Kitchen Trails - Spinach Pesto

Pesto. Manna from Heaven. There are so many varieties of pesto now, not just the conventional basil, garlic, pine nut, olive oil, parmesan pesto.

Pesto goes best with pasta, but it can be used in so many different ways, On roast chicken, fish, a dressing, a spread, a dip, a topping. So, so versatile.

Baby spinach, about 150g, washed and drained

Sweet basil, about 100g, washed and drained

Garlic, 4 cloves, skinned

Cashew nut, about 1 cup, washed and soaked in salt water overnight, drained and pat dry. Air fried in my Philips AirFryer at 170 C for 15 mins, shaking to redistribute 3 times

Parmesan, grated, about 1/3 to 1/2 cup

Salt to taste, about 2 tsp, add more if omitting the parmesan

Lemon Juice about 3 TBSP

Zest of the Lemon

Olive Oil, about 1/3 cup

Wash and drain the spinach and basil (I used sweet basil, I've always preferred sweet basil. You can use normal basil, that works great as well). Then I use the vege/salad spinner thingy to expel as much of the water as possible. I love the spinner thing! Perfect for more fragile and easily bruised veggies

I don't have a food processor. They are bulky and pretty expensive. If someone/company wants to sponsor/gift me one, I would obviously welcome it, never mind the kitchen counter real estate! Instead of a food processor, I normally use my Shimono blitzer (It's very similar to the magic bullet), but here I used my Moulineux chopper/blender thingy. 

I blitzed them in this sequence:

Roasted cashews, until just chunky, it will be in fine bits at the end of it all, so I want to keep it just chunky for now

Garlic, another 2-4 pulses

The basil and the spinach, pulse until it's quite fine

Lemon zest

Salt

Olive Oil

Parmesan, just a couple of pulses to mix it into the pesto

Notes:

If omitting the Parmesan (I know, I know, I know cheeses are pretty high in fat), add a little more salt and maybe 1 sundried tomato. Other things I can think of right now are possibly Olives, capers, tahini.... basically, anything that can pep up the flavour of the pesto

The lemon juice and zest can be omitted as well, or just squeeze a bit of lemon juice into the pesto for those who would like some. Personally, I would omit during the process, and squeeze some in when serving/eating, especially when I'm storing it.

I've read that the pesto can be stored for up to 2 weeks in a lidded jar in the fridge (put a thin layer of olive oil to cover the top, kinda like seal it in) but truth be told, mine has never made it past the 5 days mark before it's finished.

I used cashew instead of pine nuts as per most pesto recipes as pine nuts are freaking expensive where I am. If using cashews, do research and read up on the dangers of cashews and the oxalate thingamajig. Don't overdo it on cashews, or anything else, for that matter.