Recipe: Vegan Basil Pesto with a twist

I fancied making some pesto myself, rather than, relying on the ready-made stuff. So I had a look at a few recipes and got creative. 

This recipe makes enough for 4 servings with pasta.

Ingredients for vegan pesto 

• 0.5 cup of Pine nuts 
• 1 handful of Brazil nuts
• 1.5 cups of fresh basil 
• 0.75 cups of olive oil
• 2 handfuls of whole black peppercorns  
• Lemon juice to taste
• Salt to taste
• 1 avocado (optional) 
• 3 black olives (optional)
• 1 chilli (optional)
• 1 handful of nutritional yeast (optional)

How to make vegan pesto 

1. Roast the nuts on low heat, without any oil, for about 3 minutes - they shouldn't be roasted for so long that they become brown - lightly roasting them brings out their flavour 
2. Blend the nuts, peppercorns, olives, the oil and a little lemon juice until it's the texture you'd like it to be - it's not meant to be smooth like chocolate spread or smooth peanut butter 
3. Add everything else to the blender and stop blending when it's combined 

Points to consider 

• If you're going to keep the pesto to use later, drizzle some olive oil over it to keep it green.
• I boiled some spaghetti and put a generous amount of pesto on top of it. I did this so that I could take the amount of spaghetti and pesto that I wanted, rather than, mixing it all together. 
• The avocado makes the pesto creamy. 
• Many recipes say that any nuts can be used. 
• The olives gave it a subtle flavour. 
• Adding 1 chilli wasn't enough to make it even near 'hot' but it complimented it.
• The nutritional yeast is considered to be a replacement for parmesan. 

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