Spinach Basil Pesto Sauce

I love pesto! Pesto on chicken, lamb, couscous…… the possibilities are endless! I was prepping for my son’s BBQ at home and decided to make a basil pesto pasta. As I opened my fridge, i saw a pack of spinach that needed to be used up soon, so….. I thought to myself, why not incorporate it in my pesto. 💡 Voila! Spinach Basil Pesto! 😉

When I make pesto at home, I make sure to make a huge batch and stash some in the fridge and store some in the freezer. That way, anytime I need it to make pasta, flavour my tomato basil sauce, mix it with butter and spread it on sliced farmer’s loaf, etc… I have it all the time. 😀

Step 1:

In a bowl of a food processor, add the garlic cloves and some olive oil and pulse until tiny pieces. Add the walnuts (Pine nuts are used traditionally but I didn’t have them in my pantry so I used what I had 😉 ). Add blanched spinach and process. Add a little olive oil at this point to help the food pro out. Add the basil and parmesan cheese (not photographed, sorry 😦 ) and process until well combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Add olive oil as you process the pesto until combined and thoroughly processed.

Place some pesto in a container and cover the top with a thin layer of olive oil (this prevents the pesto from darkening), seal and store in the fridge.

I like to label it making sure to write down the date it was made. 🙂

Since I usually make a huge batch of pesto, I store some some of them in the freezer using ice trays. This will keep for a long period of time and you can have pesto anytime you want! 😉 This will be amazing topped on a fish fillet and baked, pesto’d mash po’s? Yuuuuum…. baked pesto chicken, pesto rice pilaf and even a tuna pesto panini sandwich! Deeeelish! 😛