It’s easy for me to stress about what to make when I visit my friends The Minchillis (Elizabeth, Domenico and Sophie) in Italy. In my head there are expectations that I bring something new to them. In addition to running a thriving tour business Elizabeth writes cookbooks and her own very active newsletter filled with recipes, so I tend to default to that awful competitive place. But before I even start sometimes I feel defeated. Then I remember that I am here because they want me here and all I have to do is just be me and the culinary version of that is to just riff. It’s what I’m best at. See what’s in the fridge and throw something together. That’s how the green bean-chickpea salad happened. There were beans, so I snapped off the top, leaving the little tails. I love the tails. I steamed them. Then I rummaged through the leavings from previous meals and found a little container with a few tablespoons of some kind of herby paste. It turned out to be a wild fennel top pesto that Elizabeth had made a couple days before. She said to be careful because it was strong, but a couple days of rest mellowed it, so I dolloped it on the beans, added some tomatoes that were of risk of turning in the heat here. One of Elizabeth’s go to condiments is sliced onions in wine vinegar. She always seems to have a little bowl hanging around to add to salads for brightness. So I threw some of that in. Then I added a jar of chickpeas which were lovely and tender. That’s it. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts, and yes, the fennel paste seems effete but remember that wild fennel grows all over California. You just need to identify it once to see it everywhere. The fronds look just like farmed fennel (sometimes they are a darker green) but there are no bulbs, which is why the foliage is so fragrant and flavorful. But really any pungent paste would work here from a standard basil pesto to one made from sun-dried tomatoes or nuts. Good extra virgin oil brings it all together. The finished dish held its own on the table along with fresh ricotta, sun-dried tomatoes and eggplant preserved in vinegar and oil.
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thinking about best way to make pesto from wild fennel tops - nuts or no nuts?
Thanks for sharing !