Tonight, I decided to use up as much of the salad we'd bought last Sunday for our 18 guests. We had plenty of leftovers, and two kinds of salad greens (spinach and mâche), plus some arugula, so I thought I could make some pesto. The leaves we had were a sad bunch, so today was absolutely the last day I could use them for anything. I had to throw out a lot of wilted leaves, and didn't find enough baby spinach to make my usual spinach pesto. The plan, originally, was to use 3/4 spinach, 1/4 mâche, but it turns out that I had way more edible mâche than spinach, so to counterbalance a somewhat bland taste, I had to use some arugula too.
Mâche is a very popular salad in France. For those of you who've never seen it at your farmer's market, NPR did a story on it a few years ago. If you can't find it, just use half arugula, half baby spinach.
Baby Spinach, Arugula & Mâche Pesto
Ingredients:
- 2 cups mâche
- 1 cup baby spinach
- 2 cups arugula
- 15-20 basil leaves
- 1/3 cup olive oil (more if mixture is too thick)
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 tbs pine nuts or walnuts
- 1/3 cup parmesan, cut up into pieces, or grated
- a pinch of sea salt (I used fleur de sel)
- pepper to taste
Instructions:
Throw the mâche, spinach, arugula and basil into food processor.
Add olive oil and nuts.
Chop up garlic and parmesan. Add to the mixture.
Add salt and pepper into food processor.
Mix until well combined.
If it's too bland, add more garlic and pepper. Or grate a small part of a lemon zest like I did. Mix again, chill and serve on pasta, or bread. It tastes pretty good on my thyme crackers too.
Why is pesto so hard to photograph?
3 comments:
hi! i hate the header function too, i gave up suuuuch a long time ago. ugh.
oh i think it photographed well! i love anything with pesto -- makes all things taste better! even burgers. lovely shots.
Rhiannon: It worked fine when I uploaded my header a couple of weeks ago, so I was all the more surprised when it crapped out and resized according to its will. I is the blog designer, not you, template.
Jacqueline: Thank you! Pesto is so wonderful! I think I like it walnuts better in pesto, they have a more interesting texture. I need to experiment with different herbs and salad greens. I have about 5 versions of this pesto, but I think a few more would be great.
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