Wasabi Arugula Pesto

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For the last couple of years, Chele and I have been growing an interesting variety of arugula called “Wasabi Arugula”, which (as you have probably already guessed) has the same flavor and fiery kick as that famous Japanese condiment. It’s been simple to grow, doesn’t get eaten by the neighborhood rabbits, and has proven to be a great addition to salads and sandwiches. It also make a great topper for ramen, udon, and similar Japanese dishes. It also grows like mad and aggressively reseeds itself, which means we end up with TONS of the stuff. Unfortunately, it doesn’t lend itself to freezing or dehydrating – our go-to preservation methods – so we ended up with a lot of waste in our first season. So this past season, looking for alternative methods to save more of our crop for later enjoyment, we tried our hand at a classic standby for dealing with an over-abundance of green leafy things: pesto.

Now to be honest, I often tend to shy away from making pesto when I’m looking for ways to use an unusual herb or green, mostly because I tend to think of it as the obvious choice. It’s almost as obvious as tossing it in a salad. Not that I don’t like pesto (or salad), it’s more that I gravitate towards taking my cooking off the beaten path. Plus, pesto can actually be trickier to make well than it might seem. It’s all too easy to end up with an oily green mess if you don’t get things right – too the point that many published recipes and even some commercially prepared pestos seem to think that is what pesto is supposed to be (A good pesto should be close to a paste in consistency, with just enough oil to make it viscous enough to spread or mix into things). But I have to concede that it IS a really efficient method of using up large quantities of herbs or tender leafy greens.

Wasabi arugula turns out to lend itself very well to pesto. Its peppery bite mellows out quite a bit with this treatment, but still gives just a little bit of a kick that complements the heavy use of garlic quite nicely (especially if you leave a little of the garlic raw). The recipe we’ve settled on consistently comes out with a good, smooth texture, with minimal oil separation. It also allows you to easily customize how intense the garlic flavor is by pan roasting some or all of the garlic cloves (cook them all for milder flavor, or go full raw if you want it to kick your teeth in). This can be enjoyed any way you would use any other pesto: as a pasta sauce, on sandwiches, or simply spread over bread or crackers. Even if you don’t have the wasabi arugula that we call for here, this will work great as a basic pesto recipe for standard arugula, spinach, basil, or whatever else you might want to try.

This recipe also freezes exceptionally well. Just fill a container of your choice, add a thin layer of extra oil to protect the surface, and freeze. When you are ready to use it, just move the container to the refrigerator to thaw overnight. I recently used a batch that had been frozen since October, and there was absolutely no loss in quality even after months of storage.