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Roasted Garlic and Pumkin Seed Pesto

What you need: 

1 head garlic
2 cups pumpkin seeds
3 cups fresh basil
1 cup other nuts, such as walnuts, pine nuts or almonds
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup nutritional yeast (optional but delicious)
1 to 2 tablespoons red pepper flakes (optional, also delicious)
1 cup plus 1 teaspoon olive oil

What you do: 

1) To make roasted garlic heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice off the top of a head of garlic, just enough to expose the tips of the enclosed garlic cloves. Pour 1 teaspoon of olive oil into this area. Wrap the garlic in parchment paper or aluminum foil. Place the wrapped piece of garlic on a baking sheet and put in oven for 20 to 30 minutes. You can smell when it starts to get done, also you can remove from oven and gently poke sides; if its soft or squishy it's done.
2) When garlic is done and cool enough to handle, remove cloves from skins and blend all ingredients in a food processor, drizzling in oil and continuing to pulse until pesto has reached your desired texture. You may want start with 1/2 of the garlic cloves and taste before adding more. The roasted garlic taste is much more mellow than raw garlic. Another idea, if making this for pizza or as a spread, is to reserve some of the roasted garlic cloves to serve whole. Roasted garlic makes a tasty and fancy-looking spread on its own.
This freezes really well, and makes a bunch! Feel free to cut down on amounts, or do what I do and freeze so you always have pesto on hand. Use on pizzas, foccica, pasta, on roasted potatoes, etc....Yum!
Source of recipe: I wrote this recipe

Preparation Time: 
10 minutes, Cooking time: 25 minutes
Cooking Time: 
25 minutes
Servings: 
6 to 8
Recipe Category: 

SO HOW'D IT GO?

I used two cups walnuts and one cup pine nuts (you know, what was around), but other than that, I followed the recipe almost exactly. It seems that adding roasted garlic will make about anything taste wonderful. This recipe gets my vote for tasting the most like the stuff we made pre-vegan days, the stuff w/ parmesan. But this pesto doesn't need it- I'm eating it right now on pasta :). Thanks a lot!

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Made this tonight with pasta -- oh my heavens, it was SO DELICIOUS.

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I forgot to add that the juice of 1 lemon is good with this too....sorry!

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