A free recipe from Eat your Weeds for spring foragers for Chickpea Pesto
Posted by Lydia Unwin on
A free sample recipe for the group for spring foragers from Eat your Weeds, a book that showcases surprise ingredients that are commonly found and harvested. This book not only shows 170 recipes for sweet and savoury dishes, but also details the plants medicinal properties, culinary uses, and traditional uses.
Chickweed (Stellaria media) is an example of good things coming in small bundles. Both as food and medicine it is a powerhouse whose unappreciated benefits would astonish the gardener who despairs of eliminating this cheery, bright green
plant.
Chickweed Pesto
This is our favourite wild pesto recipe. It’s so delicious that we make it at Thanksgiving, at Christmas and whenever we have enough chickweed. It is perfect when you are craving something fresh and green. It goes well with pasta, but we usually serve it like a side sauce with whatever else we are eating – it complements most savoury dishes.
Blend together in a food processor:
100g chickweed (a colander full)
2 or 3 cloves garlic
1 or 2 teaspoons vegetable boullion powder
125ml (1⁄2 cup) extra virgin olive oil or cold pressed hemp seed oil 150g (1⁄2 cup) sunflower seeds or Brazil nut pieces
2 tablespoons yeast flakes (nutritional yeast)
salt to taste
Alternatives: You can use cleavers or other greens in place of the chickweed, wild garlic is a nice spring edition. Pumpkin seeds or pine nuts can be used instead of sunflower seeds.