Garden Rocket Pesto x2

I remember watching Jamie Oliver years ago, always preparing salads and garnishing dishes with a magical green called rocket. It turns out, rocket is actually my favorite garden green. Otherwise known as arugula, this green packs in the most flavor per leaf in my opinion. It's not bitter like escarole or too bland like iceburg lettuce, instead it's rather peppery with a good bite. During the CSA days, I anticipated each bunch of arugula more than anything else.

Over the past weekend, I was assigned the job of cooking for a pack of 10 hungry friends (to keep them nourished before a big holiday party) and was lucky enough to have a cooking partner who also shares my love of rocket/arugula. Making pesto is extremely simple and quick if you have a food processor. I usually just eyeball my ingredients to taste and consistency as I've made pesto far too many times at this point.

As a rough guide...

• 4 cups of packed arugula leaves
  
• 1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
• 1/4 cup (packed) freshly grated parmesan or pecorino romano cheese
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Once your pesto has a smooth consistency, toss with your favorite cooked pasta. For added flavor and texture, we sauteed a pint of grape tomatoes and tossed them in as well. We served this with a side of focaccia and a small bonus portion of very tasty sage pumpkin pasta that was leftover from the night before.

It's quite safe to say that our plates were a smashing success as most people were looking for seconds and maybe even thirds. I think we provided enough energy to keep everyone going until 4 am so we could all sing in holiday cheer.

The next day: x2

So we had some left over arugula and made another batch the following night substituting toasted walnuts instead of pine nuts.


X2 was served with a Tuscan bread salad made with a nice crusty loaf of organic rustic Italian courtesy of Amy's in Chelsea Market. The main flavor component in this salad is the lemon garlic vinaigrette. We ran low on oil and the bread in the salad was slightly on the dry side but still tasty with tomatoes, onion and cucumber.


So much good food & good times.

It's all about the sauce.

This sauce was born very quickly out of the desire to eat only what was on hand.


It turns out what was on hand was at least quality home grown ingredients. We had an abundance of tasty cherry tomatoes I used for this sauce in addition to field tomatoes and home grown oregano and basil.

Oven roasted pizzaiola sauce

2 large field tomatoes sliced
20 or more cherry tomatoes halved
half an onion sliced thin
3 garlic cloves crushed
1 small shallot diced
large handful of fresh oregano finely chopped
5 large basil leaves finely chopped
sea salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. While the oven is heating lay out all of your tomatoes, onions & garlic on to a large baking sheet. Sprinkle your diced shallots and herbs on top of the tomatoes. Aggressively brush everything with plenty of olive oil. Season with sea salt & black pepper. Place the tray in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until everything is just starting to crisp up with a nice golden brown color. The kitchen should smell amazing at this point.


Transfer all of the roasted goodies into a food mill over a large bowl and grind away. Taste what you have, it's pretty good. Super fast sauce, tons of fresh flavor with oregano breaking through screaming at you for attention. This batch was just enough for 1 pound of pasta. We had a little oven roasted crispy kale as well with this.

So good.