Author Notes
The pesto makes a great pasta sauce thinned with pasta water, or thinned with more oil and acid it makes a tasty salad dressing. Truly the possibilities are limitless.
You're just using the strawberry greens in this recipe, you want to have as little fruit as possible attached to the caps. Some may remain as this is certainly a byproduct recipe, but ideally, it will be just the green top, no fruit. Above all else this recipe was developed to find a use for the entirety of a product. Our farmers are our friends and we take the responsibility of using their products very seriously. To waste any part of it, even something widely recognized as "trash" is a disservice to them, and something I cannot bring myself to do.
The GA olive oil is the closest olive oil to NC that we've found produced. To keep with our concept we buy it from a local olive oil shop. With its notes of fresh grass and pepper, it's obviously the perfect oil for a pesto such as this one.
We use OBX Sea Salt. Amy Huggins Gaw and her husband John do such amazing things with salt on the coast of NC, using fire to help the salt evaporate. It has such a rich umami flavor, way more to it than just "salty". It's the perfect way to get just that little bit extra out of almost any recipe. —Clark Barlowe
Ingredients
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36 grams
parsley (stems included)
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50 grams
whole ramps (garlic can be substituted seasonally)
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72 grams
strawberry tops
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100 grams
Parmesan-style cheese
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6 grams
fresh whole cayenne
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80 grams
black walnuts
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385 milliliters
(1 3/4 cups) Georgia olive oil
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4 grams
salt
Directions
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Remove rind from cheese and cut in 1/4-inch blocks.
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Combine parsley, ramps, strawberry tops, cheese blocks, cayenne, and black walnuts and grind through a meat grinder with the smallest possible die setting.
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Thoroughly mix ground ingredients in a metal mixing bowl and combine with olive oil and salt.
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Reserve pesto in plastic containers and store in refrigerator or freezer depending on desired shelf life. It keeps for one week in the refrigerator or one year in the freezer.
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