Bear's Garlic Pesto

Spring is the best time to collect bear's garlic in the forest and make a yummy pesto out of it. For 6 jars of pesto you will need the following:

• a big bowl (diameter approx. 35 cm / 14 inches) full of bear's garlic leafs
• 500 ml / approx. 2.5 cups of olive oil 
• 0.5 kg / approx. 1 pound of grated parmesan cheese
• approx. 30 Almonds
• Salt

Instead of almonds, you can also take pine nuts, but i prefer almonds, since they make the whole paste not so "heavy". To mix everything you only need a hand blender.

Go to the forest and collect a lot of bear's garlic. I took a dog poo bag (a new one :)) and stuffed as much leafs as i could inside. Make sure you take enough! If you have too much, you can still use the leftover bear's garlic for 

• bear's garlic bread with bacon
• bear's garlic mashed potatoes
• bear's garlic risotto

it all tastes awesome! Wash the leafs well with water, and make at least 5 piles. 

Take a hand blender and blend each leaf pile with the grinded parmesan cheese and olive oil. Make sure you take enough olive oil! If its too little, the blender will get stuck and burn through :). The same will happen, if you try to mix all of the leafs and the cheese together :). It's better if you dont blend the leafs for too long, because its said they become bitter after a while. I don't know if that's true, but to be on the safe side...

When all the leafs are mixed, you can "reunite" the 5 portions. Then, blend the almonds and add them to the paste. Take a spoon to stir it and distribute the almonds. Now add salt. It needs quite a lot of salt, so don't worry if you put much more than a table spoon in the paste. To keep the pesto as long as possible, put it into small jars. 

When you filled the jars, make sure you cover the pesto with a lot of olive oil, that way you prevent the pesto from oxidation with the surrounding air. Close the jars, make nice name tags and bring it for your next house warming party! You can eat the pesto with spaghetti or any other type of pasta. I also like to put it into a nice tomato mozarella sandwich or just as a spread onto little toast breads as appetizers...

WARNING: The pesto leaves a very strong garlic taste in your mouth, so if you plan to have an important meeting the next day, postpone your bear's garlic spaghetti.