A while back now (yes, I am far behind on home-territory posts, but are you surprised?), I was invited to tour the Fresh Direct facilities. While photographs of the facilities themselves were forbidden, it was a great time, and I intend to write about the experience shortly. But first, here’s a recipe – since I haven’t done a Recipe Friday in quite a while! (I still cook frequently, but usually stuff that isn’t really … well, there’s no real recipe for it, like sauteed zucchini with thinly sliced onions. Who wants to see that? But that’s what I eat in the summer!) – using the ramps I received in our generous goodie bag from that visit!
(Oops, as suspected, these pictures are from so long ago that ramp season is over, darn it! But save this recipe for next spring. It was awesome!)
Pasta tossed with pesto!
Roasted salmon drizzled with ramp pesto
Very easy: ramps have a kind of garlicky, mild/sweet oniony taste to them, a lot of bright green, verdant flavor as well, so they don’t need much to transform into a wonderful, delicious pesto.
1-2 bunches of ramps, trimmed
toasted handful or so of pine nuts
grated hard Italian cheese (I probably used parmesan or piave, since I always have those two on hand)
juice of half a lemon
olive oil
Pulse together the first four ingredients in a food processor (or, if you don’t have one, you can use a mortar and pestle!). Drizzle olive oil slowly until the consistency comes together a bit; season with salt & pepper to taste.
Since I also made pasta, I reserved a bit of the pasta water and added that in as well, to help bring it to a creamier consistency. Mmm, and so it’d stick to the pasta a bit more.
I just want to comment about my meal above: the pasta was sufficiently tasty with the pesto, but what stole the show was definitely the salmon. I roasted the salmon quite simply – just a bit of salt, pepper, then into the oven at 350 or 375 for 30-45 minutes (I generally check it at 30, and let it keep cooking a bit longer if it looks like it needs it) – and then spooned a lil of the pesto over it, which brought both to whole new levels. The fattiness of the salmon mixing with the garlicky goodness of the salmon was amazing! Afterwards, since I always make too much salmon, I wrapped individual pieces of salmon up in tinfoil and covered it with some of the remaining pesto. To heat it back up, I popped the packet into my toaster oven and baked it for about 15 minutes (it wasn’t blistering hot out, so I did let the packet sit for a few minutes to take the chill off before I put it into the toaster oven). PERFECTION and DELICIOUSNESS. Mmm, good!
(The other part of my dinner was just simply blanched green beans. I need my vegetables!)
HAPPY EATING!!! 🙂
Hungry says
Never made pesto with anything but basil. Must explore.
Yvo says
This was my first time using a non-basil green, though I’ve eaten spinach pesto… I’ve tried using nuts besides pinenuts and find I prefer the flavor of pinenuts to walnuts or almonds, though in restaurants, theirs seem to come out much better than mine. My favorite is definitely the maple syrup pesto I’ve eaten at Press 195… sooo good, I need to try to replicate it! Nom! Let me know what you try!
Peg says
Alton Brown has recommended using pistachios (already green) to pesto instead of pine nuts as the latter is more expensive, has a higher fat content and therefore turns rancid more quickly. I haven’t tried making pesto with pistachios, but if you do, let me know how it turns out?