Uncle Bert’s Honey Lemon Pesto

I love pesto, but I hate shopping for pine nuts. Sometimes, they can be hard to find and slightly prohibitively expensive. I also love honey roasted peanuts. I LOVE pesto. I am a huge fan of anything with honey and lemons. Did I mention that I LOVE pesto? The smell of fresh basil and crushed garlic in the kitchen gets me charged to start cooking. It’s like a green light for pesto. Oh yeah, I LOVE pesto, just in case you forgot. Greenery and peanuts are a winning combination. I think you already know what’s coming. Pesto is life. Let’s get started…

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup (8 oz) Honey roasted peanuts, crushed with a mortar and pestle. You can use a food processor if you like – but you won’t get the same stress relief.
• 2 tablespoons (1.0 fl. oz) honey
• 3 ounces fresh basil, finely chopped. Use a scale to measure this if you need to.
• 1 ounce freshly chopped rosemary
• Juice and zest of large lemon
• 5 cloves (more if desired) garlic, finely minced
• 2 cups (16 oz) olive oil (preferably Spanish
• 16 oz of fresh (NOT FROZEN) baby spinach, finely chopped and dried in oven at 450 degrees Fahrenheit (232 degrees Celsius)
• 1 teaspoon (0.17 oz) red pepper flakes
• 4 oz (measure with scale if you’re not sure) freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (for best results, grate the cheese yourself with a Microplane)

DIRECTIONS:

• Before you do anything else with your ingredients- make sure that your spinach is completely dried out after chopping. Chop very finely, with a vegetable cleaver, on the largest wooden cutting board in your house.
• Mix all ingredients, in order as listed, in a large refrigerator-safe bowl (preferably with a lid for overnight refrigeration) You can place them in a food processor, if you’re pressed for time. However, you’ll get great results with a whisk (and it’s more fun that way, in my humble opinion)

NOTES:

For even more depth of flavor, you can opt to toast the peanuts before you pound them in the mortar.

This should last a week in the refrigerator if properly covered. I doubt very seriously that it will last that long, as the fragrance will tempt you to pull it out and start cooking…