Your First Invention

If you’re comfortable with following recipes, you might ask, “Why should I bother learning to improvise in the kitchen? My food tastes fine.”

Good! I never said your food was bad, and I still use recipes from time to time. But there are a number of practical reasons to learn to improvise more when you cook. The first I want to address is that knowing how to improvise can help you save money by helping you to eliminate food waste.

If you have ever cooked with fresh herbs, you have experienced the problem of buying a whole bunch when all you needed for the recipe was a few tablespoons of minced herbs. Most grocery stores won’t allow you to just take a pinch. What do you do with the remainder?

You could hang them and dry them. You could scour the internet for 7 more recipes that call for 2 tablespoons of minced cilantro (or whatever you have). Or you could make pesto and be done with it!

Traditional pesto is made with basil. But we’re improvising, and one of the simplest ways to learn how to improvise is to replace one ingredient with another, similar ingredient. So here’s a list of ingredients for a generic, “traditional” pesto:

• 2 cups basil leaves
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons pine nuts
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese

And here’s a list of ingredients for a more improvisational pesto:

• Leafy green stuff
• Garlic
• Oil
• Nuts
• Hard, crumbly cheese
• One lemon

Notice two important aspects of the second list: I’m not overly fussed about which greens, nuts, oil, or cheese I’m using, and I haven’t specified how much of anything to use. We simply begin with the knowledge that pesto is mostly leaves. The other ingredients are the supporting cast. So if you only have 2 tablespoons of cilantro left, pesto is pointless.

From there, use what you want. The first list of ingredients is helpful if you’re not sure of the proportions: mostly leaves, a decent amount of cheese, enough oil to make it saucy, and some garlic and nuts. Ultimately though, you need to taste your sauce. And smell it. And look at it. Your senses are your best guide when you’re improvising in the kitchen. All of them. When I pay very little attention to the time when I’m cooking; I decide when it’s time for the next step by sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound, and so should you.

I prefer using a molcajete or large mortar and pestle to make my pesto. It gives you more control over the recipe. I start by toasting the nuts (I’ve used walnuts, almonds, cashews, and pine nuts in the past). Do this by pouring a palmful or two of nuts into a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Shake the pot about every 30 seconds; you want to toast the nuts as evenly as possible. They’re done when they’ve become darker and smell toasted.

Grind the toasted nuts with your mortar and pestle. Add the garlic – I usually use 5 o 6 cloves because the wife and I love garlic – and a generous pinch of salt. Grind that into a paste. Next add your leaves. I have made pesto with basil, cilantro, arugula, kale, and spinach. The one thing that never varies, regardless of the leaves, is that you add them a little at a time. Once a batch has been mostly ground, add another batch. Cilantro leaves aren’t very big; you can include the stems as long as they aren’t too thick, and as long as you grind them well. Never include the kale stems.

After you’ve successfully ground all your greens, add your cheese. Keep the cheese in roughly the proportion of the “traditional” recipe (about 1/4 the amount of cheese as leaves), but ultimately it’s up to your taste. Honestly, I love parmesan cheese, so that’s the only cheese I have every used in my pesto. Then add enough oil to make it a sauce instead of a pile of ground up bits. I’ve used extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, hemp oil, safflower oil, and walnut oil in my pestos. Add salt and pepper to taste. We’ll talk about salt and its role in deliciousness in another post.

Finally, add the zest of a whole lemon, and about half the freshly squeezed juice of said lemon.

When I make pesto, it’s usually to use up leftover herbs. Since it’s a way to avoid food waste, I use whatever substitutes for the other ingredients that I already have in my cupboard. So next time you go grocery shopping, pick up some leafy green stuff and try throwing together your version of pesto!