Every year that I have had a garden I have grown basil. Planted in April, my pretty, little basil babies become these 4-foot tall trees that have to be taken down with a saw by September. To celebrate the harvest, I usually have a “Pesto Party,” and invite friends over to share in the bounty and make enough pesto for their families to last through the winter. It’s a B.Y.O.F.P. (Bring Your Own Food Processor) event, of course. But, here in Southern California, where basil grows almost year-round, I already have a surplus, so I’m making pesto earlier this year.
Italian pesto is traditionally made with lots of parmesan cheese. Well, now that Babyzilla shares our table, and she is allergic to dairy products, we have needed to change our recipe. After a bit of experimenting, here is our new version. It tastes like the Italian pesto I know and love, and it happens to be a raw, vegan food too!
Raw Vegan Pesto
(Makes approximately 2 cups)
- 1-1/2 cups zucchini, chopped
- 2 cups fresh basil leaves, firmly packed
- 3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
- 1 Tbsp. nutritional yeast flakes
- 2-4 cloves garlic, crushed (to taste)
- 1/4 tsp. sea salt
- 1/2 cup pine nuts, previously soaked and dried (See Soaking Nuts and Seeds)
Quick and Easy Method:
- Place the zucchini in the food processor fitted with an S-blade and process until smooth.
- Add basil, olive oil, nutritional yeast, garlic, and salt and pulse a few times to coarsely chop the basil.
- Add the pine nuts and process until the texture is creamy, with crunchy, bits of pine nut throughout. Do not over-process or the pesto will become too oily.
- Stored in a sealed glass jar in the refrigerator, your pesto will keep for about 5 days.
- Alternatively, pour the sauce into ice cube trays, and once frozen, transfer the single serving pesto cubes to an airtight container in the freezer. Stored in the freezer, you can enjoy fresh Italian pesto goodness all winter long.
Alternate Traditional Method:
Hand chopping with a mezzaluna
- Using a mezzaluna
- Add garlic to the chopping, along with about 1/3 of the basil leaves.
- Once this is loosely chopped, add more basil, chop some more, add the rest of the basil, chop some more.
- Scrape and chop, gather and chop. At this point the basil and garlic should be a very fine mince.
- Add the yeast and about half the pine nuts, chop. Add the rest of the pine nuts, chop.
- In the end you want a chop so fine that you can press all the ingredients into a basil “cake.”
- Transfer the pesto “cake” to a small bowl (not much bigger than the cake). Cover with the olive oil.
- Gently stir the olive oil into the pesto before serving or freezing.
- Store according to Nos. 4 and 5 of the Quick and Easy Method.
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