Almond & Kale Pesto

Yesterday I was really craving pesto pasta. Pesto in the shops tends to be packed with preservatives and weird additives so I thought I would give it a bash making it from scratch. The problem was that I had only a couple of sad, wilted looking basil leaves in the back of my fridge, and absolutely no pine nuts, which lets face it, are pretty much the key layers in pesto. 

I did not let this dishearten me. I had almonds, and I had kale. I decided to swap out the pine nuts for almonds and bulk the basil out with kale, and in all honesty it turned out deliciously. The kale gave the pesto its beautiful deep green colour and some texture and bite, and the almonds were a delicious alternative to pine nuts as they really hold their crunch, so the pesto took a whole new dynamic. Time wise, I'm not exaggerating here, it took 5 minutes start to finish and that includes spooning it into a faffy jar.

Ingredients

handful of fresh kale (I steamed mine for about 3 minutes just to take the edge off)

Bunch of basil. Mine was probably about 4 basil leaves and some stalks but you can never have too much basil in pesto right?

juice of half a lemon

4 cloves garlic (or 3 if you are not obsessed with garlic like I am) 

1/2 cup of almonds

thumb sized wedge of STRONG quality parmesan

1 tsp sea salt flakes

1/2 cup of quality extra virgin olive oil

Course black pepper

Method

I used my Kenwood mini chopper which is the perfect size for things like sauces but I'm sure you could use a blender or food processor for this.

1. Put all of your ingredients into the mix, and blend until desired consistency. Some like it smooth, some like it rough, you can always add more oil and or lemon juice to loosen it up a bit.

2. Taste, season accordingly.

3. Slather on a cracker, dollop on your pasta, or just eat it with a spoon which I definitely have never done *cough cough*