It could probably be pesto
A cure for wilted stuff in your refrigerator
I’m sort of ambivalent about tomatoes. They’re fine, but I will never appreciate them the way my dad did, with his commitment to just… eating a slice of tomato on bread with mayonaise and calling it a tomato sandwich. When I am at a rando diner I will almost always get a BLT, not out of any faith that the tomatoes will be good, but rather there is no greater equalizer than a diner BLT. It destroys your mouth, it is tasty, it’s a perfect vehicle for iceburg lettuce and mayonaise.
Last summer Noah and I had a CSA. As everyone with a CSA has ever experienced, this means throwing away a lot of food and feeling really guilty about it. It also means trying pathetically to use stuff that’s about to go bad because it came from a farm, or whatever.
What I’ve found is that, as a BLT is the great equalizer of diners, pesto is the great equalizer for…. that food that is kinda wilted and needs to be used rn, because if you wait until tomorrow you’ll have to throw it away.
I made… wilted mature arugula pesto over the summer, which was pretty good. It’s like regular pesto but I used toasted walnuts, because I love walnuts, and arugula because we had some. I made roasted tomato pesto because like…. I’m sorry there are not that many ways to eat tomatos and mine ALWAYS get squishy and gross, which was actually…. really very good? I didn’t have high hopes for it. I originally was writing this because I meant to share the recipe for that, but I lost motivation.
So instead you get my Winter Pesto, which can also be made out of wilted vegetables, which is especially convenient in new york where it seems like every bit of produce comes to the store pre-wilted.
Last night for dinner I am made kale pesto, because I’ve been cooking a lot of Korean and Chinese food recently, and this is a change of pace from that, and also, it is easy and I am lazy. I keep meaning to share some of the Chinese dishes that I’ve been making, but 85% of them are just “here’s this recipe from The Woks of Life” and that feels like cheating.
Kale is such a contentious food. It is always about virtue, which is annoying. You find kale in all sorts of Dignified Situations, it is Concerned for Your Health, it is always asking you “Have you tried yoga as a cure for your depression?”
I feel that this is unfair to kale, because it is tough and bitter, and to be frank, I like those things about it. You can buy kale over the weekend, and on Wednsaday it’s still typically okay! Sometimes it is even still good the next weekend! You can’t say that for very many vegetables with leaves.
So, whatever, I like kale, and I like making pesto out of kale, because 1. I think it’s tasty, and 2., it allows me to feel as though I do not need to make a vegetable to go alongside my dinner, because I never know what vegetable should go beside Italian-adjacent pasta, because I do not like making salads and lettuce seems like a waste of time to me. (Although last night I made green beans, I was feeling very ambitious!)
Kale Pesto
2 bunches of tuscan kale
Two cloves garlic (you can do more, chase your bliss)
zest of one lemon (then the juice)
1/2-3/4 cup walnuts (toasted is preferable) (it could have been over a cup, tbh, I didn’t measure even a little bit, look at the picture for an idea)
olive oil (enough that it feels… right)
3.5 oz parmersean (or a mix of that and regiano, or whatever unlabeled hard cheeses you have malingering in your drawer….)
NB: I use less garlic, because I don’t love raw garlic (there! I said it! I am so brave!) but you can use more if you are of the school of thought that the only righteous flavor in cooking is garlic, I don’t care.
First, rip the ribs out of the kale. Submerge the kale in cold water, leave it for a few minutes, lift it out, drain the water. Feel the bottom of the bowl, is it gritty? If it is gritty, repeat this process until the bottom of the bowl feels clean. This is my foolproof method for not having dirt in my vegetables.
Boil some water, salted. Blanche the kale for about 30 seconds, not long, just a smidge of blanching. Remove the kale (with a spider if you have it, or just drain it, whatever). Set it aside until it is cool enough to grab and squeeze. Then, squeeze it! You want to get out a fair amount of water, but it’s not like you gotta get ALL the water out, you know?
Using a food processor, pulverize the cheese. Put it in a bowl. Put the kale and garlic in the food processor, pulverize those also. Then add the walnuts, lemon mix, salt, and cheese, and some oil. Go at it until you feel good. Taste it. I added a bunch of aleppo pepper here, because I like it. If you like red chili flakes, go ham. I personally hate them. Gochugaru would also be good I think!
I added more lemon juice and salt, because I thought it wanted it, and then I added more aleppo pepper. Then I thought it was good!
Okay, boil some noodles cooked however you like, scoop out some pasta water, drain them, add them to a bowl, add some butter (I used half a stick) or oil, but I think butter with pesto is nice, it’s something Marcella got me into. Start tossing pesto onto the buttery noodles. I used about half of what I had made. I added more oil as I tossed, and some pasta water to break it up. This is a chunkier pesto, with more dry stuff and less oil, because that’s how I like it. It’s still plenty oily though.
Save whatever you have leftover in a tupperware with oil on top. It probably lasts in the fridge for a week? Idk I’m planning on using the leftovers on Wednesday night, because I’m making ravioli. I haven’t been eating a lot of noodles recently, but this week I am having noodles THREE TIMES! The third noodle is this one, which I haven’t tried, but think will be good.
That’s all for now. It was a good pesto, I recommend it!