Radish Pesto Recipe

Here's a simple pesto made with radish greens. Radish greens have a strong, peppery flavor, which adds an interesting dimension to traditional pesto. If it's too strong for you, you could mix it with more traditional greens, such as basil or spinach.

We grow our own radishes, and it's really wonderful to be able to use all the fruits of our labor. Radishes are one of the easiest and fastest maturing crops that can be planted in the garden. The "French Breakfast" variety used in this recipe only require about 22 days to mature. Here in California, that works out to at least four or five harvests per season. So expect to see more radish recipes as long as it's sunny out!

The longer you leave the radishes in the ground, the spicier they get and the hairier the leaves will become. The leaves are still edible, but, the texture may become unpleasant, which is why I decided to put these greens to use in a pesto. In France, there are several soups made with radish greens. Cooking the greens, in general, will mellow them out a bit.

Red Pesto Pasta Salad Recipe

Pasta salad is an easy dish for quick on-the-go meals. For this version, I used radiatore pasta because its unique shape that traps the sauce into the corkscrew-style curls. The sauce is a colorful bright red pesto made of sun-dried tomatoes, roasted red bell pepper, eggplant and pine nuts.

This is a perfect main course or side dish for picnics or summer parties. This time, I let the pesto pasta salad chill in the refrigerator for our family’s road trip to Oregon. We're leaving in the wee hours of the morning today and will arrive in Ashland for Oregon's annual Shakespeare Festival. We're looking forward to the visit! I will try to post about it and share our experience with you.