One night the hubby and I were determined to make pesto (which it turns out is just a fancy way of saying grind up your favorite nuts and weeds). However, we had pine nuts and arugula which, according to "teh internets" was not a good match. So we switched our focus to using the arugula and found this recipe which substituted chick peas/garbanzo beans for the nuts. Crazy delicious. Crazy easy. And way less expensive than pine nuts or walnuts.
Makes: ~2 1/4 cups pesto
Ingredients
3-4 cups arugula
1 clove garlic
1 1/4 cup garbonzo beans
1 cup parmesan
1/3 & 1/8 cup olive oil
Directions
ADD arugula, parmesan, garbanzo beans and garlic to the bowl of a food processor.
PROCESS until smooth
SLOWLY DRIZZLE in olive oil WHILE continuing to process (We added the 1/3 cup here)
ADD salt and additional oil to taste (We used about another 1/8 cup oil here to get to the consistency we liked.)
My Thoughts
1. This was so easy and inexpensive that we will be doing it more often!
2. You control the viscosity of the pesto with how much oil you add. Want a thinner sauce? More oil. Thicker sauce? Less oil. You have the power.
3. Using garbanzo beans instead of nuts means this pesto is nut allergy friendly! Hurrah!
4. According to the original recipe, this will last about a week in the fridge. It makes a ton though, so we kept a small amount out and frozen the reminder in ice cube trays from the dollar store. Now we have pesto hearts and stars. : )
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