Celery Almond Pesto

   So ever since I mentioned the celery almond pesto from Wednesday's post I haven't been able to get it off my mind. It intrigued me.

Celery?

Almond?

Pesto?

Really????

        Ok fine so I had to try it soon. It calls for the usual players in most pesto recipes: leafy green something,cheese,garlic,nuts and olive oil,but oh buddy this was no ordinary pesto. It is good. Really good. Let's dive in!

    I snipped off all of the celery leaves at the thinnest part of the stalk. The bunch of celery yielded over 4 cups of celery leaves,more than enough for the recipe. The leaves are beautiful and HUGE ! Little did I now how much flavor those leaves packed,good heavens.

    The other ingredient that took me a back were the almonds. Almonds have a subtle but bold flavor all their own and they met the strong flavors of the celery leaves nose to nose. The recipe called for blanched almonds, all I had in the freezer were whole,skin-on raw almonds ,so that is what I went with. I quickly toasted the almonds in a dry skillet until the smelled nutty,always a sign that they are good and toasty.Toasting nuts really does give them a chance to show off  all of their flavors. The act of toasting the nuts heats up the natural oils just hiding away in the nuts.

I put all of the ingredients in the food processor and let the magic happen. Taste test #1 yielded a REALLY BOLD pesto that was peppery,a tiny bit spicy and balanced out by the smoothness of the almonds,but something was missing.

Huh...

Well it dawned on my like a ray of sunshine,well it was something yellow : A LEMON!   I , 99% of the time,put the juice of 1/2 a lemon in my batch of pesto. It brightens up all of the flavors and really brings them together. Lemon is sort of the friend that kid that gets along with everybody and brightens up the room when they walk in it.
Taste test #2 : And well thats exactly what the pesto needed,so ta-da! Celery Almond Pesto is finished,hooray! Mystery to me no more.
    Now the hunt is on what to pair it with,maybe a nice flank steak grilled up and slice thinly,ooohhhh maybe with a big ol' baked potato on the side. Well a girl can dream,but for now the recipe for this wonderful pesto !

Celery Almond Pesto
adapted from shesimmers.com

Ingredients:
4 cups of fresh celery leaves\
1/3 cup raw,skin-on almonds,toasted
juice of half a lemon
1/3 grated Parmesan
2 garlic cloves,peeled
1 tsp salt
3/4 olive oil
Directions:
Put all ingredients in the bowl of your food processor,pulse a number of times to break everything up into a paste. Then with the machine running ,drizzle in the olive oil until the pesto has reached your desired consistency. ( I like mine a little thin,but chunky enough to served as a dip.)