Recipe: Wild Garlic Pesto

While out and about from March to July, you might have smelled the strong aromas of wild garlic and wondered what to do with it.

Well the answer of course it to make this vegan friendly pesto! As well as adding it to fresh pasta, this pesto is great on top of plain hummus or, take a frozen cube of pesto and put it inside a chicken breast for a really simple chicken kiev.

You can read my guide to foraging for wild garlic here, so you don’t end up picking the wrong leaves or making any foraging faux-pas.

A simple wild garlic pesto

1 bunch of wild garlic, approximately 20 leaves

100ml of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

20g of fresh basil, I used frozen

50g of pinenuts, toasted

½ teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of pepper

Whiz the ingredients in a food processor, hand blender, nutribullet etc until it’s your desired consistency. Add more oil if you prefer a looser consistency.

Tip:

It’s a great idea to fill an ice tray with the pesto so that you can easily freeze ready to use portions. To do this, add less oil so the pesto creates a thicker paste and when you defrost your cubes of pesto, simply add in some more oil.

Substitutions:

If you don’t have wild garlic near you, or it’s the wrong time of year use the stems of spring onions, the dark green bits, and fresh garlic bulbs (approximately 10 stems and 4 cloves) for a really similar, super zingy pesto.

Cheese mad?

Just because the recipe is vegan doesn’t mean you can’t add in some cheese to the recipe. Try adding in some grated parmesan, or mix it in with a strong blue cheese to create a topping for pizzas or meat.