Vegan Sun-dried Tomato and Thyme Pesto

March 19, 2014

Hey there,

Today I got up early to try my first ever attempt to make some vegan hot cross buns, sadly they turned out absolutely awful, I was adapting from a non-vegan white-flour recipe and tried to convert it to vegan with wholemeal flour and I must of had the ratios so far wrong. They smell amazing but look awful and are so dense, even my Dad who eats anything told me not to give up the day job, which is awkward when I’m a chef…

update: although very ugly with failed crosses the hot cross buns actually tasted really nice, all 12 were demolished in 48hours by my family. 🙂

Anyway, that is definitely a recipe to work on. In the meantime for the main course today I made a whats-in-the-cupboard pesto, and it turned out great. I had a jar of sun-dried tomatoes kicking around for a couple of weeks waiting for me to try a Mediterranean inspired nut-roast, but while I figure that recipe out I thought I’d put them to good use, I really didn’t want to leave the house to go shopping for ingredients and we were low on any nuts, so again, I just combined whatever we had with the tomatoes, added a bit of garlic, lemon juice, some discounted thyme I picked up last week and seasoning and a new favourite recipe was born.

This made quite a lot, I served it today on some wholemeal pasta tossed with roasted veg (whatever was left from the veg-box, I think I ended up with beetroots, courgette, mushrooms, turnips and parsnip) – I made enough pasta and veg to serve 6 generously and I still had some pesto left over. I think it would go really well as a pizza topping too, as a sandwich filling (I’m going to have it with falafels and salad in a sandwich tomorrow) or as a dressing on a salad, but I’d love to hear any other suggestions how it could be used more creatively.

Sun-dried Tomato and Thyme Pesto 

Ingredients:

• 1 jar of sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 packet of fresh thyme
• 2/3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 40g pine nuts
• 50g walnuts
• 2 tablespoons ground almonds
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• seasoning to taste

Method:

1. Empty jar of sun-dried tomatoes along with any oil or juice into a food processor.
2. Remove the thyme from the stalks and add to the food processor, along with all three types of nuts and the garlic and blend until combined but not smooth
3. Add lemon juice and blend until your desired texture is reached, I like to leave a bit of a bite to the nuts and keep a coarser texture but this will blend down smooth if you prefer.
4. Season to taste.
5. Store in fridge until ready to eat.

Such a simple and easy recipe, but one I think will become a staple in my house. All nuts and herbs can be substituted for anything you have in the house, if anyone tries it I’d love to hear if you liked it and what you served it with.

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