Magical Green Sauces
traditional basil pesto and Hailee Catalano's herb-drawer-clean-out sauce!
Hi friends,
It’s that incredible time of the year when greens (and baby bunnies!) are abundant around here.
We’ve been participating in a local CSA for the past few years, and this week’s box came with a multitude of greens: radish greens (and radishes, of course), spinach, lettuce, cilantro, and bok choy. CSAs (which stand for community-supported agriculture) are great ways to support your local farms; each week, I receive a box filled with goodies.
As much as I love having access to incredibly fresh produce, even I—someone who develops recipes for a living—can feel overwhelmed by a big box of mystery vegetables. It's a common anxiety I hear from people with CSAs who want to avoid food waste.
Some weeks, you’ll receive a box full of zucchini, tomatoes, or eggplant; other weeks, you’ll find a vegetable you can’t even identify. It can be overwhelming, and I completely get that!
Over the years, I’ve developed some systems to mitigate these risks. One such solution is to blend your greens into a sauce. This, my friends, is the benefit of a beautiful pesto, chimichurri, salsa verde, or chutney. You can pack a lot of greens into a sauce (case in point: this kale pasta)
These versatile sauces pair well with pasta, beans, potatoes, meats, and seafood (they’re great marinades too)! You can even use them as a base for salad dressing.
Today, we’re talking about two magical green sauces: a classic pesto alla Genovese (homemade basil pesto) and an herb-drawer-clean-out sauce from Hailee Catalano’s new cookbook, By Heart.
The details on all the recipes are below! Do you have a CSA? If so, what’s in your box? Let me know in the comments!
Pesto alla Genovese (Homemade Basil Pesto)
The Recipe: A traditional recipe for pesto alla Genovese with minimal ingredients (fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, pine nuts, and cheese) and instructions for both a mortar and pestle or food processor.
I had a great time researching the traditional methods of making Ligurian pesto and trying to create a version that matched the original flavors I enjoyed in Italy.
Hailee Catalanos’s Herb-Drawer-Clean-Out-Sauce
If you follow any large account on social media, let it be Hailee Catalano’s. Hailee is an incredibly talented chef with wonderfully inspired recipes. Her cookbook, By Heart, includes 100 flavor-packed seasonal recipes with lots of tips and tricks.
The name of the recipe alone is genius. We all struggle with wilted herbs sitting around in the fridge. Blanching the herbs and then blending them with oil, nuts, and a bit of acidity yields a bright, vibrant, and colorful sauce.
The recipe calls for handfuls of cilantro and spinach, but feel free to play around here. I used a mix of cilantro, mint, parsley, spinach, and arugula with much success.
And don’t be afraid to change it up as you like. I added a bit of lemon juice and chili powder for a punchier sauce. The full recipe is in her cookbook, which I recommend you check out (tip: borrow a cookbook from the library!). However, a very similar version is available here.
I also enjoyed her white bean Caesar salad, a very un-sad-desk-kind-of-lunch! Other fun recipes on my list to try are hearty-seed rye bread, maple cheddar snack mix, and charred cumin beets.
Have a great week,
- Karishma