If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know how I hate to pay top price for food that I can recreate on my own. Now, I'll pay for certain ingredients, but it just goes against my grain to pay for something that I can make for MUCH less than the retail price. So it is with the mushroom pesto. I first blogged about this pesto in the fall of 2009. BC - otherwise known as before camera :-) We went to two farmer's markets on Saturday. At the second, we saw the stand for Jacquie's Pestos. She really has some incredible pestos. Cilantro lime, traditional, mushroom/truffle oil... Last year, we sampled all of them and the mushroom/truffle oil was so incredible that I actually forked out the $8 to buy a little tub. Ouch! Needless to say, I set about recreating it. Our visit to the Binford market reminded us how much we enjoyed the pesto. So, I looked at my posting from last fall and decided how I was going to change the recipe... Last year's came closer to hers but we like this year's version better. The most important step here is to cook the mushrooms until they're about dry. As Connie said when they'd reached that point, "They look like they're breathing in the pan." He was exactly right. You can add more oil to this if you'd like a thinner pesto. Or some cream or half and half turns it into a lovely mushroom sauce. We've slathered it on bread, made melts with it and tossed it with pasta and a good bit more grated Romano cheese. I've got just a bit left and am hoping I can get something made before Connie raids the refrigerator :-) Now, because the finished product is not very appealing to look at all alone, we'll start with a photo of the half-prepared melt...
We've switched to the Broad Ripple Farmers Market. Too many vendors have left the Binford market - they're done for the season. We'll go back next week for the last weekend to stock up on Annie's lamb jerkey. Then, sometime this winter we'll have to find Terry to get another supply that'll last til the market starts up in the spring. We love the shagbark hickory syrup and the persimmon folks at Broad Ripple. But, my favorite has to be Jacquie's. They've got the BEST pestos ever. Last week we bought a container of mushroom/truffle oil pesto. This week they were out of that so we bought cilantro lime and asparagus. Since we'd munched away half of the mushroom pesto on Triscuits, I needed to re-create the recipe so we could have pasta with mushroom pesto. Fortunately, the ingredient list has to be in order of quantity. Good starting point. Mushrooms, pine nuts, olive oil, romano, garlic, truffle oil. Are the mushrooms roasted? Chopped and sauteed? Chopped and put in raw? Are the pine nuts raw or toasted? What are the actual measurements? The thought process was that mushrooms have a considerable amount of moisture so it's best to cook them in some way. I chose to chop them finely in the processor then saute them in olive oil (8 oz box buttons.) I didn't toast the pine nuts but probably will next time (1/3 c.) Added in about 2/3 c of finely shredded romano and a clove of garlic. Then, about 1T of truffle oil. Once all of that was nicely blended in the processor, I poured a stream of olive oil in until it had the right consistency. Mine was almost as good as Jacquie's. And, at about $4 for two times the quantity we bought, it was a LOT less expensive.
Along with the pesto and rigatoni, we had filets with gorgonzola mushroom sauce and butternut squash with fruit. The butternut squash was about half of a 2 lb squash. It was leftover from making autumn vegetable soup. I cubed the squash and tossed it with about 8 diced dried apricots and an equal number of diced prunes. Then, I made a sauce with about 2T of butter, 1 t curry powder, 1 T brown sugar, 2 t lemon juice and tossed everything with the sauce. I baked it at 400 for about 30 min. The apricot flavor was wonderful and the butternut squash tasted almost like candy. YUM!
