Winter Green Sauce

Name: Winter Green Sauce
Ingredients: 3 scallions, chopped; Fennel leaves, roughly chopped, enough to make about 1/4 cup; Parsley leaves, roughly chopped, enough to make about 1 cup; 1 garlic clove; Salt; 1/4 cup light olive oil; 1/4 lemon

December 9, 2011

This is a good way to make use of those unnecessarily large bouquets of parsley that we get at our supermarkets, as well as fennel fronds that usually go to waste.

Ingredients

3 scallions, chopped

Fennel leaves, roughly chopped, enough to make about 1/4 cup

Parsley leaves, roughly chopped, enough to make about 1 cup

1 garlic clove

Salt

1/4 cup light olive oil

1/4 lemon

Preparation

Step 1
Put the scallions, fennel leaves, and parsley in the bowl of a food processor or a mini-chopper, and process until finely chopped. Smash the garlic clove, peel it, and chop the flesh. Sprinkle on about 1/4 teaspoon salt, and mash it with the garlic, using the flat of a big knife, smearing it back and forth until you have a paste. Or this can be done with a mortar and pestle. (In fact, the whole sauce can be made with a mortar and pestle—good exercise for your upper-arm muscles, Julia Child would say.)
Step 2
Back to the food processor: Scrape the garlic paste in, and pour in almost all the olive oil and most of the juice of the quarter-lemon. Process again until almost puréed, scraping down the sides as necessary. Stop and taste. Add more salt and a few more drops of lemon juice, if you think they are needed. Transfer the sauce to a small jar, scraping it all out with a rubber spatula, and float the remaining olive oil on top. Refrigerate, and use within a week; otherwise, freeze. If you’re using just a few tablespoons, float more olive oil on top before refrigerating again, to help preserve the color and freshness.

The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. Copyright © 2009 by Judith Jones. Published by Knopf. All Rights Reserved. Judith Jones is senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf. She is the author of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food and the coauthor with Evan Jones (her late husband) of three books: The Book of Bread; Knead It, Punch It, Bake It!; and The Book of New New England Cookery. She also collaborated with Angus Cameron on The L. L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook, and has contributed to Vogue, Saveur, and Gourmet magazines. In 2006, she was awarded the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives in New York City and Vermont.

Ingredients

Preparation

Step 1

Step 2

Recipe notes