and The Besto Pesto (arugula-apple).



You can see he's much more handsome than my little Paint-drawn logo of him. ;b

Many thanks to Devin for the gorgeous photos!

Arugula pesto

We have TWO bunches of arugula from our CSA box this week! (Confession: I swapped our poblano peppers for the second bunch, so I could have more pesto. Teehee!) When I went up to Erik around 11:30 this morning and asked, "I can haz pesto for lunch?" he sweetly obliged.

You can see that this week's pesto is very bright green, unlike our past weeks' which have been more brown. And since we were using so much arugula (Erik's past arugula pestos have been mostly arugula, but with some basil), the pesto had a very peppery bite. This was a slight shock at first, but now I like it. However, I felt the pesto had less body than usual -- it was sharp and raw -- and Erik thinks maybe this is because he didn't toast the walnuts as long as usual. Apparently his usual m.o. is to toast them until they're almost burned, and in fact a few do burn and he picks them out afterward. This time he toasted them only lightly. Hmm.

We were out of all other kinds of noodles, so we had to have pesto on pad thai-type rice noodles. It turns out those noodles are the least yummy with pesto, out of all the varieties we've tried. Duly noted.

Same basic recipe as usual, but with method modifications.

Sharp Arugula Pesto

1 fat bunch fresh arugula
5 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
3/8 c olive oil
1/4c walnuts

1. Toast walnuts: Crush nuts into small pieces and toast in dry pan over low heat, until fragrant.
2. Grind garlic: Put garlic into mortar and grind with pestle.
3. Make pesto: Put everything else into mortar, including oil. Grind with pestle.