Broccoli Pesto
September 14, 2014
We’re alive! Sorry for the extremely long hiatus, especially after I mentioned a stack of recipes. I’m happy to report that we are still vegan and we’ve just been a bit busy the last two years raising our new twin daughters who will be two in November. Yes, they are vegan too. We’ll try to update our about page soon.
Now on to the recipe! We’ve been experimenting a lot with foods that we think our girls will eat – some recipes work, while others don’t, but this one was a winner. It’s also really easy to make with just 6 ingredients! You can also leave out the tofu making it just 5 ingredients! It was inspired (or technically borrowed and modified and veganized from the 101 Cookbooks recipe called “Double Broccoli Quinoa”). The girls like quinoa, but it’s hard for them to eat since it falls all over the place, so we’ve been eating a lot of whole wheat pasta instead (pictured here with whole wheat orzo, but we’ve been using whole wheat medium shells lately as they are easy finger food for the girls).
Here’s the recipe:
3 large heads of broccoli
1 cup of walnuts
1 lemon
1 tbsp. olive oil (for pesto)
1 tsp. olive oil (for frying tofu)
1 block of extra firm tofu
1 lb. of whole wheat pasta (or the grain of your choice so it can be made gluten free)
Dice up your broccoli to bite sized pieces, steam 1 to 1 and a half cups so it is barely cooked, set the rest aside to steam more fully. Grind your walnuts in the food processor alone, then add the barely cooked broccoli, the juice of one lemon and one tablespoon of olive oil. Grind it all together to make your pesto. Who knew you could make pesto with broccoli? I didn’t!
Then steam the rest of your broccoli to your liking, cook the pasta or grain of your choice (rice, quinoa or pasta would all work well), and cube the tofu and fry it up lightly. Combine the pasta and tofu in a large bowl and mix in the pesto. Once blended mix in the rest of the broccoli (this makes for a very large batch – the broccoli barely fits in – we usually eat the first serving by just adding the broccoli to our bowls, then mix in what’s left in the big bowl after eating. We love leftovers. You could cut this recipe in half and still feed two people easily. Enjoy! It’s good to be back!
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