Yogi recipe: vegan parsley pesto

March 12, 2014 by Ambika Yoga 5 Comments

I’m a huge fan of pesto and I’ve already posted a recipe of kale pesto before. Now that kale is no more in season (at least not here in Belgium), I’ve started exploring other ingredients to make pesto. Parsley is an excellent replacement for kale, it’s cheap too. It’s very nutritious, easy to find, to cultivate yourself (on your balcony if you don’t have a garden). Parsley is a great source of antioxidants, vitamin A and C, folic acid and iron. I love to mix parsley with sunflower seeds in this pesto recipe. Sunflower seeds are high in vitamin E (anti-inflammation), magnesium (keeping nerves and muscles relaxed), selenium (improved detoxification).

Ingredients

• Bunch of parsley*
• A handful of sunflower seeds
• Juice of one lemon
• Olive oil
• Sunflower seed paste (optional)

Tools

• (Jazz max) slow juicer

Preparation
Wash the parsley. Put it in your juicer, add sunflower seeds in between sprigs of parsley (to not jam your machine, don’t put all the seeds in at once). Squeeze the lemon. Mix the parsley & sunflower seeds paste with the lemon juice and cover it with olive oil to keep it fresh longer in your fridge. You can add some sunflower seeds paste if needed as well as black pepper.
The pesto is delicious on toast or with raw or baked vegetables as well as with a pasta or gnocchi of your choice.

In this picture (right), the pesto is served with orecchiette pasta and some nutritional yeast.

* I use organic produce.