Recipe: Arugula Pesto

To use up some of the food still in my fridge, I realized I had all the ingredients to make a delicious pesto (not having tasted it, I'm only hoping that it will be delicious). Pesto is relatively new to me, but the few times I've had it, be it on chicken or pasta, I really liked the flavour. Of course it has cheese in it, so that could be part of the reason. And I know that pasta can be made with many different green leafy vegetables, and since I had almost a full tub of arugula from our pasta dish the other night, I thought why not? 

So I pulled out my trusty Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book (actually, it's Matt's, but I have claimed it as my own). The pesto recipe in there called for the traditional basil, but I just swapped that out for the arugula. 

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cups arugula

1/2 grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 cup pine nuts, walnuts, or almonds

1 large clove garlic, quartered

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 olive oil

DIRECTIONS

COMBINE arugual, cheese, nuts, garlic and salt in a blender or food processor. Cover and process or blend with on-off pulses until a paste forms, making sure to scrape the sides throughout. 

SLOWLY add the olive oil while the machine is running and blend to the consistency of soft butter. 

And that's really all there is to it. 

Since I knew we wouldn't be using this pesto for at least a few weeks, I had read that pesto is a great little sauce to freeze and use later. So to do that, I emptied and dried one of my ice cube trays and filled the cups with pesto, then covered it with plastic wrap and stuck in the freezer. So the next time we want to add a bit of green to our pasta, we just pop out a cube or two and warm in a pot, then pour over the pasta.