Specials Board: Broadbean Pesto

Broad Bean Pesto & Vegan Mofo Day 2

The first recipe I'm sharing with you during Vegan Mofo 2014 is using broad beans from my garden. They're at their end now and this will be the penultimate recipe from my last harvest picked at the weekend. I'm going to miss them! Now I have a freezer I think I will grow twice the amount next year!

Broad beans are so easy to grow, you sow the seed, water and watch it grow! However this year I had a little visitor in the way of a field mouse, I named him Sammy. Now I don't mind sharing my veggies but this little munchkin was devouring all of the young plants night after night until I had none left! I kept sowing in the hope that he would get fed up of the broad bean plant but no Sammy just seemed to love them, he couldn't get enough! 

I started to sow each bean encased by a toilet roll, which acted as a barrier to my little field mousse friend and that seemed to do the trick. But as soft as I am I did plant a couple without the toilet roll just for Sammy! And yes he found them and munched his way through but he did leave the toilet roll beans alone, so we were both happy.

My last broad bean recipe, in a few days time, will give you some top tips on how to grow broad beans, when to sow, how to stop the usual critters and when to harvest. But for now on with this recipe.

Broad Bean Pesto (Serves 4-6)

Ingredients
235g Podded broad beans
3-4 Cloves of Garlic
10g Pine nuts
2 Tbsp Nutritional yeast
1 Tbsp Lemon juice
4 Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Method
Remove the skin from the garlic and cook with the beans in boiling water for 5 minutes, I've noticed the beans float to the top when they are cooked so if your beans are small they might need less than 5 minutes.

Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process and are cool enough to handle. Remove the outer grey skin to reveal the bright green bean! Transfer the bean and garlic to a food processor.

Add the pine nuts and pulse a few times to chop the ingredients. Add the remainder of the ingredients to the processor and blitz until you have the texture you prefer. I don't like mine completely smooth, I like a bit of texture.

The pesto is great spread on toast, used to make a dip (my fried green tomatoes recipe) or stirred through pasta, which is what I did for tea tonight.