Happy Meat Free Monday lazy green people!

This has to be my laziest recipe yet; as all in all it took less than 10 minutes to prepare and make! But after a long day at work in a hot stuffy office, I was looking for something quick and easy that didn’t involve a warm oven. And despite my history of unintentionally killing off almost every plant I have ever tried to grow, my basil is growing so fast my conservatory is beginning to resemble the rainforest biome at the eden project!

This recipe uses key ingredients that everyone will have in their kitchen; apart from the nutritional yeast, which is more commonly a vegan essential ingredient. But it can be  found in most supermarkets or health food shops. You can also easily pimp up your pesto with whatever you have to hand. It works particularly  well with sun dried tomatoes, chilli oil or swapping the pine nuts for another nut (I used almonds). The best thing is, it’s completely raw and dairy free!

Easy Vegan Pesto recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups fresh basil
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup pine nuts, cashews or almonds
• 5 cloves garlic
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast (get the fortified version with added Vitamin B12)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper 

Method:

1. If you have a food processor, simply whizz up all the ingredients until they are combined and the nuts are ground (but not completely smooth) Add seasoning to taste.
2. If you have to do it the old school way like I did: grind the nuts in a pestle and mortar first, and finely chop the basil. Use a soup blender or whisk to whizz up the basil, garlic and oil. Once blended add the nuts, nutritional yeast and seasoning. This is a little more labour intensive method, but as long as its all crushed together just use whatever tools you have to hand.

Serve swirled in warm pasta, on top of salads or – my personal favourite – drizzled over avocado on toast.