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!

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.