Saturday, March 1, 2008

Arugula Pesto - who knew?

All the ingredients needed!

Who would have thought that when you Google Arugula Pesto you will come up with 51,800 items that relate to it. All I wanted to know is are the properties of it similar to basil???!!! I think maybe I have mention before that I don't really pay very well attention to things and if there are too many directions in a recipe there is no way that I am going to get through it!!! Just me I guess. I am sure it all stems from the concentration issues but I hate to do things that are too complicated. Cooking should be simple if you have wonderful, fresh ingredients to work with and I did! While reading a couple of recipes for Arugula Pesto what I found is that it is definately more bitter than Basil Pesto so I needed to counteract that with something. Some of the people suggested walnuts??? instead of pine nuts??? I decided that I was just going to go by taste so this is what I ended up with!

It is wonderful, fresh tasting with a hint of bitterness that will go so well with pasta and on sandwiches. I have been freezing my pesto flat in a Ziploc freezer bag.
Nice bright green arugula pesto
Dakota wondering what in the H*** I am doing?


Arugula Pesto

2 cups of fresh arugula
1/2 cup of freshly grated parmessan
1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup of toasted pine nuts (i just lightly toasted them in a dry pan)
6 garlic cloves (you can use less but I love garlic)
2 pinches of sea salt

Add arugula, Parmesan, toasted pine nuts, garlic,sea salt to the bowl of your food processor. Chop until well chopped and mixed. Add the Olive Oil slowly to the mixture. There you have it it Arugula Pesto!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

9 comments:

Valerie Harrison (bellini) said...

I see more and more recipes for arugula(aka Rocket) in salads and other recipes these days. This would be a good introduction to arugula in something other than my salad. Thanks for the inspiration :D

Judy@nofearentertaining said...

It is a pretty bitter green. I am not a huge fan of it in my salad but in pesto it is really good. I think I will have it on pasta tonight for dinner!

Danni said...

Your pictures are beautiful...you inspire me so much with trying new things. My husband loves basil pesto, but we'll have to try the arugula.

Cris said...

Have you tried arugula as pizza topping with sun-dried tomatoes? It is really yummy and a great combination. We eat a lot of arugula here. Oh, and it tastes great with soy sauce too. :-) This pesto looks so good!

Judy@nofearentertaining said...

The arugula makes a nice pesto farmgirl_dk and thanks for the kind words!

Cris-funny you should mention that. I was just making pizza dough and thought instead of sauce I am going to use the arugula pesto. T. does not like sundried tomatoes but I think fresh ones will be just as good!

Heather said...

I love arugula. I prefer the baby arugula, though. I wonder if you wilted it slightly and drain off the liquid, if it would reduce some of the bitterness?

Peter M said...

I've tried the commercially made stuff and it was good. I'll definitely try a home version in the summer.

Anonymous said...

The pizza topping with the sun dried tomatoes sound good too.
Everyone had some good comments. I've never tasted arugula. I am going to have to try it soon.
Thanks for the ideas.

The Prof said...

My children won't eat arugula in salad, but they love the basil pesto that I make. This may actually get them to try it. thanks