A Simple Sauce with Many Uses
Recipes for Oregano Pesto and Roasted Rockfish Fillets (with Oregano Pesto)
Welcome to Buona Domenica, a weekly newsletter of Italian home cooking and baking. I’m a journalist, cooking teacher, occasional tour guide, and author of eight cookbooks on Italian cuisine.
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This week’s newsletter features two recipes for all subscribers: Oregano Pesto, and Roasted Rockfish with Oregano Pesto.
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I’ve only recently started to appreciate oregano. It’s not an herb I grew up with—my mom rarely used it in cooking and the same has been true for me. For the longest time I associated it with bad pizza and mediocre sauce from a jar. I’ve always preferred to cook with sage, rosemary, and marjoram—oregano’s more floral cousin. Also, basil and mint.
While on vacation in Puglia with my family a few years ago, I was struck by how prevalent the herb was there. It was everywhere, growing wild in the hills, and displayed in dried bunches hanging upside-down at produce stands. In aroma and taste, it was so different from the harsh pizza-parlor-shaker-oregano flavor I was used to, much sweeter, and far less aggressive. It enhanced, rather than overpowered, the dishes it was in—stuffed vegetables, roast fish, stewed lamb.
A couple of springs ago, I stuck a seedling of Origanum vulgare, var. hirtum, or Greek oregano (the most common variety) in my herb garden and since then it has been my best performer, thriving in spite of my benign neglect. Last month, I looked out my kitchen window to find that a giant green mound of it was already flourishing in my otherwise paltry spring herb garden. I went out and snipped just a few sprigs, not wanting to injure something that was just springing back to life.
Turns out, I needn’t have worried. Oregano, a perennial herb, is resilient, meaning you can cut back most of the whole mound and it will make a comeback a few weeks later. I learned this from (where else) the internet. In fact, this article was packed with helpful tips for how to grow and harvest what is apparently the world’s most accommodating herb. Newly emboldened, I marched back outside with my kitchen scissors and before I knew it, I had gathered a large bouquet.
I had more than I knew what to do with, so I sent out a query on my Buona Domenica chat space for paid subscribers.
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I’d like to give a hat tip to Diane, who responded to my oregano query with two excellent suggestions. One was to make an herb basting brush for grilling. Another was to mix together a batch of Herbes Salées, a French-Canadian seasoning made by finely chopping herbs and aromatic vegetables (carrots, celery, onion) and preserving them with salt. The mixture is stored in the fridge and used to season soups, stews, sauces, and other dishes. This elicited a “D’oh” from me, as Herbes Salées sounds a lot like the pesto Abruzzese in my book Preserving Italy. Like Herbes Salées, it’s a raw mixture, not meant to be tossed with pasta, but rather to be used as a flavor base in cooking—a pre-made battuto.
In addition to those two uses, I decided to also make a batch of pesto, which would allow me to use up all the oregano I had cut—it takes a lot of oregano leaves to fill a measuring cup. I used my basic basil pesto as a template, subbing in the tender oregano leaves as well as some flat-leaf parsley for the basil. I was skeptical, but you know what? It’s really lovely. It has a bit of a bite to it, not only from the oregano but also because I used walnuts in place of pine nuts. But it’s also gentler than I expected, floral and fragrant.
The first thing that came to mind when I tasted a small spoonful was: roasted fish. I knew this pesto would go beautifully with simple roasted or grilled fish. I’m sharing the recipes for both the oregano pesto and the roasted rockfish fillets that I made as a vehicle for the pesto. Chesapeake Bay rockfish, also known as striped bass, is meaty and mild and local to the D.C. area, where I live. You can substitute any good meaty white fish—cod, snapper, halibut, walleye (which I made just the other night), not to mention scallops and shrimp; or whatever happens to be local where you are.
The pesto also makes a great finishing sauce for grilled chicken thighs or kabobs, beef tagliata, and lamb chops. It has plenty of other uses, too:
Toss with roasted or grilled sweet peppers
Stir it into potato salad
Use it to garnish a plate of mozzarella or burrata, or—heresy—a Caprese salad
Dollop it on pizza straight out of the oven, so it sort of melts into the topping. The Sicilian-style veggie-loaded pizza from last week comes to mind.
Tell me: how would you use a fresh batch of oregano pesto?
RECIPE: Oregano Pesto
This riff on classic basil pesto is a surprise—sweeter and more floral than you might imagine, but with a welcome bite. It combines a mix of tender oregano leaves, flat-leaf parsley, and walnuts, which contribute richness and a tinge of bitterness. Use this pesto as a sauce for pasta, a pizza topping, or as a sauce for grilled or roasted fish, meat, or vegetables.
If your oregano leaves are tender, you can make this pesto in a mortar, but a food processor is much quicker and, to my mind, the results are just as good.
Makes about 1 cup
INGREDIENTS
1 packed cup (1 ounce/28 g) tender oregano leaves
1 scant cup (1/2 ounce/14 g) fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
Generous 1/3 cup (40 g) walnut pieces
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon fine salt, or to taste
Extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 packed cup (40 g) freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
2 tablespoons freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Put the herbs, garlic, walnuts, lemon zest, and salt in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and pulse to chop everything coarsely. Drizzle in 1/2 cup (65 g) olive oil and process to form a thick, spoonable paste. Add the cheeses and process briefly. The pesto should mound softly onto a spoon. If it’s too thick, drizzle in a little more oil and process briefly.
2. Spoon the pesto into a container and smooth out the top. Pour enough olive oil on top to cover the pesto; this will keep it from turning black from oxidization. Leave the pesto at room temperature if you’re planning to use it within a few hours; otherwise refrigerate it for up to 5 days. Bring it to room temperature before using.
Cook’s Note: To loosen the pesto to make it “saucy” rather than pasty, stir in a little more oil.
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RECIPE: Roasted Rockfish with Oregano Pesto
Chesapeake Bay rockfish—also called Atlantic striped bass—is a mild-flavored fish with an appealing meaty texture and mild, buttery flavor. Its habitat runs from Canada to Florida, and it is prevalent in the mid-Atlantic (it is Maryland’s official state fish).
Roasting rockfish in the oven is one of the easiest ways to prepare it. And it leaves with you with endless flavor options. I sometimes scatter a mixture of chopped olives, roasted peppers, tomatoes, and capers over it. Other times I sprinkle it with seasoned breadcrumbs.
In this recipe, I’ve given it the simplest treatment—drizzling the fish with a little melted butter, olive oil, and lemon juice, and roasting at high heat. As soon it comes out of the oven, I spoon dollops of oregano pesto on top. The sauce melts a bit from the residual heat, giving the fish a welcome punch of herby flavor.
If rockfish is not available where you are, substitute snapper, cod, whitefish such as walleye, or even salmon. If you’re on the West coast, use Pacific rockfish, aka Rock cod or Pacific snapper. Like its Atlantic counterpart, it is a mild white-fleshed fish that takes well to roasting.
Makes 4 servings
INGREDIENTS
2 large or 4 medium rockfish fillets; 1 1/2 pounds (680 g) total
Fine salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
A squeeze of lemon juice—about 1 tablespoon
Oregano pesto, at room temperature—anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 cup
Lemon slices and oregano sprigs for garnish
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Position a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat the oven to 400° F (200° C). Pat the fillets dry and arrange them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle the fillets with salt and pepper.
2. Combine the olive oil and butter in a small bowl and microwave briefly to melt the butter. Stir in the lemon juice. Pour this mixture over the fillets and use a pastry brush to make sure the fish is well coated.
3. Slide the fish into the oven and roast for 10 to 15 minutes, until the fish is cooked through.
4. Transfer the fillets to a serving dish and spoon the pesto over them, spreading it around a bit with the back of a spoon. Garnish the plate with oregano sprigs and lemon slices and serve.
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Alla prossima,
Domenica
It’s funny I only ever use oregano dried ( and like Victoria mentioned, I have found it dried on the branch—both from Sicily and from Greece—the flavor is so great!). I look forward to trying this on fish it sounds delicious.
You’re inspiring me to want to try growing some oregano again just to give this pesto a try. I’ve also had some disappointing experiences with dried oregano—and other dried herbs for that matter. Tender spring herbs, a bit milder flavored, are the way to go. Hope my gardening skills are up to the task!