June 28 Pesto

Last year I concocted kale pesto and froze batches of it. It has a rather dark flavor and we're still eating it.

This year, we planted daikon radishes and red frilly mustard and perhaps they weren't planted early enough or the plants decided to go to seed because of the warm/cold wet weather instead.  Who knows?  Instead of having long beautiful daikon roots to harvest, we have short stumpy roots and lots of greens and flowers. The greens by themselves are pretty bitter so we googled radish pesto and Peter (my partner) modified the original recipe to create a beautiful green zesty spread.

Here is the original recipe:

- 2 large handfuls of radish leaves (stems removed and washed)

- 30 grams (1 oz) hard cheese, grated (e.g. pecarino, parmesan)

- 30 grams (1 oz) nuts (pistachio, almond, etc. but not walnuts)

- 1 clove garlic

- lemon zest (just a small amount)

- 2 tbsp. olive oil

- salt

- pepper

- chili powder

Place all the ingredients together and use a hand blender to pulverize until you have the consistency you like.

Peter omitted the cheese, salt and chili powder, replaced the lemon with lime, used both greens and flower tops and a mix of raw almonds and cashews, with additional olive oil until the right consistency was reached. Simple and easy to make and tasty too.

So we're left with radish roots and mustard greens. Perhaps more pesto.

What wonderful concoction have you in mind?