Summer Greens Pesto
Jul. 6th, 2012 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indeliblesasha in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
omnomnomSuffering from an over-abundance of summer greens? If you shop farmer's markets or have a CSA farm-share I imagine that (for those of you in summer climates) you are like me and looking at the rampant piles of beet tops and kale and chard and lettuce and despairing of ever finding enough recipes to not be utterly sick of these things by the time fall rolls around.
"How can I possibly cook ALL OF THESE BEET TOPS when half my family won't eat them and I am really pretty sick of "wilted greens with lemon/oil/garlic/basil/pasta" myself!? Let's not even get started on eating two salads a day and still losing some of the lettuce to wilting before it gets eaten..."
Solution! Make pesto. (I can't help you with the lettuce. We actually didn't even take our bag of lettuce this week because we still have enough to get us through ANOTHER WEEK. It's insane.)
At some point in the past I read an article on making pesto and how if you've ever had pesto made by an Italian grandmother you're basically never going to find a store bought pesto, or even recipe for making it at home, that compares. The secret is not the ingredients, it's the preparation.
Apparently Italian grandmothers don't believe in food processors. ;) It's all about hand chopping with a sharp blade. (Preferably a mezzaluna if you have one. I do not, but I'm thinking it might be time to get one. [Amazon link, prime eligible])
I was skeptical until I tried it and I will never ever ever make pesto in a food processor ever ever again. You, quite obviously, can. Anyone with injuries/disabilities/chronic pain/etc. for whom that much chopping even with a mezzaluna would be impossible isn't going to have the choice. Unless you can get someone to do it for you, which I highly recommend. ;) But any pesto you make at home is going to be better than store bought, honestly.
To start with you need something green and leafy. Basil is the classic and generally most preferred option. Parsley is an excellent choice also. But you can (and should!) use just about any flavorful green. Kale, chard, beet greens, etc. are all excellent options.
(I do not know about carrot tops, collards, mustards. I haven't experimented and usually have other uses for them.)
Today I used three bunches of beet greens (slightly wilted from having been hanging around for three weeks*), a small handful of fresh basil, and a handful of parsley that was about to dry out.
Trim as much of the stem as necessary. For basil you want to ditch all of the stem, using just the leaves. For parsley you can trim the stem below where the fluffy part starts. For your other greens it depends on the stem. Chard stems you should separate entirely from the leaf, and you can grill/roast/sautee the stems and eat them separately. Kale stems you at least want to take off below the leaf, possibly higher if they're really tough.
The beet greens I had today were young and tender enough I kept most of the stem.
You'll also want fresh garlic, and a hard white cheese. Generally recipes call for Parmesan freshly grated, but I use pecorino romano.
Pine nuts (lightly toasted in a dry skillet) are most commonly paired with basil pesto but they can be difficult and expensive to obtain, so toasted walnuts are frequently substituted. I have used both, today I used pine nuts.
Additionally you need an extra virgin olive oil (if you live in the States try to find a USA grown and produced olive oil, particularly with the California Olive Oil Council seal if possible. Imported oils are a total crapshoot on whether or not they are even 100% olive oil because of the lack of regulation. Sprouts, Sunflower, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's all have them for certain, and many standard grocery stores do too. Folks in Europe do not have that fear, because hey! Regulation. What a concept.)
Optional: lemon juice, salt.
The method for hand chopping goes like this: put down your leafy greens on the cutting board and roughly chop them. Add some garlic, chop, add some cheese, chop, add some nuts, chop. (Or add in any order you want. Or add them all in once. Whatever you want!) Add more greens, chop, add more stuff, chop. Repeat until you've got everything added and chopped and then chop and chop and chop some more. By adding everything in stages you wind up with a finished pesto with a good variety of pieces, some absolutely paste, some larger. You don't want large chunks or leaves. Keep chopping until you can shape the pesto and it will retain its shape, not be crumbly. Almost paste, not quite.
Put into a large bowl and add olive oil until it's the consistency you want. Add lemon juice and salt to taste.
It took me 40 minutes for three large bunches of greens, a 1/2 cup of nuts, 2 cups of cheese. (I forgot the garlic until it was too late, today. I'm thinking of chopping it and adding it now.) The final yield was a full quart, so I think I'll do one bunch at a time from now on.
This recipe is largely "eyeball it" so I will provide approximate (US) measurements:
Summer Greens Pesto
1 - 3 bunch(s) greens/herbs (Basil, beet, kale, arugula, chard, parsley, garlic scapes, etc.)
Small handfuls various herbs for additional flavor (optional)
1/4 - 1/2 cup toasted pine nuts or walnuts
1/2 - 2 cups shredded Parmesan or pecorino romano (or preferred hard cheese)
2 - 5 cloves fresh garlic (or 10, really, whatever makes you happy)
1/4 - 1 cup extra virgin olive oil (depends on the greens, the humidity, and your preference)
Juice of 1/2 - 1 whole lemon (optional, best with greens as opposed to basil)
Salt (optional)
Hand chopping:
* Roughly chop half of your greens.
* Add half of the garlic, cheese, nuts, herbs one at a time or one at a time with some chopping in between.
* Add the remainder of the greens and continue chopping.
* Add the remainder of your garlic, cheese, nuts, continue chopping.
* If you are using more than one bunch of greens, start with 1/4th of your ingredients and repeat until you've got everything added and minced.
* Keep going until you can shape the pesto and it will retain its shape, not be crumbly. Almost paste, not quite.
* Transfer to a large bowl and add olive oil until it's the consistency you want.
* Add lemon juice and salt to taste.
Food processor:
* Add all ingredients except oil and lemon juice to the food processor with the blade attachment.
* Process until paste like and add oil with the blade on until it reaches the consistency you would like.
* Add lemon juice and salt to taste.
Keep refrigerated, freeze if not using immediately. (I have read that leaving the cheese out if you're going to freeze, and adding once thawed helps the texture and flavor, but I don't know if that's always true.)
"How can I possibly cook ALL OF THESE BEET TOPS when half my family won't eat them and I am really pretty sick of "wilted greens with lemon/oil/garlic/basil/pasta" myself!? Let's not even get started on eating two salads a day and still losing some of the lettuce to wilting before it gets eaten..."
Solution! Make pesto. (I can't help you with the lettuce. We actually didn't even take our bag of lettuce this week because we still have enough to get us through ANOTHER WEEK. It's insane.)
At some point in the past I read an article on making pesto and how if you've ever had pesto made by an Italian grandmother you're basically never going to find a store bought pesto, or even recipe for making it at home, that compares. The secret is not the ingredients, it's the preparation.
Apparently Italian grandmothers don't believe in food processors. ;) It's all about hand chopping with a sharp blade. (Preferably a mezzaluna if you have one. I do not, but I'm thinking it might be time to get one. [Amazon link, prime eligible])
I was skeptical until I tried it and I will never ever ever make pesto in a food processor ever ever again. You, quite obviously, can. Anyone with injuries/disabilities/chronic pain/etc. for whom that much chopping even with a mezzaluna would be impossible isn't going to have the choice. Unless you can get someone to do it for you, which I highly recommend. ;) But any pesto you make at home is going to be better than store bought, honestly.
To start with you need something green and leafy. Basil is the classic and generally most preferred option. Parsley is an excellent choice also. But you can (and should!) use just about any flavorful green. Kale, chard, beet greens, etc. are all excellent options.
(I do not know about carrot tops, collards, mustards. I haven't experimented and usually have other uses for them.)
Today I used three bunches of beet greens (slightly wilted from having been hanging around for three weeks*), a small handful of fresh basil, and a handful of parsley that was about to dry out.
Trim as much of the stem as necessary. For basil you want to ditch all of the stem, using just the leaves. For parsley you can trim the stem below where the fluffy part starts. For your other greens it depends on the stem. Chard stems you should separate entirely from the leaf, and you can grill/roast/sautee the stems and eat them separately. Kale stems you at least want to take off below the leaf, possibly higher if they're really tough.
The beet greens I had today were young and tender enough I kept most of the stem.
You'll also want fresh garlic, and a hard white cheese. Generally recipes call for Parmesan freshly grated, but I use pecorino romano.
Pine nuts (lightly toasted in a dry skillet) are most commonly paired with basil pesto but they can be difficult and expensive to obtain, so toasted walnuts are frequently substituted. I have used both, today I used pine nuts.
Additionally you need an extra virgin olive oil (if you live in the States try to find a USA grown and produced olive oil, particularly with the California Olive Oil Council seal if possible. Imported oils are a total crapshoot on whether or not they are even 100% olive oil because of the lack of regulation. Sprouts, Sunflower, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's all have them for certain, and many standard grocery stores do too. Folks in Europe do not have that fear, because hey! Regulation. What a concept.)
Optional: lemon juice, salt.
The method for hand chopping goes like this: put down your leafy greens on the cutting board and roughly chop them. Add some garlic, chop, add some cheese, chop, add some nuts, chop. (Or add in any order you want. Or add them all in once. Whatever you want!) Add more greens, chop, add more stuff, chop. Repeat until you've got everything added and chopped and then chop and chop and chop some more. By adding everything in stages you wind up with a finished pesto with a good variety of pieces, some absolutely paste, some larger. You don't want large chunks or leaves. Keep chopping until you can shape the pesto and it will retain its shape, not be crumbly. Almost paste, not quite.
Put into a large bowl and add olive oil until it's the consistency you want. Add lemon juice and salt to taste.
It took me 40 minutes for three large bunches of greens, a 1/2 cup of nuts, 2 cups of cheese. (I forgot the garlic until it was too late, today. I'm thinking of chopping it and adding it now.) The final yield was a full quart, so I think I'll do one bunch at a time from now on.
This recipe is largely "eyeball it" so I will provide approximate (US) measurements:
Summer Greens Pesto
1 - 3 bunch(s) greens/herbs (Basil, beet, kale, arugula, chard, parsley, garlic scapes, etc.)
Small handfuls various herbs for additional flavor (optional)
1/4 - 1/2 cup toasted pine nuts or walnuts
1/2 - 2 cups shredded Parmesan or pecorino romano (or preferred hard cheese)
2 - 5 cloves fresh garlic (or 10, really, whatever makes you happy)
1/4 - 1 cup extra virgin olive oil (depends on the greens, the humidity, and your preference)
Juice of 1/2 - 1 whole lemon (optional, best with greens as opposed to basil)
Salt (optional)
Hand chopping:
* Roughly chop half of your greens.
* Add half of the garlic, cheese, nuts, herbs one at a time or one at a time with some chopping in between.
* Add the remainder of the greens and continue chopping.
* Add the remainder of your garlic, cheese, nuts, continue chopping.
* If you are using more than one bunch of greens, start with 1/4th of your ingredients and repeat until you've got everything added and minced.
* Keep going until you can shape the pesto and it will retain its shape, not be crumbly. Almost paste, not quite.
* Transfer to a large bowl and add olive oil until it's the consistency you want.
* Add lemon juice and salt to taste.
Food processor:
* Add all ingredients except oil and lemon juice to the food processor with the blade attachment.
* Process until paste like and add oil with the blade on until it reaches the consistency you would like.
* Add lemon juice and salt to taste.
Keep refrigerated, freeze if not using immediately. (I have read that leaving the cheese out if you're going to freeze, and adding once thawed helps the texture and flavor, but I don't know if that's always true.)
no subject
on 2012-07-07 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-07 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-07 05:21 am (UTC)Is cheese usually a part of pesto? I thought when I ordered it at restaurants etc that it was vegan (not vegan or lactose-intolerant, not I'm not crushed to learn this)
no subject
on 2012-07-07 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-07 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-07 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-08 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-07 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-07 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-07 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-07 03:30 pm (UTC)Also, you can do olive oil infusions with parsley if you wind up with a lot.
I'm toying with not adding any oil or lemon to a batch and using it to stuff raviolis and see how that goes. Cause I think we'll all get sick of pesto after awhile too lol.
no subject
on 2012-07-07 03:43 pm (UTC)I just blanch and freeze most of my kale, and am delighted to have it for soups in February.
no subject
on 2012-07-07 05:21 pm (UTC)When we got our CSA, we also invested in a Food Saver appliance and MANY containers to go with it. When I get home with the haul for the week, the first thing I do is put all salad greens of any kind into a big (or several big) bowl(s) of water to soak and lose grit. THen I spin it and stuff all these containers full and suck the air out.
I've eaten lettuce two or three weeks later as fresh as the day I got it, as long as the lettuce is mostly dry on going in, and the seal holds. Which is lovely since every once in a while there's a week without lettuce and I'm like ... I have a billion carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers... I have to buy LETTUCE?