Courgette Pesto Flatbread
This recipe is a great example of how much the way I cook has changed in the last year. The major difference now is that I cook to minimize the amount of food we waste. In this case, lunch made from a variety of things that, each on their own, weren’t interesting but became much more than the sum of their parts when working together. When I think about how I used to cook what strikes me is how worried I used to be about the outcome and how little I actually thought about the ingredients involved. I was paying so much attention to the end result I wasn’t spending enough time paying attention to what goes INTO the outcome.
I’m learning that the more you know your ingredients the more you’re able to create something from scratch like a musician who can hear the music in their head before it’s ever written down. When you know what a courgette does in the oven and what pesto tastes like and how it will work with a cheese like ricotta it isn’t a far stretch to improvise with what you know and end up in the neighborhood of something good. Sometimes you end up with something great.
There are several examples of food waste focused recipes on this site that, while written as recipes, are more generally formulas for how to use things that are in the fridge or the cupboard. This recipe is no different. It started because I had a block of puff pastry in the freezer. Then I looked and realized the ricotta cheese wanted to be used. There was some leftover prepared pesto sauce from an earlier dinner that would work and while I could have used any number of vegetables, I thought the courgette would work well. From there it was put it together, cross your fingers a bit and know that you can do a decent amount of doctoring just before something goes onto the table if it truly comes out boring or terrible.
As this is a recipe I will write down the ingredients and the steps below but as you’re reading it, think about what you have, what you would change, what you’re curious about. Then step into YOUR kitchen, look around and make some magic. If it looks like this when you’re done, great. If it looks (and tastes!) like your own thing, even better.
