Another Twist on a Classic: Parsley Pesto.
It was finally time to take serious action. In anticipation of falafel night, tin picked up a HUGE bunch of parsley (she claims that it was the smallest one they had, and I believe her, but seriously, it was basically the entire plant). It was beginning to wilt, despite our better efforts to keep it moist by occasionally misting it with a spray bottle... It was time to make pesto.
Pesto is traditionally made with basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, salt & pepper and finished with grated parmesan cheese. But if you're willing to experiment, almost any herb (dill, rosemary, mint) can serve as a delicious, unexpected base for a pesto. You can prepare your pesto well in advance and set it aside in a cool place/in your refrigerator to allow the flavors to marry -- I simply warmed mine briefly before mixing it into my pasta.
I had plenty of parsley at my disposal -- and if you're making a pesto, you should, too. While the spaghetti noodles were bubbling away, tin chopped about 2 cups of fresh parsley (approximately 1 cup per person/serving of pasta). I finely minced three cloves of garlic (anywhere between one and three will do -- it's a potent ingredient, which I happen to like a lot). I threw everything directly into a deep skillet (if you have a wok, use it). To the parsley and garlic I added a dash of salt, a lot of fresh black pepper, the juice of half a lemon, and one finely chopped sun-dried tomato -- just one will go a long ways in the flavor-department -- don't shake all of the oil off and back into the jar -- in fact, I scraped every last bit of it off of my cutting board and into the skillet.
I skipped the nuts. If you're really dying for the nut component, I recommend using walnuts in a parsley pesto (not more than 1/4 cup chopped). If you choose to use the nuts, skip the tomato -- the parsley should really be the star of the show, and it's easily overwhelmed when too many other fancy ingredients come to the party.
Perhaps surprisingly, my favorite part of a pesto is the texture of the parmesan cheese. To make my vegan pestos, I mimic this texture by adding crumbled tofu. For two servings, I use about 100g of extra-firm tofu. This time, quite frankly, I was too lazy to get out my blender (because that would mean having to wash it) -- but if you have one, you'll probably balance out the time you spend washing it afterward with the time I spent chopping all of this stuff by hand. (I just really hate washing dishes.) I very, very, very finely diced my tofu -- but if you put it in your blender, you'll quickly end up with a crumble that looks something like cheese.
At this point, since I was making my pesto and pasta at the same time, I turned the heat on low and warmed all of the ingredients in my skillet. My goal was simply to take a little bit of the edge off of the massive amount of raw garlic I threw in there (and if you're making your pesto ahead of time, one clove will do -- the raw garlic will only get stronger over time). I heated it through (only about a minute) then added my cooked & drained spaghetti noodles to the skillet -- thus, again, if you have a wok, you are really in business.
I added olive oil. Please, please, I'm begging you... don't drown it -- 2 tablespoons, tops -- I only used about 1, since I already had that oily tomato in there. Added oil is the fastest way to take your meal from healthy to "I didn't know vegans could be fat, too."
As a little surprise, I added about 1 cup of peas. (I can find a reason to put peas in pretty much anything.)
And there you have it -- pasta with pesto. Yum.
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