Great with pasta or noodles and so many other foods. Also useful as a spread on crackers or bread or as a dip for crudite or good corn chips/nachos. Pesto is versatile, but also so nutritious, tasty, quick & easy. This pesto has the vitality of sprouting nuts or seeds in addition!
Preparation before the time: Pre-soak seeds/nuts – a couple of hours before time of using
Prep time: 10mins
Cook time: None
Ingredients
2 to 3 cups basil (other green herbs work beautifully too eg parsley, coriander leaf, celery leaf, rocket)
½ cup pre-soaked & rinsed seeds (eg pumpkin or sunflower) or nuts (eg walnuts, almonds or macadamias)
½ cup parmesan(or other hard) cheese ½ cup feta OR nutritional yeast, to taste
½ cup of olive oil, or to taste
1 or 2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
Salt and pepper to taste
1 to 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Lemon zest, to taste (optional)
Method
Put all ingredients into a food processor, using only half the oil at first, and pulse until everything is well chopped but not blended – you want some texture, the sort that would occur if you used a pestle and mortar for making this sauce. This takes about 10 short pulses.
Add the rest of the oil gradually, until you get the consistency you want.
Couldn’t be quicker/easier!
Notes
I store my pesto in a bottle in the fridge or freezer. I like to dribble a little oil over the top once in the bottle – this maintains the brilliant green colour of the peso and stops the top layer from dulling and keeps it fresh.
Good on mushrooms, pasta, bread or crackers, as a dip or on potatoes, steaks, and more!
No (or not enough) fresh green herbs at hand? Substitute fully or partially with frozen peas (a great standby to keep in the freezer).
Proportions of all ingredients can be varied according to taste
I double, even triple this recipe and freeze the extra: see last photo below
What makes this dish special?
1. Garlic enhances iron, cholesterol, fat and carb metabolism.
2. Enhancing iron metabolism is especially important for vegetarians:
Iron from vegetarian sources needs some help as vegetarian iron takes a few extra steps before our body can use it (in comparison to iron from animal sources). Basil and all dark green leafy vegetables are excellent vegetarian sources of iron, and so pesto, using basil (and other dark green leafies) paired with garlic is a wonderful combination for iron metabolism.
3. Soaked nuts and seeds are a wonderful source of protein for vegetarians and vegans: Nutrients and protein are far more bioavailable in soaked (i.e. sprouting) nuts and seeds as opposed to unsoaked seeds.
4. Any nut or seed generally works in pesto
5. Pesto is valuable for us all - vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike:
We all need the nutrition from a pesto such as this, not just vegetarians. For instance the chlorophyll in dark green leafies helps to prevent disease/premature aging; garlic helps with cholesterol, fat and carb metabolism. So as useful on that pasta bowl as on that fatty sirloin!
© Dr Karen Morris
This batch employed some frozen peas, together with fresh green leafy herbs:
Lemon zest: one of life's simple pleasures...
Whenever I can, I add plenty of it to pesto
Emerald green beauty sitting on the fridge shelf, inviting use
One of the many reasons to store food in glass, not plastic - contents beautiful to behold... Others: glass is inert, and so does not impart xenoestrogens (read here and here about them if you wish) into the food, especially important for oil/fat rich foods; eminently recyclable... need I say more?
Stores of my stupidly easy tomato sauce and pesto sitting contentedly in freezer, waiting for their day in the sun :)
As you can see, they have their (frozen) layer of olive oil as topping - keeps them fresh when defrosted and sitting in the fridge awaiting use.
One batch of pesto made with pumpkin seeds (middle bottle), other batch I tried adding black eyed peas (right hand bottle). It was good, but a sloppier, more liquid texture than with nuts/seeds. Next time I'll try adding less oil..
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