Basil Pesto

This fresh, vibrant basil pesto is a weekly staple in my home; homemade pesto pairs with just about everything and upgrades the most simple dish with bursts of nutrition. Sweet Basil is an aromatic herb which adds more than just flavour.

Basil contains good amounts of Vitamin K and Vitamin A and provides both anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties. Combine this with the addition of essential fatty acids from monounsaturated olive oil and pine nuts and you have a balanced nutritional flavour bomb to enhance any number of dishes. My favourites include a tablespoon of pesto folded into an omlette for breakfast; pesto drizzled over sliced avocado and served with a fresh rocket salad or simply as a filling in a baked sweet potato for lunch. 

Traditionally a pesto contains a grated hard cheese such as pecorino. To keep this dish vegan I omit the cheese but may sometimes include a tablespoon of Nutritional Yeast. If I am serving this pesto as a family dish with fresh pasta I add the cheese seperately on the table and let the children help themselves. Mostly it gets devoured by breakfast with eggs + avo x

 

Ingredients

100g fresh basil

100ml extra virgin olive oil

2 tbsp pine nuts (these may be raw or flash pan roasted)

pinch of salt and pepper

Method

If you have a blender or mixer you can simple add all the ingredients and mix together simply by the click of a button. On slow day... by which I mean those lovely calm days where jobs in the kitchen take on gentle and meditative edge, then I recommend you get out a heavy pestly and mortar, crush the pine nuts to a fine sand and then add the basil, watching as the aromatic flavour releases from the leaves, drizzle over the oil a little at a time as the pesto comes together, and gently season with salt and pepper. I love to store my pesto in old fasioned mason jars in the fridge.