My husband and I LOVE pesto. Especially Wegman's pesto, which is a grocery store chain in the Northeast that makes awesome pesto. We use at least one jar a week, sometimes more. Pasta, pizza, potato salad, quinoa salad - we put it on a lot of things. In the past, I have never had good luck with making my own. It just didn't taste as good as store bought pesto, plus I never wanted to spend the money to buy pine nuts. They are so darn expensive! Last week my husband grabbed a bumper load of basil at our CSA pick-up. I did not have pine nuts or even walnuts, so I thought I would experiment. I had nutritional yeast and since that tastes a bit nutty, I decided to use that in place of nuts. I wouldn't say it is fantastic for eating straight out of the jar (something the little babe and I occasionally do with the store bought stuff), but the pesto tasted really good on pizza.
Nut Free Pesto
1. I started with a whole colander full of basil. After washing and picking off the leaves, I had a whole food processor bowl's worth. I don't have an exact measurement, so you can check out the photo to see how many basil leaves I used.
2. Process the leaves until a paste starts to form. Add extra virgin olive oil. I forgot to measure, but think it was probably about 1/2 - 3/4 of a cup. You can add more later, so don't over do it now. Wait to see what the consistency is like.
3. Add a heaping 1/2 cup of Pecorino Romano or Parmesan. You can add more cheese if you like.
4. Add 1/2 cup of nutritional yeast and 1 teaspoon of salt. My husband said it could use even more salt, but I stopped at 1 teaspoon.
5. Puree until smooth, adding more olive oil as you think is needed.
We used our pesto for a Pesto Three Cheese Pizza with heirloom tomatoes from the CSA.
How do you like to eat pesto?
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