Pesto pasta is my ultimate go to meal when I’m feeling lazy or when I want to cook something quickly. I use a lot of my favourite ingredients in this recipe including buckwheat spirals, garlic, nutritional yeast and pumpkin seeds. If I’m feeling a little bit fancy or I manage to plan ahead when making this meal, I replace the pumpkin seeds with pine nuts because it complements the pesto sauce so well! More often than not I don’t have pine nuts at home which is why I decided to replace them with pumpkin seeds, which I’m more likely to have in my pantry.
Pesto is really easy to make when you have a food processor. It is much cheaper to make pesto at home than to buy it in the supermarket and this way you’ll know for sure that there are no nasty additives or preservatives. I use spinach instead of basil because basil is often hard to find and is usually VERY expensive. Sadly, at the moment we don’t grow basil in our garden but this will change soon! If you have access to fresh basil, I would definitely add it to the pesto.
Green Garden Pesto Pasta
Ingredients
- 350 grams Buckwheat spirals or a pasta of your choice
- 7 handfuls Spinach
- 3 cloves Garlic roughly chopped
- 2 Tbsp Nutritional yeast
- 2 Tbsp Lemon juice
- 1 Tbsp Salt
- ½ cup Rice bran oil
- ½ cup Pumpkin seeds
Instructions
- Boil water in a large pot. You'll need a large pot because this is where all the elements will be combined. Add the buckwheat spirals (or your pasta of choice) to the boiling water and cook it according to the packet instructions.
- Heat up a medium sized frying pan and add the pumpkin seeds – no oil is needed here. Roast the seeds for 5-10 minutes (Note: make sure to keep and eye on the pine nuts and stir them frequently as they can burn very quickly).
- Add the spinach, garlic, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, and olive oil to a food processor. Pulse until everything is well combined. Add salt and pepper to taste and pulse again (keep tasting the pesto, don’t be afraid to adjust it to your taste).
- When the pasta is cooked strain it but make sure to reserve one cup of the water. I preserve this water because the pasta will absorb most of the pesto sauce and by adding back some of the water will prevent it from becoming dry. Leave the pasta in the same pan that you boiled it.
- Add the pesto sauce, reserved water and pumpkin seeds to the pasta and stir well. Heat up everything once again to allow all the flavours to combine.(Note: If you want to be a little bit fancy, you can reserve some of the pumpkin seeds and add it to the top when serving).
