Return of the pesto!

Erik's made more pestos since my last post, but I forgot to take photos.

Tonight, though, he made beet-green pesto. That is pesto made from the greens on beets. Many people hardly know what beets look like, let alone their greens. Well, the greens are red and green. When you make them into pesto, it turns a beautiful/disgusting burgundy color. We took some photos of it in the mortar, but they looked kind of like murder, so we're only posting this one:


Startling, isn't it?

When we tasted it, we were shocked that this pesto tasted very mild -- no bite at all. Only after we were finished eating did Erik realize this bunch of beet greens was much bigger than the bunches of basil or arugula we usually use. So now we can't comment on the flavor of the pesto at all, only to say that it wasn't weird. :|

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.

Harvest pesto photo

Erik made more harvest pesto today. You can see it's not a green pesto like the traditional recipe; it's more brown. It's on Chinese noodles in the foreground, and in the background, there's a bowl of the pesto by itself.

He also tried a new mortar-and-pestle technique, which yielded interesting results. Normally he pestles everything and then adds the oil at the end; this time he put the oil in at the beginning, which meant he had to grind everything extra-gently to avoid splashing oil everywhere. The end result had an overall smoother texture and milder flavor... but then we'd get these bigger uncrushed bits that delivered intense kicks of garlic flavor. Kind of uneven, but I'll eat pesto in any form.

Pesto-inspired pasta tossing sauce

This week's pesto isn't a very green one, mostly because we didn't have too many greens sitting around, and those were beet greens. Erik fried them briefly in butter before making the pesto; the butter gives the sauce a roundness our raw pestos don't usually have. I think you could try this recipe with spinach too, or tender kale or chard.

Pesto-inspired Pasta Tossing Sauce

2 cups beet greens (stems removed)

1 tbsp butter
at least 1/4c toasted walnuts
at least 4 cloves garlic
at least 1/2 tsp coarse salt
at least 3/8c oil (we ran out of olive, and used canola)

1. Put butter in a sauté pan over high heat, until butter has melted. Add beet greens and fry for about 15 seconds.
2. Put greens, nuts, garlic, and salt into a mortar. Grind with pestle.
3. Stir in oil.

We ate this with thin Chinese noodles, and then Erik drizzled some over roasted chicken he made yesterday. He liked that too.

Update on the Harvest Pesto

The week is flying by, and I am a little afraid we will not have a new pesto recipe for this week. BUT! We did eat the last of the Harvest Pesto last night, and we were out of regular noodles, so we used Korean sweet potato starch noodles. These are clear noodles with a springy, chewy texture. We bought ours at the Chinese market, dry, and they came in a plastic sack.

We had never before tried any kind of clear noodles with pesto, but this combination was surprisingly good. I think the slight sweetness of the apple in the Harvest Pesto meshed well with the (very) faint sweetness of the noodles.

It is true I will eat almost any kind of pesto and any kind of noodles, so maybe I'm a biased taster. :) But if you happen to have some of these Korean noodles around, give them a try with some pesto, and let me know what you think!

First post: Harvest Pesto

Welcome to The Besto Pesto! Don't you love my super-pixely Besto Pesto Man? This blog is the invention of the lovely Jackie, the person who can never eat enough pesto (me, Lisa aka Satsumabug), and Erik, the modest creator of all this amazing pesto. We came up with the idea during one giddy evening of delicious pesto -making and -eating, in which Jackie and Erik invented the following, our inaugural, recipe:

Harvest Pesto
about 30 leaves fresh basil
1c diced Granny Smith (or other tart) apple
5 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
3/8 c canola (or other light-flavored) oil
1/4c walnuts

1. Toast walnuts: Crush nuts into small pieces* and toast in dry pan over low heat, until fragrant.
2. Grind apple: Put diced apple into mortar & grind with pestle. Soak up excess liquid, remove apple mash from mortar, and set aside.
3. Make pesto: Put basil leaves, toasted nuts, salt, and garlic into mortar. Grind with pestle. Add apple mash and grind until you have a rough paste.
4. Finish: Transfer mixture to bowl, and mix with oil.

*Erik says he does this with his thumb, which seems crazy to me, but to each their own!

We put hearty dollops of this pesto onto cooked thin Chinese noodles (the long white kind that come in a hefty box), and it was fantastically delicious.

We thought of this blog because Erik has been concocting fabulous pestos week after week for the past month or so, while I've been wrapped up in sewing things for a craft fair, and our CSA box has been replete with basil and other leafy greens. First we had basil pesto with pine nuts and Parmigiano -- the old standby -- but one week we ran out of everything and had to improvise. Erik whipped up an astoundingly good pesto from arugula and toasted walnuts, with no cheese, and the pesto experimentation began.

Erik is great at making pesto, but he doesn't like blogging, and I do, so we've worked out this agreement: he'll make the pesto and jot down the recipes, and I'll do the writing.

The premise: every week Erik will do something new with pesto. He might make a new pesto recipe, like tonight's Harvest Pesto, he might tweak just one ingredient (using toasted walnut oil, for example, instead of canola or olive), or he might try different ways of serving the pesto (atop roasted butternut squash, perhaps).

As long as the pesto keeps coming, I'll keep writing this blog and smiling about it!