Courgette Pasta with Basil Pesto

My first raw food post!

I was shown this recipe by two lovely ladies at a raw food workshop at the 2012 Green Man festival. Unfortunately I can't remember their names or contact details so can't credit them properly...but I hope they don't mind, this recipe is too good not to share!

I haven't experimented much with raw food (beyond like, salads) but this dish inspires me to try more. I recently helped teach a raw food workshop with the Hearty Squirrel Food Co-operative in Edinburgh and this recipe was a big success.

Serves 1 as a main dish or 2 as side dish

Ingredients:

1 medium or large courgette

50g soaked almonds (just soak almonds in cold water for a few hours before use)

50-75g or 2 big handfuls of fresh herbs (basil is most popular, though you can use coriander too)

1 clove of garlic

1 tbsp nutritional yeast (available at most health food shops, I've always bought Marigold Engevita)

2 tbsp olive oil

Lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste

Quick Method:

(Using blender and spiralizer)

1. To make the pesto, put the almonds, basil, garlic, nutritional yeast and olive oil in a blender and mix until at desired consistency.

2. Put the courgette through the spiralizer to make the pasta.

3. Mix the pesto with the courgette pasta. Add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.

Manual method:

1. Grind the almonds using a pestle and mortar until they have reached the consistency you like.

2. Chop the basil and garlic and add to the almonds along with nutritional yeast and olive oil. Grind it all together to form a paste, adding more olive oil if necessary.

3. Shave strips off the courgette using a vegetable peeler to make the pasta.

4. Mix the pesto with the courgette pasta. Add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.

 - My method, using a blender for the pesto and veg peeler for the pasta. Yes it's served with cooked 

food, I only had one courgette and was cooking for two!

 

Notes/tips: 

- the nutritional yeast is used to add that 'cheesy' flavor typical to pesto, it's not essential though if you can't find it, in fact when I forgot to bring it to the workshop I just added more garlic for a flavor boost and no-one noticed anything missing! 

- traditional pine nuts can of course be used but I recommend almonds as they're MUCH cheaper and still taste great