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Pesto is great. You know it, I know it. I like making it, and I like eating it. Here is my recipe. This recipe, like many of my others, is created ‘on the fly’, and I encourage you to mess with the proportions as you see fit.

This pesto originates in our garden, where we have three types of basil growing, traditional sweet basil, lemon basil (which has a serious lemon smell, much like lemongrass), and dark-side basil (a delicious dark purple leaved basil often called ‘purple basil’, however, it is clearly from the dark side of the force, hence its more appropriate name). We also have some thyme, mint, sage and arugula. We also have a bunch of dried tomatoes from the garden.

Why should these not join forces in one mighty pesto? No reason at all! It’s a vegetarian recipe, and can be made vegan through the elimination of one ingredient.

Ingredients

• 2 cups basil leaves (any kind of basil)
• 1/2 cup-ish mixed herb leaves
  • Sage?
  • Mint?
  • Arugula?
  • Thyme?
  • Rosemary?
• Spinach?
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup grated hard cheese
  • Asiago?
  • Parmesan?
  • Romano?
• A mixture of the above?
• 4 good cloves of garlic
• 1/3 cup unroasted/unsalted nuts
  • Pine nuts are classic
  • Walnuts are good too
  • So are cashews
  • And pecans
• And even almonds
• 1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 package (12.3oz) firm style silken tofu
• 1 good splash balsamic vinegar

• Big pinch of salt

  Procedure

  This is the hardest part: Take all the herb and basil leaves off of their stems, wash them, and put them in a colander to drain. It will take a long time, because 2 cups of leaves is a lot of damn branches of basil. It doesn’t matter much what your final amount of leaves is, but if its much more or much less than 2 cups after packing them into a measuring cup, adjust the rest of the recipe up or down a bit as necessary.

  Toss a handful of these leaves into a blender or food processor along with a small portion of the olive oil. Blend them. Blend them good. They’ll fight you, so be prepared to stop the blender, scrape down the sides, and fire it up again. Keep at it, slowly adding more of the basil and more of the oil as you proceed.

  Eventually, things will get rather pasty and consistent. Once you’ve integrated all the oil, and all of the basil and herb leaves, it is time to start on the other ingredients. Crush the garlic cloves by setting them one by one on a cutting board, placing the wide flat part of a dough blade or meat cleaver on them, and banging it with your palm. That will smash all the goodness out, and beats those stupid garlic presses into the ground. Toss the smashed remains of the garlic right into the blender, and make sure it gets well ground up.

  Add the nuts and cheese slowly, working them in as you grind. You can tune the amount of nuts to your liking, just add them slowly at first. Remember, you can always add more to a pesto, but its hard to get something back out.

  Now you should have a fairly standard herb pesto. Mostly basil, but with a few other herbs thrown in because they were growin’ in the garden anyway.

  I like to take things a step further with three more ingredients. First, a handful of sun-dried tomatoes. We make our own, but commercial ones are cool too. They bring a lot of goodness in a small space. It colors the pesto slightly, and you can really taste them. Its fabulous.

  Second. A box of silken tofu. Silken tofu is tofu that hasn’t had the water squeezed out of it hydraulically. It is what comes in those little ‘envelope’ boxes that look like juice-boxes. Mori-Nu is a common brand, and it can be found at most supermarkets near the ‘regular’ tofu, or in the ‘soy products’ area. Silken tofu is not as good for things like sauteing and grilling, but its great for blending. Toss a whole box of firm silken tofu into the mix. It will extend the pesto a bit, give it some nice texture and flavor, and add lots of helpful protein.

  Third. Balsamic vinegar. Since we’ve got basil, cheese and tomato, then why the hell don’t we have balsamic vinegar? It really belongs with the others, and its acids really ride that nutty wave in a happy way. Put a good splash of it in, and blend it up real good.

  Lastly, put in a big pinch of salt and mix it up, it’ll help, trust me. Taste your pesto. Is it good? Does it need more garlic? More nuts? More cheese? If it does, put them in! Every pesto is a bit different because of your starting herbs, and you’ll need to tweak a bit. Tweak the texture if you need by adding a bit more olive oil.

  Now, simply spread the yummy pesto on anything at all. I recommend bread, pizza, or pasta. You can refrigerate it for a few weeks, or freeze for a few months. Since it has no structure to speak of, it freezes and thaws pretty well.

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