vegan pesto.

As I mentioned in my last post, this weekend we finally made some pesto sauce. We got a whole bunch of basil from the Farmer's Market and incorporated it with some from our own basil plant. It takes a lot of Basil!!!

What you'll need:

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts, or walnuts. {We found that Trader Joe's was the cheapest option for pine nuts}
2-3 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon of salt, {we used sea salt}
1 cup of packed fresh basil leaves
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon of vegan parmesan (optional)
1/3 cup of parsley (optional)

What you do (scroll past pictures):

1. Toast the pine nuts on medium heat until they turned a golden brownish color.

2. Add the nuts, garlic and half of the olive oil in a food processor/chopper and pulse for about a minute. You want the nuts to be fully chopped. 

3. Stir the contents of the processor and add your basil leaves and the rest of the olive oil. Pulse for another few minutes until all ingredients are pureed together. 

4. Taste the pesto sauce and modify to your liking. We played around with the salt, garlic and vegan parmesan cheese a little bit until we were happy with the end results. We even did one batch adding parsley as an ingredient. It highly depends on your personal tastes which means this is a hard recipe to screw up!

5. Depending on how much basil you have, you might need to do this in a few batches. Transfer the first batch to a bowl and continue until all you basil is used. Once finished, store pesto sauce in an air tight container. It should last up to a week in the fridge, or you might want to freeze a portion for later!