After all that cake it’s time for a savoury recipe, using one of my favourite seasonal spring ingredients: wild garlic, known by many other names including bear leek (similar to the German Bärlauch). With its broad dark green leaves that pack a powerful flavour punch it is destined for making epic pesto! I love the strong taste and the almost fiery kick. Together with the fragrant pine nuts, rich olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice and some nutritional yeast it beats any ‘regular’ or store-bought pesto for me.

Wild garlic pesto

Makes: ca. 3 servings

Ingredients

• 75g fresh wild garlic
• 50g pine nuts
• 2.5 tbsp olive oil
• 0.5 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast (optional, but highly recommended)
• salt, to taste
• 2-3 tbsp of water, if desired, to thin out

Method

1. Dry-fry the pine nuts in a hot pan, until lightly golden. Grind into a powder.
2. Blend together with the olive oil, wild garlic, lemon juice and salt – I used a handheld blender for this part and a separate grinding attachment for step 1.
3. Stir in the nutritional yeast and (if desired) some water to thin out the texture. I love a nice thick pesto, but added 1-2 tbsp water when stirring the pesto to the cooked pasta.
4. Serve however you like, e.g. with pasta, on top of risotto, as a dip, on crackers or savoury pancakes, as a filling in savoury swirls, etc. etc.

I added the pesto to three servings of yellow lentil spaghetti and topped with some cherry tomatoes and a few extra pine nuts. Feel free to also add some chopped wild garlic, if you have any left over, and to drizzle some extra olive oil on top before serving.

Enjoy! 

Feel free to tag @blueberrysmiles22 if you share your creations on Instagram, so I can share in the joy 🙂