Want a pesto for your pasta and a spread for your bread? The ingredients for oily pestos and dairy cheeses differ a lot. But not when I started veganising and switching refined ingredients for wholefood ones. And 2-in-1 means half the work to make wild garlic macadamia pesto and vegan cheese. Yay!
Ingredients
Here’s a rough guide of what I used to make this wild garlic … I didn’t measure anything though, and you don’t need to either. Feel free to put a bunch of things together, blend, taste, and add more ingredients to taste.
- Macadamia nuts, around 150g (best price I’ve seen is Tesco’s £4.15 for 250g = £16.68 per kg)
- Wakame seaweed, broken into small pieces
- Wild garlic, around 70g
- Fresh chives, around 10g
- Fresh oregano, leaves only from around 4 sprigs
- Italian herbs, around 1 teaspoon – I used a basil, oregano and thyme mix, from the frozen section of Tesco
- Lemon juice, around 2 teaspoons
- Miso, around 1 heaped teaspoon
- Turmeric powder, dash (optional)
- Black pepper, dash (optional)
- Mustard powder, dash (optional)
- Nutritional yeast flakes, around 3 tablespoons, to taste
- Black eye beans, cooked, around 6 tablespoons / 1 cup
Wild garlic: I got mine from Riverford Organics. I expect similar delivery or collection services would have it too. You can also forage for it.
Herbs: Feel free to use whichever herbs you like. If I’d had basil, I would have added more.
Nuts (or seeds): You can use cashews instead of macadamias, or any nuts, or seeds
Beans: You can use any light bean, e.g. haricot, cannellini, butterbean, pinto, chickpeas…
Miso & seaweed: Feel free to omit these, but if you’re used to salted dishes I recommend including one or both
How to make wild garlic macadamia pesto and vegan cheese
- Toast the macadamias
- If you have one, you’ll be using a stick blender, so choose a suitable, tall container with a lid. Otherwise, you can use a different blender or food processor.
- Break the wakame seaweed into the container. Add the macadamias.
- Cover these ingredients with water and leave to soak for an hour or so
- Chop the wild garlic and chives, and add them to the container, with the oregano leaves.
- Add the Italian herb mix
- Add the lemon juice, miso, spices, nutritional yeast flakes and black eye beans
- Blend
- Taste
- Add any ingredients to taste and blend again
Wild green pesto + Macadamia vegan cheese 
Petis pois & pesto pasta 
Vegan cheese salad open sandwich
Most weeks I get a delivery from Riverford Organics. I tend to order a large fruit box and whatever herbs, fruit and veg takes my fancy. I use it as a way to tempt myself into eating more of these things. So, as soon as wild garlic became available this season I started ordering it. And then I looked online for ideas of what to do with it.
If you can get fruit delivered every week, I recommend it, because I eat a lot more fruit now.
Alternative delicious pesto recipes
Watch the video for Dr. Greger’s Eight Check-Mark Pesto, as presented by The Vegan Corner. You can get the recipe online too. Or, get a copy of How Not to Die by Michael Greger, for the recipe and much more.
Check out Cheap Lazy Vegan’s pesto recipe video using kale stems and broccoli stalks. Less waste, more nutrition
