Recipe: Roasted Garlic-Pistachio Pesto

With frost and/or snow threatening to kill many gardens this past weekend, I decided it would be a good idea to begin harvesting a good bit of the basil from my herb garden and make some fresh pesto. I’ve played with a couple of pesto recipes in the past but one of the things that I did not like was the often over-powering flavor of the raw garlic. Don’t get me wrong, I love garlic, but not in its raw state. I found that roasting the garlic really helps bring out a certain depth of flavor that you just can’t find when raw.

Pine nuts are another area where I decided to make a change. Not only are some people truly revolted by pine nuts (the dreaded “Pine Mouth” – go ahead and Google it if you don’t believe me), but I also find it difficult to buy a package of pine nuts for just this one recipe. Since I had pistachios on hand, in they went. I have also made this with macadamia nuts and cashews, but I think just about any nut will do. I don’t know if I would try peanuts…

Roasted Garlic Pistachio Pesto

INGREDIENTS

6 cups fresh basil leaves

6 cloves roasted garlic

2/3 cup pistachio nuts, shelled

¾ cup Parmesan cheese, grated

¾ cup olive oil (preferably Extra Virgin, but any good flavorful olive oil will do)

Thoroughly rinse the basil in a large bowl of cool water to remove any of the loose dirt or dust that may be on them. Then dry the basil either in between some dry paper towels or, preferably, in a salad spinner. You want to make sure that you remove as mush of the water as possible.

In a food processor fitted with a chopping blade, add the pistachio nuts, roasted garlic, Parmesan cheese. Pulse the mixture a few times and then add as much of the basil that can fit in the machine. Pulse the mixture and keep adding the basil until all of it has been added and you have a nice bright green paste.

With the food processor running, slowly add the olive oil until all of the ingredients are thoroughly combined. This pesto is best used right away on chicken, fish or pasta, but you can optionally freeze it.

Freezing

If you choose to freeze the pesto, there are a couple of ways to do it. You can opt to

1) Place some of the pesto into an ice tray until frozen and then store in a large Ziploc freezer bag;

2) Place all of the pesto on a Ziploc freezer bag, squeeze out all of the air and freeze; or

3) Place all of the pesto in a plastic container (or multiple plastic containers) and freeze.

The benefit of the ice tray method is that it is simpler to remove only small amounts of pesto at a time without having to either defrost the whole batch or attempt to scrape some of the pesto out into a separate container for defrosting.