Dairy free brocolli pesto

Pesto has always been a lifesaver for us - it keeps beautifully in the fridge and is one of those last minute, can't be doing with cooking supper savers. However, it contains cheese and so is off limits for us, until I decided to make it dairy free and use one of Harry's favourite vegetables as well. Whilst Sacla do a dairy free pesto it has soya in it which is also in our off list, so making it myself seemed a good way to suit it to Harry's and my tastes. We know we're OK with nuts so I happily used brazil and pine nuts. As this is a weaning recipe it's important that the nuts are completely blitzed to a really fine powder.

Whilst this is undoubtedly a healthy recipe, at first glance it's not Slimming World friendly. I haven't done the SW maths, but as you only use a couple of tablespoons of sauce on your pasta I don't think it can be that bad for you. Any SW whizzes that fancy working out the syns, I'll be forever in your debt.
 

Dairy free brocolli pesto

1 head brocolli - lightly cooked in boiling, unsalted water until just tender. Then run under cold water to cool and refresh
150g brazil nuts
1/2 packet (about 50g ish) pine nuts
3 cloves garlic
2 handfuls rocket (basil would work well too)
1 and a half avocados
Juice of 2 lemons (I confess I ran out of lemons this weekend so used my standby bottle of Jif)
Olive oil
Water

Blitz the brazil nuts and pine nuts in the food processor - you want a fine powder - think ground almonds
Add the garlic, rocket, avocados and brocolli and blitz some more
Add the lemon juice about 150ml(ish) of olive oil, and up to 100ml of water until you get a creamy, pesto type consistency

Cook pasta, and spoon sauce over - it's not a sauce to be lolloped on the pasta, but stirred in, using the heat of the cooked pasta to warm it through. For me, I have it with extra brocolli florets, grilled courgette slices and peas stirred into my pasta. I also add salt and a good grinding of pepper to mine

M mentioned that he thought it'd be really nice as a baked potato topping - I'm holding him to that and will try it this week..

I store this in the fridge, in a container with some extra olive oil over the top for up to a week. I've also frozen it in portions for quick and easy Harry suppers.

The tomato pasta in the background of these shots is my Bacon and butternut squash pasta
which is syn free and dairy free

For more dairy free pasta sauce ideas, that are good for your little ones why not have a look here:

Watercress, rocket, spinach and almond pesto from Jen's food
Spaghetti with almond and mushroom sauce from Family, friends food (omit the sherry though)
Rose petal and roasted tomato pesto from Recipes from a pantry

A quiet week; for cooking and blogging

As the title would suggest, this has been a quiet week on both the cookery and blog fronts.

I did manage to cook chicken enchiladas, using my t&t recipe which is loosely based on a very old recipe from Sainsburys... when I say very old, I'm easily talking 6 years or so!

I start by making a salsa with onions, tomatoes, garlic, chilli and green pepper. Pop that on one side and cook some chicken, spring onions, mushrooms, yellow and red pepper, garlic, chilli and cumin in a hot pan until the chicken is cooked through. I add a couple of large handfuls of grated cheese to this and then fill 8 tortillas with the mixture, roll them up, put them in a baking tray and top with the salsa. I then sprinkle more cheese on top and bake in a medium oven for about 20 minutes. They're a great home-made ready meal I find, as I cook and assemble them on one night, and then do the final step for however many I want to eat (usually 2, I'm not that much of a gannet!) as I go through the week.

I've also made pesto this week, to my basic recipe from Jamie O. It's currently in the fridge as I haven't got around to actually eating it yet. But I will.

The big success of the week, was the chocolate courgette cake. Recipe here It was ridiculously easy to make, and everyone adored it; even when they heard that it had sneaky vegetables hidden within!

Oh but quantities? This makes 18 generous squares of cake... I have no idea how if made to the recipe it serves 6... but my office didn't mind at all!