Pesto with various greens

Traditionally pesto is an Italian sauce made with garlic, basil, pine nuts, parmesan and olive oil. The ingredients are crushed and the olive oil is added to form a paste like consistency.
​Pesto can be spread on toasted bread, added to pasta, or served with steamed or roasted vegetables. 
I often adapt the original recipe to the season by using the green vegetables and seeds available from rucola(arugula), spinach, parsley, kale, coriander, wild garlic to pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds or almonds....Just use your imagination. 
It is an easy way to add vegetables to the diet for adults and also for children.

The step by step recipe in images

For today's recipe I used a combination of parsley, kale and basil leaves. I removed the hard stem from the kale leaves keeping only the tender parts. I didn't have any seeds so I used walnuts (I soak and dehydrate them in advance check my article why-and-how-to-soak-nuts-and-seeds.html) and  some himalaya salt, garlic and olive oil

Place the walnuts in the food processor and pulse a few times to first break down the walnuts, it is not necessary with smaller seeds.
Place all the other ingredients except the olive oil in the food processor and puree for a few minutes. You can also use a blender.

Put the mixture in a glass jar and add the olive oil until you have a paste like consistency. You can add some lemon juice to keep the color.

Ready to eat!

Pesto with various greens

prep: 5 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 cups various greens (basil, parsley, kale.....)
• 2 garlic cloves
• salt
• 1/2 cup pine nuts (or any other seeds: sunflower, pumpkin....)
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• parmesan cheese (optional)
• lemon juice (optional)

Recipe

Place all the ingredients in a food processor or a blender and mix for 5 minutes, add the olive oil. You can use a mortar and pestle if you prefer.
Place in a closed glass jar and keep in the fridge for one week adding some olive oil on top after each use.