Pesto, Changeo!

Has this ever happened to you….you plan to make something for which you require a certain cooking tool and you proceed to look for the utensil, or pot or some other item to assist you in the preparation and you can’t find it? The conversation (with yourself) that follows goes something like this….”I could have sworn I had a __________(fill in the blank)…I remember using it when I prepared that Saute De Boeuf A La Parisienne that everyone liked back in 1992.” Your prep plans quickly go to hell in a hand basket because the proper tool does not exist. Such was the case on Tuesday….now I’m not talking about a whisk, or a juicer, or maybe even a fancy grill pan, I’m talking about a food processor…who misplaces or believes they have and really does not have a food processor, I ask you? Apparently, me, and further, I did not follow my own advice and put “check to see if you really have a food processor” on my “To Do” list.

A detail.

It was my turn to cook and I decided to make Pesto using the basil from my garden. After discovering I had NO FOOD PROCESSOR, I moved on to Plan B…the blender. Well, imagine my surprise when my BLENDER didn’t work. At this point, I thought I was being “punked” and despite being totally faklempt, I composed myself and trotted over to my neighbor’s house to borrow a blender, which thankfully they had and were not using at the time. All the while, I had a pork tenderloin (that was marinated in apple juice, rosemary and thyme, both from my garden) on the grill, hoping it didn’t become the next victim of a cooking catastrophe.

I took pictures of the required ingredients, but the events described above left me so twitterpatted, that I forget to take pictures during the prep-process…so I will describe what I did. The recipe I used is from the Barefoot Contessa – Back to Basics cookbook:
I placed ¼ cup of walnuts and ¼ of pine nuts and 3 tablespoons of garlic in the blender and processed it for 30 seconds. Next, I added 5 cups of fresh basil leaves, salt and pepper and 1 ¼ cups of extra virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice and processed until the pesto was finely purèed. I added 1 cup of Parmesan cheese and purèed for 30 seconds more. Meanwhile, I prepared some fresh linguine to toss with the Pesto and rescued the pork tenderloin from the grill. We also had a wonderful salad with hibiscus flowers, a very nice bottle of Smoking Loon Cabernet Sauvignon, and homemade coconut-lime sorbet for dessert. What could have been a disaster, actually turned out to be a very good meal and, as usual, an enjoyable evening!