This is a recipe that I feel almost guilty for calling a recipe.  A delicious pesto can be made to order following the below formula; just fill in your favorite herb, greens, nuts, oils and flavorings:

Mix-n-Match Pesto Generator Recipe

• 2 cups or so of herbs (basil, cilantro, dill, parsley, arugula, watercress, spinach)
• 1/2 cup nuts (pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts, almonds, cashews, macadamia)
• a bit of savory flavor (optional - Parmesan, miso, nutritional yeast)
• a bit of tangy flavor: (lemon juice, vinegar, lime, olives, jalapeños, onions, garlic
• Oil! (olive oil, avocado oil, walnut oil, thai chile, sesame oil)

Use whatever stuff is growing wildly on your doorstep or appears in abundance in your shopping cart. 

You can mix your fashionable new pesto in with pasta, top a pizza with it, slather it on bruschetta, fold it in with omelets, create a new a salad dressing, etc!

You can also make a pesto with roasted tomatoes, beets, or marinated veggies like olives, artichokes, peppers.  Go crazy.

If you’d like a more specific pesto recipe, try some of the tasty looking ones below, which I’ve culled from very reliable sources:

Yummy-looking Cilantro Pesto and a Classic Basil Pesto from Elise at Simply Recipes
A raw pesto dish - Basil Pesto over Zucchini “Pasta” by the fantastic folks at What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway
Beautiful Asparagus Pesto by 28 Cooks and a proven hit low-fat version by SusanV at FatFree Vegan. 
And here’s 28 Cooks Basil and Habanero recipe.  So pretty! 
Great minds think alike!  Check out the Pistachio Arugula Pesto at VeganYumYum
Mmmm! Beet Pesto from Alanna at Veggie Venture.  What a great way to use your CSA veggies!  And here’s her concurrently-posted Arugula Pesto.

My very own recipe for Cilantro Arugula Pistachio Pesto has a taste reminiscent of guacamole and has proven to be just as addictive.  The tartness of the arugula stands up to the assertiveness of the cilantro, and the heat from the jalapeños and mellowness of the avocado oil round this out into a sauce you want to eat right from the spoon… which is just fine until you have a dozen dirty spoons sitting in your sink.

Time: 20 minutes
Makes over a cup of pesto

Cilantro Arugula Pistachio Pesto

1/2 cup pistachios
1 bunch of arugula, roughly chopped and stems removed
1 bunch of cilantro, roughly chopped and stems removed
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
1 small jalapeño, deseeded and minced
juice of 1 lemon
big pour of avocado oil
big pour of olive oil

In a blender or food processor, pulse the pistachios a few times to break them up into small pieces. Add the arugula, cilantro, onion, lemon, and a pour of avocado oil. Try blending and add olive oil until the pesto is liquid enough to blend smoothly. Depending on your intended use you can add more oil or keep it nice and thick. (If using on bruschetta keep thick, but add more oil if you’d like to mix it in with pasta.)

Fresh at the farmer’s market this week are beautiful root veggies, gorgeous greens, and addictive sugar snap peas. They’re all at the height of their yumminess right now and I just want to pile them in a big bowl and gobble them up. Which is basically what this recipe is about.

Turnips, depending on who you ask, range from underappreciated to just plain scorned. But this time of year they are sweet, mellow, and still possess a hearty potato-like quality that should put them firmly in the “adored” category.

This dish is a Summery Cornucopia of Fun - a mix of crunchy, leafy, and starchy vegetables. Don’t leave out the chard - the stems give the salad a nice crunch and a beautiful magenta color. If your turnips have the greens still attached, chop those up too and sauté them with chard. And if you’re not down with hardboiled eggs you could use  tofu strips or garbanzo beans instead.

To give some credit where credit is due, this salad is inspired by a warm potato salad recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks- Peter Berley’s Fresh Foods Fast. The book focuses on full vegetarian menus, not just separate dishes, and the menus are categorized by season. So basically, you flip to the section of the current season and start going “I want to make this, and this, and this…” and it’s all laid out with helpful menu planning tips and mouthwatering photos. Some of the dishes are fancy, some of them homey, but all of them are well within the range of do-ability for an upstart vegetarian enthusiast. I wish the book was three times as thick.

serves: 3 - 4
time: 45 minutes

Warm Roasted Turnip and Sugar Snap Pea Salad

bunch of turnips (8 - 12), cut into wedges
bunch of small red onions (6 small, 3 large), cut into wedges
4 free-range eggs
1 bunch of red or rainbow chard including some stem, chopped
2 pints of sugar snap peas, ends snapped and string removed
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp flavored vinegar (I used tarragon vinegar)
1 Tbsp grainy mustard
salt and pepper

Bring a pot of water to boil and turn on the broiler.

Pile the turnips and onions on a baking sheet, coat with olive oil and broil until the turnips are spotty golden brown -about 15 minutes- turning every few minutes.

When the water is boiling, add the eggs and cook for 11 minutes on a low boil. Put the eggs in cold water to cool. Peel and cut into wedges.

Saute the chard for a few minutes until wilted.

Using the hot water from the eggs, blanch the peas for about 2 minutes. Submerge in cold water to cool to stop the cooking process.

Mix up the olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard and salt and pepper. Add the turnips, onions, chard, snap peas, and egg wedges to a large bowl, pour the dressing over and mix. Serve warm, or chilled is nice too.

I know that you’re thinking:
1) another pink meal?
2) grapefruit and … wasabi?

Since this is my blog, I’ve got the home court advantage and intend nip your skepticism before it even begins to pretend to bud.

So, 1) Yes, pink. Isn’t pink was new black? And even if it isn’t who’s eating black food anyway? Pink is the color of Love and “in the pink” means healthy so it’s the perfect color for a refreshing spring meal in the season of twitterpation and rejuvenation.

And then 2). Why yes, grapefruit and wasabi: tart and juicy and sweet and spicy. Check out this tasty-looking Spicy Grapefruit Coleslaw from SusanV of FatFree Vegan if you don’t believe me but really! - the wasabi and almond butter combine in a complex and unctuous sauce that makes this dish a jaunty country cousin of the traditional Pad Thai. The crisp green beans and succulent pink grapefruit segments counterpoint the rich noodles, creating a dish full of love and health.

Time: 40 minutes
Serves: 4

Wasabi Noodles with Grapefruit

4 servings of thick Asian-style noodles, fettuccini, or linguine. I used whole wheat linguine
4 handfuls of green beans, ends snapped, cut into 2″ pieces
2 grapefruits, supremed*
16oz block of extra firm tofu, cut into 1/4 inch dice

2 tsp wasabi paste, more or less to your taste
2 - 3 Tbsp almond butter
reserved grapefruit juice
salt to taste

sesame oil
black sesame seeds
fresh basil or mint, chiffonaded (is that a word?)

(more…)

I’ve always been a little afraid of blenders. It probably started with that scene from Goonies where the Fratellis threatened to puree Chuck’s hand in a blender. *Shutter.*

I also had a childhood mishap whilst making watermelon sorbet. After I had blended up my watermelon and measured out my sugar, instead of lifting the blender jar fully out of the base I somehow twisted off the bottom of the jar (surely a blender should have enough structural integrity to withstand a 10-year-old?) and pink slush flowed from the bottom of the container in waves and waves all over the countertop and floor. That, as you might imagine, put a stop to my career in sorbet-making and became instead an excellent exercise in floor-mopping.

Anyway, here I am, forever optimistic and instructing you all to drag out your Hamilton Beach and get to blending. This recipe makes TWO colorful, elegant, and understated soups. From there, the serving possibilities are endless. You can swirl them together in a bowl, like I did below, or serve small portions of each in individual shot glasses or martini glasses. This way guests can really appreciate the differences between the two melons. Please be prudent in your blender use; don’t stick your spoon in the moving blades and, as always, don’t threaten to stick anyone’s hand in here.

This soup would make an excellent first course on a hot day, with anything barbequed, or with a substantial salad like this Corn and Cabbage Quinoa Salad.

Serves: 4 - 6
Time: 30 minutes plus 2 hours chilling time

Chilled Spicy Melon Soup

3 teaspoons minced ginger, divided
1 clove garlic, minced
1 to 2 small jalapeno peppers, minced
1/4 watermelon, deseeded and cut into chunks
1 cantaloupe, deseeded and cut into chunks
juice of 3 limes
2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp avocado oil (or olive oil)
Mint sprigs, for garnish

Finely chop the ginger, garlic, and jalapeno and set aside in little piles.

Put watermelon in a blender with the juice of 1 1/2 limes and puree until smooth.

To the blender add 1 tsp of ginger, 1/2 tsp of garlic, 1 1/2 tsp of jalapeno, 1 tsp of salt, and 1 Tbsp of avocado oil. Blend again and adjust the seasonings to your taste. Pour the soup into a pitcher and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Repeat the process with the cantaloupe and same amount of seasonings.

You can skim off the foam or push through a sieve for a perfectionistly clearer texture. Top with a sprig of mint, if desired.

I’ve recently been obsessed by the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s essentially a year-in-the-life of a writer (who can forget the Poisonwood Bible?) and her family who decide to make eating local their priority. So they do what anyone who’s developed this itch would do: they move to Appalachian Virginia and consume only food they’ve grown themselves or has been grown by farmers within an hour’s drive. This miracle year took a stand against excessive fuel consumption, concentrated animal feeding operations, vegetable monocultures, and big business. Instead, it emphasized gratitude, respect, time with loved ones, and the deliciousness of fresh foods.

Along similar lines, the New York Times has an article today in the Dining Out section about restaurants returning to tap water rather than offering bottled. It’s been over 2500 years since the Romans built viaducts and aqueducts (so gorgeous) and in our one-upmanship for purity and “safety” many of us feel more at ease with the packaged “seal of freshness” and portability of bottled water rather than having to old-school our potables from the tap and a, gasp, reusable container we have to wash ourselves. (Depending on the quality of your local water supply you may want to get a filter too.) Thus the local food movement has moved to include beverages as well.

This salad is a little hat-tip to Ms. Kingsolver and her very laudable undertaking of eating local. It was topping off around 90 degrees this weekend in Brooklyn and all I really wanted was something green, crunchy and fresh. But I wanted something with fruit… which brings up one of the most dire problems for locavores; until late summer and fall, most fruit - unless you live in Florida or California - is far from local. The only fruit choices for me at NYC’s well-stocked Union Square Greenmarket this late May weekend were last year’s apples (still crunchy and juicy - some apples improve during storage.) In her book, Kingsolver ameliorated a late-spring fruit craving with rhubarb and if it’s good enough for her it’s good enough for me. Sautéed with unrefined sugar and balsamic vinegar, rhubarb makes a great dressing for this local salad.

Serves: 2
Time: 30 minutes

1/4 cup of walnuts, chopped (substitute local nuts if you’ve got em)
olive oil
2 very long stalks of rhubarb, sliced
1 tsp unrefined sugar or honey
1/8 tsp salt
1.5 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
a few handfuls of spring greens
2 apples, cut into matchsticks – I used the Mutsu variety
6 radishes, cut into coins

Dry-roast your nuts in a small saucepan. Set aside.

Add a pour of olive oil and sauté the sliced rhubarb for about 5 minutes. Add the sugar, salt, balsamic vinegar and another pour of olive oil and sauté a few more minutes or until the rhubarb starts to soften and lose it’s juice.

Assemble the salad with greens on the bottom, then the apples and radishes, spooning the rhubarb and the juices on top. Sprinkle with walnuts. I could also heartily endorse a local crumbly blue or goat cheese on top.
This is my entry to the very cool food event Salad Stravaganza hosted by La Mia Cucina. Also, even though I blog veggie every week, I thought I’d submit this to Eat the Right Stuff’s first blogging event, vegetables, beautiful vegetables. What a great choice for a first event!