It is so easy to make vegan pesto 🙂 When I'm not having smoothie for breakfast, I eat few pieces of warm pandesal I bought from our neighbor back in Manila. I only like to eat pandesal when it's fresh from oven. l cut it in half and fill it with pesto basil (I bought from the nearby mall) then sprinkle it with roasted sesame seeds. Pesto is a traditional dip sauce made of basil, olive oil, pine nuts, dairy cheese and salt to taste.
Now that I'm temporarily staying in my hometown Irosin where a jar of basil pesto is hard to find, I figured out why not I use a local vegetable that's everywhere in my hometown. Just across the national highway where my mom's house is, there's a vacant space where kangkong (water spinach) is abundant. We just literally cross the highway ( it's a national road that connects Luzon and Visayas) to get to this lot. Growing on a soil mixed with dried rice hull, I would say the water spinach here is way cleaner compared to those growing on land immersed on shallow water.
Making my homemade pesto kangkong for the very first time was a win. I don't have to cook anything. I only need my Nutri Blitzer blender and that's it. Instead of olive oil, I replaced it with virgin coconut oil which is native in our town. Instead of pine nuts, I used cashews. Instead of dairy cheese, I used nutritional yeast because I want to make a vegan pesto.
Ingredients of plantbased kangkong pesto
1 stalk of kangkong
1/2 cup of cashews soaked overnight
1/2 cup of virgin coconut oil
2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast
a pinch of salt or crushed black pepper
Recipe of vegan kangkong pesto
1. Wash kangkong thoroughly.
2. Gather the leaves and the stems then put these in the blender together with the rest of ingredients.
3. Adjust the taste by adding a pinch of salt or crushed black pepper.
Photos of my malunggay pan de sal and whole wheat bread with my kangkong dip pesto
Since I always want my plantbased pesto to be cheesy and creamy, I added 4 tablespoons of nutritional yeast. By the way, you can use dairy cheese if you don't have nutritional yeast to make a regular pesto. Make sure to keep it inside the refrigerator and fully sealed to last longer.My jar of plantbased pesto perfectly goes well with my whole wheat bread, pan desal, suman (local rice cake) and even with my plantbased pasta.
Our perception about kangkong is that it's only a poor man's food. Yes it's true because it is way cheaper and you can buy kangkong anywhere unlike basil. However, the nutritional benefits of kangkong are also remarkable. The taste of water spinach in a pesto is also very outstanding. I can still taste it's crunchiness even if it's blended in the form of pesto already.
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