Raw Spaghetti with Basil-Wild Spinach Pesto
As I have mentioned in other posts, we like to eat some of the wild greens (weeds) growing in our garden. Lamb’s Quarters is also known as wild spinach and very tasty and nutritious. We eat it in salad, sandwiches and it goes really well in pesto. We also eat young Dandelion leaves in our salad as well as Purslane leaves. Those have a lemony taste. There are other wild volunteers we don’t eat but they too have lots of nutrients and you can make medicinal teas out of them for different ailments. If they are growing in our rich, organic soil and are good for our bodies, why not eat them?
We were really excited to see garlic scapes last week at our farmer’s market. Scapes are the tops that grow
from hard neck garlic. We love these and they are only available for a short time in June around here. They are like a delicacy. Since the scapes were available, we have been making batches of raw pesto using the scapes and putting it on raw spaghetti noodles or spreading it on some flax crackers and topping it with tomato.
I make so many different sauces for raw spaghetti, it’s so easy and quick for me when I don’t have much time. You can use zucchini, summer squash, jerusalem artichokes, etc. as the noodles. To make the spaghetti, you can use a knife to cut it down into thin strands but that is very time consuming and tedious! I have 2 different tools I purchased this past year to make different kinds of noodles. The first one is called a “saladacco” spiralizer and it makes angel-hair pasta and also there is another setting on it for making very thin circle cuts like for ravioli cases or potato chips. The other tool is called a “mandoline” and is another type of veggie slicer that has 3 different, changeable stainless steel blades for different sized noodles as well as the big slice opening (no blade inserts) to make big slices like for lasagna noodles. I like both and found the mandoline at my local Asian market and it’s pretty inexpensive – around $20. They are quite handy tools for the raw kitchen.
This has been one of my favorite raw recipes because you can make it in under 10 minutes for everything and I love pesto on so many things and you cannot even tell there is no cheese in here. Here is my version of of raw spaghetti with basil-wild spinach pesto:
Spaghetti:
Make noodles out of 2 zucchini (feeds 3-4 people)
Basil-Wild Spinach Pesto:
2 cups basil, packed
2 cups wild spinach, packed
6 garlic scapes (or 2 big cloves), diced
2 large handfuls raw walnuts (already soaked and dehydrated – about 2/3 cup)
large handful pine nuts (about 1/3-1/2 cup)
1/2 -1 tsp. Celtic sea salt or Himalayan crystal salt
1/4 cup e.v. olive oil
1T lemon juice
diced tomatoes
Process basil and wild spinach first then add everything else and process all ingredients until smooth. Mix pesto with the noodles and sprinkle with diced tomatoes on top. Enjoy!
(You can use your food processor or a high speed blender to make pesto).
photos: Google images and Nature Deva
July 05 2008 11:26 pm | Health and food and gardening and nutrition and organics and raw foods and recipes
July 8th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
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