Zacchary Bird
Zacchary Bird
The vegan butcher, the vegan baker and the vegan trouble maker.

For dozens and dozens of my favourite crowd pleasing recipes, download a copy of my new ebook: Meals for Mere Mortals! It’s full of jokes, cooking hacks and heaps of dishes I know you’ll love.

To put a super savoury twist on pesto, swap in kale chips for basil! Raw kale will not be your friend in this recipe, but after baking the kale with salt and olive oil - the crispy, umami magic hidden inside comes out to play! You can easily vary this recipe to be totally kale chips, half kale chips and half basil or just straight up basil if you don't want to venture past classic, beautiful basil pesto.

This pesto is brilliant as a part of a dip tray/antipasto platter, or if you would like to use it in a larger dish - mix through pasta, baked potato or cooked green beans

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Kale Chip Pesto

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 large bunch tuscan kale

  • 2 bunches fresh basil

  • 1/2 cup raw cashews

  • 1/2 cup olive oil (get the good stuff out for this one)

  • 1/4 cup nutritional yeast

  • Juice of 1 lemon

  • 2 cloves of garlic

  • Salt

METHOD

  • Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.

  • Wash and remove kale leaves from the stems before allowing to dry.

  • Drizzle kale leaves with olive oil and a few good pinches of salt. Massage and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes (until the leaves crisp up but before they go dark brown!). Remove and set aside.

  • Add all ingredients except for cashews, but including the baked kale leaves, into a food processor and pulse until blended. Add cashews and pulse a few more times until all large, visible pieces are blended through. Pour into a tray/jar and drizzle more lemon juice and a dash of olive oil on top - ready to serve now or out of the fridge!