Pistou à la Tess

A versatile French green condiment that will make your life a lot better. Promise.

A Kindred108 first!

Hi friends,

This is the very first guest post on K108. Tess Brown-Lavoie is a poet, a teacher of literature and writing at Pratt Institute, and author of Lite Year— 2019 winner of the Fence Modern Poets Series.

Tess co-founded Sidewalk Ends Farm in 2011 in Providence, Rhode Island, and was recently the Anne Waldman Fellow at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School. Tess lives in Brooklyn and studies with me at Jaya Kula.

For your description2 — a poem by Tess

Many Jaya Kula community members are great cooks. Tess is one of ‘em. Thanks for sharing, Tess!

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

Pistou ~ a sauce for life

Pistou is a French condiment made with any number of greens, garlic, salt, and high-quality olive oil.

What can you do with Pistou? I literally always have this in the fridge.

• Dollop on salads of all kinds or whisk into salad dressing.

• Add to bowls of vegetables, grains, and proteins such as tofu, egg or whatever you please.

• Wrap into “handhelds” such as tacos, burritos, lettuce wraps, or vegetables and grains in rice paper wraps or even nori (onigiri-style).

• Float on the surface of boring vegetable soup to brighten the flavor.

• Fry an egg, or really anything in it.

• Coat meats with pistou before baking.

• Sneak into to other sauces to complexify and depthify them.

Your always-adaptable pistou recipe

Never experience sauce stagnancy!

Parsley is my go-to herb, but you can use basil, cilantro, dill, arugula, or any other green herbs to change up the flavor. Basil is most traditional.

And if you're part of a CSA, pistou is the best way to use herbs if they're piling up in your fridge. You can just throw any herbs in the blender with garlic, olive oil, and salt and it'll be really delicious and will preserve the herbs so they don't wilt and depress you!

Ingredients - only 4

• One or two bunches of a green herb—as much as you can stuff in a jar or blender

• Several cloves of garlic (depending on your taste!). I like four for a regular bunch of herbs.

• 2 tsp salt or to taste

• Cover with high-quality olive oil

Instruction - only 1

1. Puree all the ingredients together using a blender, food processor, or immersion blender.

The end. Except for the P.S.

P.S. It’s also gorgeous to chop the garlic and herbs on top of a pile of salt for a more rough-hewn slash rustic version.

P.P.S. Some fun optional additions: ground toasted hazelnuts or almonds, toasted ground pumpkin seeds, capers, grated cheese.

Store in the fridge (for like two weeks?), or freeze in ice cube trays and use at your leisure.

And now. . . (drumroll) more things you can make with pistou

1. Salad dressing

This is my go to salad dressing. I’m using the term “salad” broadly here to include greens with like a pile of warm rice in it or a whole cooked sweet potato or avocado or however you want to make it more hearty and delicious or even like a chopped salad with things like cabbage or grated carrots or boiled beets or … literally somebody stop me... 🤣

Ingredients

• ½ c pistou

• ½ c olive oil

• ½ c acid combo (I usually do half lemon juice half split between balsamic and apple cider vinegar but if you want to simplify just choose one acid)

• Salt to taste (Salt, miso, tamari—Don't be shy! Using enough salt is crucial to it being delicious.)

Fun options: nutritional yeast, tahini, sesame seeds, honey, chili flakes/chili oil, mustard, anchovies.

Instructions

1. Shake, whisk, or otherwise mix everything in a jar.

2. Pour all over your bowl and toss it.

2. Pistou-empowered peanut sauce

This peanut sauce permutation is good for noodles, or for a bowl of rice with steamed or roasted vegetables and tofu or and egg, or as a dipping sauce for umm basically anything. “Anything” is theme here.

Ingredients

• Big spoonful of pistou (Cilantro pistou is bomb in peanut sauce, parsley is good too.)

• 2 cloves of garlic minced on top of salt (This makes the garlic disperse better in the sauce.)

• Big spoonful of peanut butter or tahini

• Big spoonful of miso

• Toasted sesame oil

• Tamari

• Splash of apple cider vinegar

• Chili oil (see below) or any kind of hot sauce. Sambal is great in this, but really dealers choice.

Instructions

1. Put the pistou/garlic, nut butter, and miso into a bowl.

2. Mix in sesame oil, tamari, and enough warm water to make the sauce less thick so that it can spread all over your noodles or rice or vegetables.

3. Adjust saltiness by adding more tamari or miso or salt.

4. Add chili oil/hot sauce to taste.

3. Coconut pistou sauce

This is incredible on a noodles or rice bowl sitch.

Ingredients

• 1 can coconut milk

• 1 big spoonful pistou (especially if made with basil, thai basil, or cilantro)

• 2 cloves garlic minced on a little salt mound

• 1-2 tablespoons lime juice (or lemon if that's what you have)

• 1 tablespoon tamari or miso or miso-tamari

• 1 tablesppon toasted sesame oil

• Salt to taste

• Chili oil OR a fresh hot pepper, minced (dealers choice)

• Add a spoonful of honey and/or minced ginger if you want and/or keffir lime leaves.

Instructions

1. Put a can of coconut milk into a bowl or jar.

2. Add a big spoonful of pistou.

3. Add minced garlic, minced hot pepper, lime juice, tamari, toasted sesame oil, and stir together.

4. You can add some honey to sweeten.

5. Add salt to taste, and if you have chili oil, it will taste so good and also look nice in the top of the sauce.

4. Crunchy chili oil with Szechuan peppercorns

This doesn't have to be refrigerated. If you put it into liquidy sauces, it’ll be crunchy at first and then the fried garlic and onions will soften—which is a different texture but still adds really yummy flavor.

Ingredients

• 1 cup fried onions or shallots

• ½ cup fried garlic

• ½ cup sesame seeds

• ¼ cup Szechuan peppercorns

• ½ cup chili flakes (or less)

• 2 tsp salt

• ½ cup toasted sesame oil

• 2 cups oil of your choosing (I use olive oil)

Instructions

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

2. Mix the sesame oil in and then cover the rest of the dry stuff with the other kind of oil.

3. Let marinate at least overnight.

4. Once it marinates for a while, use the oil to cook with and/or scoop out the crunchy stuff to use as a standalone condiment or add it to another sauce and create something more flavorful and spicy.

Download the recipes!

Tess Pistou Original Version

84.3KB ∙ PDF file

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Download

Tess Pistou Kindred 108 Version

3.93MB ∙ PDF file

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Remember: Everything works. Anything goes.

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