I absolutely love to cook. I love the opportunity to not only create, but also the honor and pride of serving others. Not to mention the smug satisfaction of watching my daughter’s actually gobble up what I’ve prepared – most recently boneless skinless thighs on my new flattop grill. So, I mostly approach cooking to solve the multi-faceted problem: what do we have, what do I feel like making, and what will everyone actually eat?

On my days off, I’m thinking about how to solve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I love making breakfast sandwiches, scrambles, and burritos as well as the Mexican chilaquiles my moth-er-in-law has taught me. I love all kinds of sandwiches: taking random leftover ingredients and elevating them. Why have a sad, dry, leftover meatloaf sandwich when you can smear it with onion jelly, slide it into a sliced croissant, and throw it in the panini press? And I have become my extended family’s default turkey king for Thanksgiving – brining is a must, spatchcocking is optional but preferred.

But after this typical pontificating and illustrious introduction, most people begrudgingly ask: “So what’s your specialty?” And that’s where I share my love – a simple unrequited affair – with a thing called pesto. With a few non-traditional substitutes, this beguiling and funky green sauce can bring you the same guilt-free joy with which it has bequeathed my life all these many years. Part of this recipe came from my mother’s mother who made it to satisfy my very Italian grandfather. But I’ve tweaked it over the years (and every time I make it). I haven’t measured or followed a recipe in 20 years – so you’ll be happy to know I went through painstaking lengths to measure out something you could recreate. But feel free to tweak it till it’s just right for you.

Now, I was going to make this as “winter pesto” but I had an abundance of basil. I call winter pesto winter pesto because either I make it by the gallon in the summer then freeze it for winter or because it can be made fresh in the winter without being dependent on any dried basil which will work but can give you texture issues. So, I’ll start with the real deal, then offer a pivot to the winter variant.

We almost exclusively serve this on cheese ravioli with some trusty Italian sausage on the side, but you can add it to almost any pasta, use it to up your sandwich game, or bring it to a party with a pile of bread. Just be sure to set aside a metric ton of Altoids.

First, The Ingredients:

Matt’s Signature Pesto

4 Cups ------     Fresh basil leaves, washed and drained but not packed into the cup

1 ½ Cups ---     Shredded parmesan cheese

1 ¼ Cups ---     Walnut halves (instead of the traditional pine nuts)

½ Cup ------      Extra virgin olive oil

2 ------------       Medium garlic cloves (add as much as you want, but it’s a raw sauce, so be reasonable)

1 -------------     Roma tomato, cored and quartered (this helps thin the sauce without being only dependent on olive oil and it also cuts the sharpness of the garlic and cheese)

1 tsp --------      Salt

1 tsp --------      Black pepper

Next, The Instructions:

Throw all the above in a large food processor. I use a classic 14-cup Cuisinart but make do with what you have. A blender won’t work very well – I’ve tried it. I’ve also made a micro portion with a rough chop of a large knife as a quick and easy addition to a single sandwich.

Pulse your food processor until everything begins to collapse into the wraith of the spinning blade. You’ll especially want to take care to get those big chunks of tomato down in there. I use a silicone spatula to push down the sides and then pulse again. Once it’s all started to consolidate, I press run and let it sit a while, at least two minutes. At the risk of getting the processor’s motor kind of hot, this really blends all those gritty bits of cheese, garlic, and walnut down into a smooth consistency. This is where I scrape down the sides again and begin to taste test. The flavor and texture should both be arresting and captivating.

After that, I just let it sit in the processor (off) until my pasta has boiled – no need to dirty an intermediate bowl. I’ll then spread some pesto into the pasta bowl first and put the hot pasta on top, adding more globs and smears of the decadent green gold as I go. The hot pasta is enough to bring the room temperature fats in the cheese and oil to a satisfying melting point.

This yields enough to sauce about 2-3 pounds of ravioli (lots of leftovers!) plus some extra for a little midnight rendezvous.

The winter variant takes all the same parts and pieces above and supplements a majority of the basil for bagged, pre-washed, chopped kale. This assumes that you’re either trying to use the kale as a force-multiplier for your own fresh basil or – if making it in the winter months – you’re wanting to buy fewest of those little, over-priced, plastic containers of fresh basil leaves from the produce department. Either way, any flavor of the kale is completely masked by the intense notes of basil, parm, and garlic, and the texture is unaffected. I’ve made this version for a crowd of my Italian family in Connecticut – about 40 people in all to great applause.

If I’m making it in the summer to enjoy later in the year, I fill silicone ice cube trays with the freshly made pesto and freeze it for several hours or overnight. This way, when I pop the frozen pesto cubes into vacuum seal bags, it doesn’t get sucked into the machine’s pump. I’d assume this would last for months in the freezer, but we usually can’t hold off that long. I’ve probably had it as much as 6 months later and it was still fabulous. Cut it out of the freezer bag still frozen so that you don’t waste residue on inside of the bag.

Now go stuff your face!

Matt Hebert is an engineer and self-published author. His dopamine-fueled creative pursuits have spanned from chicken keeping, sand sculpture, acting, and public speaking, but writing is nearest and dearest to his heart. He lives in Bellevue with his wife and two daughters. You can find him on Instagram at @jerkofalltradeshebert or email him at matt.hebert.books@gmail.com

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