Recipe featuring pesto and roasted grapes

Chicken (or "Chicken;" or Tofu; or Zucchini; or even Paneer) Pesto Salad with Roasted Grapes

(this makes about 4 servings)

• two entire (cooked) boneless, skinless chicken breasts (or four portions of unseasoned fake chicken product, or cooked tofu, etc.), chilled or at room temperature
• 1 smallish red onion, coarsely chopped, roasted and cooled (see below)
• 1 cup (more is ok) seedless grapes, roasted and cooled (see below) - I think that the red ones look cooler, but the green ones work just fine too
• [optional: cubes of fresh mozarella or paneer]
• 1 large pile of fresh basil leaves, thick stringy stems removed, and washed and dried (oh, say, a food-processor bowl full, loosely packed)
• 3-4 cloves garlic, peeled & cut in half
• walnut-sized chunk of hard Italian cheese (e.g. parmesan or romano, etc.), broken into smaller pieces if you're using the food processor, otherwise grated very fine
• a couple of handfuls of walnuts or pine nuts, toasted briefly & cooled
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper

I've never tried making this with tofu, but you could cut some tofu into cubes and cook them in a bit of oil, either in a skillet (use more oil) or on the bottom shelf of the oven (just enough oil to coat the cubes) for about 30-40 minutes; the goal is to make them sort of chewy and less crumbly. They sell pre-roasted tofu, though it's usually seasoned with something.

There are some good fake chicken products on the market nowadays; the best ones for this recipe would be the gluten-based kind (e.g. seitan, although it might be a bit on the chewy side) that comes refrigerated in sort of a shrink-wrap package. The canned stuff is often too salty, and the frozen kinds that I've tried are the wrong texture for this dish. Just avoid the kind that is pre-marinated in ginger-soy sauce, etc. It's yummy, but not so good with the pesto.

You could also use chunks of grilled zucchini or patty-pan squash (cooked through, but not soggy or mushy) if you don't want dead animals in your lunch. What you want is something firm and dense enough to hold its shape, with a mild flavor that won't compete with the pesto flavor, and that contrasts with the texture & color of the grapes. I think eggplant might be too weird, but I could see trying it with paneer (see photo) or some kind of fresh cheese thing, esp. if you're serving it as a side dish.

If you're using chicken, just brush it with oil, sprinkle it with a bit of salt & pepper and grill it or broil it in the oven with the grapes & onions (see next step). I often grill a couple of extras & toss them in the fridge and/or use leftovers if I have them. Chop into generous bite-sized chunks.

Place the onion & grapes in a bowl and toss with some olive oil (enough so that everything is coated with it, but no more), sprinkle with salt & pepper, and spread it all out on a cookie sheet. This is where you don't want pools of olive oil all over the place or it might scorch. Put the cookie sheet on the top shelf of a pretty hot (425F or so) oven until the grapes start to pop and the onions are getting soft. Times vary. Start checking after 10 minutes and shake or stir as necessary.

Purists may want to keep the grapes and onions separate so that each can roast for the optimal time period, but I'm personally not going to get two cookie sheets dirty if I'm the one doing the dishes.

You can, incidentally, do that part in a toaster oven if you're making a smaller quantity, or if your oven doesn't work.

The next part is where you make the pesto. It's actually more of a pesto-flavored dressing; it's much runnier than regular pesto. If you don't want to bother making the pesto, or maybe you have some that you made already, just take about 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of it and stir in enough olive oil to make it the texture of salad dressing.

If you don't have a food processor, just chop (and chop and chop) the basil & garlic & nuts together with a chef's knife, or smash it with a mortar & pestle, or do whatever it is that you usually do to make pesto, then grate the cheese (very fine) and combine it thoroughly with the basil & garlic. Then put it in a bowl and add olive oil until it is smooth and sort of pourable.

Julie suggested in the comments recently that one should dry-roast the unpeeled garlic cloves in a skillet before using them in pesto. I've never tried this, but it seems plausible, and Julie is really smart. She's a librarian. Toasting the garlic lightly seems like an especially good idea in the late winter/early spring, when last year's garlic starts getting ready to sprout and is kind of bitter and a little too strong. You should definitely toast the walnuts or pine nuts and let them cool before using them in the pesto.

You can toast nuts in the oven on a dry (ungreased) cookie sheet, on the top shelf (temperature isn't really critical), stirring occasionally to toast evenly. But I like to use a heavy cast-iron skillet: spread the nuts evenly on the bottom of the pan (no oil, etc. in the pan) and turn on the heat - way up high until the pan is good and hot. Keep stirring the nuts so they toast evenly. Don't let them burn, or even darken very much. They'll release some oil as they heat up, and they scorch easily. Turn the heat down if they seem to be heating up too fast. They're done when they're very golden brown (pine nuts) and smell all toasty-delicious.

The nuts will hold heat after you take them off the burner (and so will the cast iron pan!), so I usually dump them into a shallow stainless steel bowl and toss them a while to help them cool off.

But back to the pesto. If you're using a food processor, please be sure you have washed and dried the basil. Why do I care? you ask. If there is water in the basil, and you are adding the oil while the food processor is going (which is half the fun!), the oil and water will congeal. Emuslify. Whatever they call it. In any case, you'll end up with what looks sort of like basil-flavored crisco, and you'll have to add more oil than you really need in order to make it pourable. If you do find this happening, just process in short bursts and take your time.

Anyway, you'll be using that chopping blade, the one that looks kind of like the satellite photo of a tropical storm. Fill the food processor bowl with the basil, the garlic, and the cheese and process it for a bit. Add a little oil to start with if necessary, just to get things going -- and then when it's all pretty evenly chopped, leave the thing running and pour olive oil very slowly down the chute thingy of the food processor.

Fun, no?

How much olive oil to use can vary. I've never even attempted to measure it. I'm going to guess that it's about half a cup, but it could be more if you used a lot of basil. It is possible to use too much, so stop every once in a while and stir it with a spoon to assess the texture. It should be pourable, but less runny than, say, olive oil. If you've used too much, add more basil (spinach will work OK too if you're out of basil).

Some folks like to add salt to their pesto. I don't. I find that the cheese is plenty salty enough, and the chicken & grapes & onions already have salt & pepper on them.

Once you've got everything prepared and cooled, put it all in a big bowl and stir in the pesto dressing, a bit at a time, to coat everything evenly and generously, but not to the point where it's all drippy. Add salt & pepper to taste.

You might not need all the pesto stuff. Save the surplus and use it like you would use pesto, or add more basil, etc. to it to make more of the regular kind of pesto. Also, if you have any of the chicken salad left, you might want to add a bit more of the dressing and/or a splash of lemon juice to freshen it up the next day.

This isn't the sort of chicken salad you would make into a sandwich, necessarily (although you can, and I have). You could serve it stuffed into a slightly warmed pita, with some shredded romaine lettuce. Or on a bed of some kind of greens. If you like those godawful "wrap" things, go ahead and wrap this beautiful salad in an enormous spinach tortilla & hide it from everyone. Hell, you can put sprouts in it for all I care.

I think it's especially nice with a Spanish or Portuguese white wine, nice & cold & refreshing.

I sure hope Julie remembers to bring some basil for me Friday. [Update: She did!]