124: Celery Leaf Pesto

This is the tiny bowl that contained all the stems from the bunch of celery I got in my last delivery. I had a few dishes in mind, but I'm not even sure how to scale to such a tiny amount, so I just ate those raw, with a little pesto I made from the leaves. You can pesto anything.

The most surprising thing about the celery is that it had distinct and strong flavor, which I'm not used to from the stuff you buy at grocery stores. I'm hoping we get some more substantial bunches in the weeks to come.

Celery leaves are amazing, if you haven't noticed how much I've been using it this past week, and yet there were still so many more to play with. So I made a pesto.

It was (approx):
- 2 packed cups of celery leaves
- 1 packed cup of basil leaves
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1/4 to 1/3 cup toasted walnuts
~ pecorino, salt, lemon juice, walnut oil

We ran out of olive oil so I switched it out. Added the lemon to hopefully keep it looking nice, and cut some of the bitterness from the celery. It was a little heavy on the garlic (not necessarily a bad thing) and a little too salty. But a lot of this is up to taste.

I went on a little postemptive search, as this was largely winged, and there's a huge variation in recipes. Maybe not huge huge, you can see some patterns emerge, but the ratio of greens to nuts to olive oil and other additions vary. Everything is up to personal preference.

Part of my doing this project is to kind overwhelm myself to the point that my "what ifs" get drowned out by the sheer volume of recipes I go through. There will be time for repetition of the good recipes, but I can't really dwell on mistakes when hey, there's another mountain of produce coming my way in a few days.

So I'm not sure I'd make this again. I liked it when I made it, but not at 2 am when I tried a little more. It was delicious again this morning but then not when I had some with my lunch. Pesto isn't generally my favorite. Also look what else exists: celery salt!