©2008 Ashy Macbean
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Green olive pesto

Maybe not pesto, exacly, but it's very like pesto. And like pesto generally, this particular pesto is good with pasta. Just boil some up, drain it and throw the pesto on. I first put the olives into the recipe in order to make something with a pesto taste but more substantial. Something that could be piled onto bread for a sitting-in-front-of-the-TV-with-a-few-beers type of snack. It also results in a vegan pesto, since the olives substitute for the cheese (and check out sun-dried tomato and chilli pesto too).

As green olives are quite salty, they really do go very well with beer, but you can decide how you're going to serve up your olive pesto.

Ingredients

A small tin of green olives I clove of garlic
2 tablespoons of pine nuts
A wee bunch of fresh parsley
A few large pinches of dried basil and mint
Some lemon slices

Start by draining and roughly chopping the olives, washing and chopping the parsley and peeling and roughly chopping the garlic. Next, get your pestle and mortar out and crush the garlic, then add the pine nuts and give them a good seeing to as well.

Add the mixture from the mortar to a bowl with the chopped olives and parsley and the dried herbs. Mix well and then garnish with a few slices of lemon.

I'm sure this would go well with wine as well.....

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