So I just made dinner. (First paragraph = fail!) But wait, hear me out. I made fresh pesto for the first time in my life two days ago and I was itchin' to use it. I'm giving myself a pass on this one, given the circumstances. This isn't just a food blog mind you. Well, except that, mostly it is.
Seeing as I have a wonderful Farmers' Market here in sunny downtown Reston, I cannot help but be presented with the possibility of future culinary greatness with the arrival of every Saturday morning from May to November. This past Saturday was no exception.
What's currently in season? Cantaloupes, apples, corn. But dang, that basil smelled especially aromatic that morning. As if someone orchestrated the perfect gentle breeze when I walked by it (or that was the fan mounted on one of the tent poles), the emerald incense lured me into its sweet, alluring grasp. Plus, it was only $2.50 for a huge bunch and I buy it at the grocery store all the time for $2.99 or more for a piddly little sad stalk. I knows a deal when I sees one.
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| Looks like its growing out of my counter top. If only that were possible. |
My first thought was to make caprese salad. Tomatoes were still in season and summer lingered in the air for about two more weeks. Eh, too easy. I needed to do something that had effort. That demanded thought. And was something I'd never done before. I thought long and hard, for 15 seconds, about what dish required large amounts of fresh basil. Then got distracted and accidentally left it on the counter overnight. (For your own peace of mind, I do not put "fast thinker" on my resume.) By morning, it already started to look a little sad and droopy. (I think I killed it!)
As necessity is the mother of invention, I had to think fast. (Faster than I had the day before if I wanted to use this basil before it turned into compost.) Ah! *Snap* I got it! Pesto! Not much else uses more fresh basil than that.
I never made pesto, which screamed to me the chance to conquer another leafy Kilimanjaro and live to tell the tale. It only had a few ingredients, this I was sure of. Plus, my cousin was in town and she said, "Oh, it's simple, anyone can do it!" (I have a feeling many a large ship has gone down to its murky demise on the tail end of those fateful words.)
Please note the extremely precise measurements...
Pesto
A bunch of fresh basil
A handful of pignoili nuts (aka, pine nuts. Trader Joe's has best prices.)
Some extra virgin olive oil (You cannot skimp and go with just regular olive oil on this one.)
A few garlic cloves
A couple heaping teaspoons of Parmesan cheese
Right, so hope it works out for you given those specific quantities. Be happy I don't bake. (Yet.) You're going to have to be daring on this one and go with your own personal preference by tasting it every step of the way. You want to add more garlic, great, do it! Less Parmesan, by all means. It's all about what tastes good to you. I know people who add lemon zest as well if that intrigues you at all. In the future, I'll likely add a jar of artichokes one day.
Basil prep: I washed it, dried it with a paper towel, pulled off all the leaves and discarded the stems. Who told me to do this? No one. I just guessed. I also peeled the garlic.
I tossed the pignoli nuts into a pan on low to medium low and dry toasted them. Really brings out the flavor when you toast your friend the nut. Though I heard most pestos don't require you to do that. However, you are a smart person and you will listen to me and take the extra three minutes to do it because it will be worth it. (You will also monitor them diligently as they go from perfectly golden to burnt mini charcoal briquettes in like five unwatched seconds.)
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| Toasting up nice and tan like you on your summer vacation at the beach. |
Possessing the insider knowledge that once chopped up finely there would be plenty of space, I placed the garlic in first, then jammed all the basil into a small food processor my cousin gave me probably eight years ago that I had never used. I'm not very gadgety, so I only use the bare minimum to get the job done. I'd like to think of myself as a purist or a pioneer of sorts. Not to mention (Which ironically always means you're going to mention something, ever notice that?), condos don't have an excess of storage space for thingamadoogies and whosiewhatses. But for pesto, you have to have either a food processor or a blender. (I'll save my blender for making smoothies, thank you very much.)
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| Basil and pignolis getting cozy. Garlic hidden on the bottom out of sight for now. |
My cousin suggested I do a little chop-chop pulse action first to start to blend the drier ingredients and make them finer. Ever the eager student, I followed her advice to the letter. (By that I mean, she took over and pressed the button for me to make sure I did it exactly as she wanted.) Good to note though, I only had two button options on this little processor. Chop and grind. Not hard to mess up my choices should I have actually been allowed to steer that ship.
Shake in some Parmesan, drizzle in a little olive oil and then everyone gets to use the grind button! (Well, not exactly everyone.)
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| I love how the olive oil turns a mossy green with all that basil. |
There you have it! Fresh pesto. Dare I say, you may never buy premade pesto again. And why should you. You're educated. You're daring. You too can push a button. (As long as your cousin is not in your kitchen taking over like the big sister you never had!!)
After I made the pesto, I wanted to come up with something slightly different to do with it. Sure, I could make pasta. That was predictable. But what woman wants to be predictable. We thrive off of changing it up. Our hair, our clothes. We love to seem mysterious. (Sometimes if only to ourselves.) Pasta was surely out then. I'm looking to cut down on carbs as well, so I wondered what else pesto could go on. Chicken? Sure, that would work great, but I didn't defrost any in preparation. Oh, I had bought medium-sized, precooked frozen shrimp recently and they can be thawed quickly by placing them in cool water for approximately five minutes. I did just that, then drained them.
Into a large saute pan went a couple tablespoons of pesto to warm up on low. Then into a small saute pan went the shrimp and as they started to cook down and water pooled around them, I just drained out the water and placed them back on the stove top with a tiny bit of butter. At that point, you could just add them to the pesto, but I prefer a little bit of a slightly crispy texture to them.
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| Turning pinkish orange and curling up. It's what they do. |
When I got them where I wanted them, (Why do I sound like I'm herding cattle?), I tossed them into the pan with the pesto and made sure the shrimp were fully coated. Into the small saute pan the shrimp had been in, I added one corn tortilla and toasted it lightly on both sides. Then I added just a little bit of shredded cheese that I had left over from another day and let it slightly melt.
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| Lactose intolerance be darned! |
Slide onto a plate, top with shrimp and pesto mixture, finish with a little bit of shredded cheese and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.
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| Who needs pasta with this one? So good, you won't miss it. |
Keep thinking outside your conventional mental recipe box. Be unpredictable! You don't have to pair things up in the same old way and stay in a banal rut because you've always done it that way. Think flavor and texture and how they might play off one another in different combinations until you land on one that is a winner. You will discover a whole new way to create something contemporary from an old standby.
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