Weekly Dish

Aaahh, pesto. That lovely oily amalgamation that I nearly kill my basil plants over every single summer. When I was a waitress at the Brick-Oven, I often worked the long lunch shift, which usually left me and the kitchen staff alone in the restaurant for at least a couple of hours. Steve, a vegetarian chef extraordinaire, taught me how to make pesto one afternoon in late summer, and I’ve made it every summer since. I usually stick to his basic version, with basil leaves, pine nuts, fresh Parmesan, garlic, and olive oil, but I’ve also made it with walnuts (my friend Angela is allergic to pine nuts, so when I lived in Jackson, I usually substituted the walnuts on her account). One of my favorite food blogs, Cooking with Amy, recently posted a whole host of variations on the traditional pesto; if you’re interested in mixing it up, you should check out her suggestions. I make mine as a paste with only a little oil at first, and then add oil as needed as I use the pesto in different ways. One of the tricks I’ve found that really enriches the flavor is toasting the pine nuts first; they become more buttery and flavorful when they brown. This week, pesto’s in chicken salad and dolloped on pasta, next week on pizza! It’s so versatile, and a little goes a long way. For this recipe, I made the pesto and then mixed about 2 tablespoons of it with 1/2 cup of the homemade mayonnaise left from the sandwiches on Monday. These proportions can be adjusted, depending on how much pesto flavor you like, and how “wet” you like your chicken salad. Add some small-diced chicken (also leftover from Monday) and toasted pine nuts. It’s wonderful on foccacia bread, if you have any left. I served the sandwiches with a simple green salad. Here’s how I made the pesto:

1 cup basil leaves, washed and thoroughly dried

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts

4 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 t. Kosher salt

1/2 t. cracked black pepper

Toast the pine nuts in a 350 oven until brown and fragrant, about 15-20 minutes. In a food processor or blender, mince the garlic as finely as you can. Then add the basil leaves and pulse until they are also chopped finely. Add the nuts, cheese, olive oil, salt and pepper, and process until a paste forms. Will keep in the fridge in a tightly covered container for about 2 weeks.

Posted: Thursday, September 15th, 2005 at 5:23 pm Filed under: Basic Recipes, Sauces and Condiments, Salad, Meat, Summer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.