Two Different Pestos

Growing up, I have always loved radish leaf kimchi, a type of Korean pickle made with the young leaves of daikon radishes. As a result, I've often wondered what I could do with the leaves that come attached to the red radishes one buys at the store. Now I know -- radish leaf pesto.

A couple of weeks ago, I found a great recipe for radish leaf pesto online, which I'll recap below:

Radish Leaf Pesto

• very fresh, bright green leaves from a bunch of radishes 
• a clove of garlic 
• a handful of pistachio nuts (btw, I prefer the kind you have to shell to the pre-shelled kind)
• extra virgin olive oil 
• a pinch of salt 
• grated Parmesan cheese

First, I cleaned the radish leaves and removed the tough stems. Then, I put everything except the cheese into a blender and pureed it. 

Of course, I can never leave a recipe alone, so I also added some tender young mustard leaves and an additional clove of garlic. Then I removed it from the blender and set aside some pesto without cheese for me. I stirred the cheese into the remaining pesto for my DH.

It was fantastic! The pesto was such a vivid, gorgeous shade of green, and the flavor was light, but pleasantly piquant. Delicious! 

Sadly, we devoured it before I remembered to take photos, so I'm showing you a photo from the blog where I got the recipe. Mmm...

Image of radish leaf pesto from:
 http://belloebuono.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/pesto-di-foglie-di-ravanello-radish-leaf-pesto/

Sorrel Pesto

A few days ago, I had a huge bunch of sorrel. I used half of it to make a potato and sorrel soup. (Divine!) Then, since the radish leaf pesto was such a success, I decided to make pesto with the remaining half. Basically, I used the same recipe as for the radish leaf pesto, but I also added in a tiny bit of lemon peel to complement the lemony flavor of the sorrel. Another homerun!

If you try either of these recipes, I hope you'll let me know how it turned out! Buon appetito!