Lettuce Walnut Jalapeno Pesto! Photo Credit: Visi Tilak
The lettuce problem plagues our house. And we shall overcome…
I had done this once, some time ago, made Arugula pesto once and a watercress pesto another time. This time I decided to give it a try with Romaine lettuce. Besides, it was a sort of a double whammy, because my kids are not especially fond of walnuts. Add two ingredients that they do not like, but camouflage it and what happened? They lapped it up!
It’s all in the mind!
Here’s the vegan recipe below, this is the way I made it. Feel free to add a 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese to the mix, if you are vegetarian like me. Much as I am a proponent of fresh herbs, I also prefer to add the dry herb in this case for two reasons — one, since the lettuce already has plenty of water, we don’t want to add more, second, the intensity of flavor in the dry herb is definitely higher and it’s much easier to cover up the flavor of the lettuce and walnuts!
Ingredients
2 cups romaine chopped (packed)
1 1/2 tbsps dried basil
1 cup shelled halved walnuts toasted or raw
1 jalapeno (about 1 1/2 inches long) roughly chopped
1/2 cup plus 1/4 cup EV olive oil
8-9 pods large garlic cloves
3/4 tsp sea salt
