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.