Arugula Pesto with Spring Garlic
From the looks of my refrigerator, you never know I’ve been doing CSAs for years. There are greens everywhere! But to be glass half full about it all, this has finally pushed me to look for a solution to a problem I have every year: too much lettuce—or in this case lettuce and arugula.
CSA Arugula
When we get behind on eating our veggies, I am great at dealing with anything that can go in the freezer. I even get creative—did you know that you can substitute Kohlrabi for turnips in soup recipes? But if you can’t freeze it, I choke. And you can only eat so many salads!
So when I heard about arugula pesto, I was elated; pesto freezes! I looked up a bunch of recipes on the internet, compared ratios and calculated approximately average quantities of arugula, garlic, olive oil, nuts and cheese.
Arugula Pesto Ingredients
For this pesto, I decided to pan roast my nuts and garlic. Usually I put them both in raw, but since I expected flack from the kids on the arugula, I wanted to do anything possible to give this a taste edge. Given the recent 90 degree days, I wasn’t about to heat up the oven, so the nuts went into a frying pan dry, got stirred once and taken off when they started to smell good. The garlic went into a different pan, got sprayed with cooking spray and stirred a bit more and left until golden and softened.
Pesto is classically made with pine nuts, but given the price tag of organic pine nuts I long ago swapped that out for walnuts, which are absolutely delicious. Alternatively, I’ll use any nut I have around—after a big Brazil nut purchase, we ate Brazil nut pesto for a year (mmmm!).
Regular garlic is another standard ingredient, but since it isn’t in season, I used the spring garlic provided by one of the CSAs. Spring garlic is the young garlic harvest from fall planted garlic seeds. It doesn’t have cloves, just a single bulb and is a milder, but works beautifully in pesto. Another fine spring substitute is garlic scapes, the early green shoots from garlic, which also makes an appearance in my CSA boxes.
I guess pesto is very adaptable to seasonal eating!
Pesto is typically served mixed with pasta (great with shrimp) and I also like it blended with reduced fat mayonnaise and used as a sandwich spread. Picnic season is here!
Pesto on Pasta
Arugula Pesto
Ingredients
- 4 cups arugula, lightly packed
- 2/3 cup olive oil (may use up to 1/3 cup more if you packed your arugula tighter)
- 12 roasted garlic cloves or 3-4 raw cloves
- 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted or raw
- 1/4 t salt
- 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Directions
1. Place all ingredients except Parmesan in a blender or food processor
2. Process until well combined
3. Stir in grated Parmesan
Can be served over pasta, used as a spread or many more ways.
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I actually liked this better than basil pesto and almost as much as cilantro pesto. And now the dilemma—do I fess up that its arugula when I serve it to the kids or just call it pesto?
And if anyone out there has ideas for serious lettuce consumption, let me know! That refrigerator is still pretty full!
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Thank you so very much for this recipe, we’re going camping this weekend and wondered what to do with the greens in the fridge. I happened upon it while looking for an easy way to grill shish kabobs as we’ll be camping and don’t want to mess around – so thank you for sharing both!
I sooo understand wondering what to do with all the greens in the fridge! I hope these work out for you!
I never would have thought to freeze pesto. Thanks for the tip! We are getting behind on eating our greens from our CSA, good to know I can at least freeze some of it!
I love my freezer. Besides avoiding waste, it makes winter eating so much better…
Looks delish!
Thanks!
This pesto looks so delicious my friend, a great twist on the traditional 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
You are wise beyond your years indeed!
I’ve never eaten arugula pesto, but I’m sure I’d love it. What a great solution for when you have too many greens!
It was such a relief to get through two bags of arugula at once. I am so glad it tasted good!
Looking and sounding delicious – i love the results when we get inventive. And the addition of frying the garlic befor ehand I’m sure made it a tasty treat!
I just did the lazy version –no roasting anything first with this week’s basil. Not quite the finesse, but very pramatic
yummy! I usually enjoy my arugula in salads but this is a great idea. Can’t wait to try it out.
Come and link up to this week’s party when you get a chance 🙂 http://inherchucks.com/2012/06/20/whats-in-the-box-31/
Will do! Can’t wait to check out the other ideas out there!
Awesome! Thanks Inger 🙂
Yum! Now I want fresh pesto…hmm…must plant a garden first…
Any friends with gardens?
You make a great point about pesto being adaptable to seasonal eating. I’m going to keep that in mind the next time I’m wondering what to do with items in my CSA box. Oh, and I completely agree about walnuts. I’ve never purchased pine nuts due to their price tag, and have always used walnuts instead with delicious results 🙂
I make and freeze cilantro pesto when I get buried in that too. A couple years ago we remodeled our kitchen–hoping to have it done before CSA season. Alas we did a LOT of freezing that year!