If you ever read my veggie bullet depth review, you should already understand that you can make pasta with zucchini.
I first learned about zucchini pasta from Lisa Bryan from Downshiftology. She has an excellent post to explain how to make and cook zucchini noodles.
I tried to be creative this time by playing around with many vegan pesto recipes I have seen before. In my opinion, pesto is one of the easiest and authentic sauce for pasta.
When you realize that raw vegan foods can be so flavorful like this, I think many people would open their eyes to it a lot more! Though the only thing is, raw garlic may not be for everyone, as sometimes eating raw garlic gives me a little problem in the stomach.
Note: If you really can’t stand raw garlic, perhaps you can even replace it with a couple of teaspoons of garlic powder.
I would suggest you only really need half the amount of pesto to combine with the zucchini noodles. You can leave the other half for other recipes later. It can even be used for pizza!
- 2-3 zucchinis
- ½ teaspoon Himalayan/Sea salt
- Extra basil for garnish
- 1 cup firmly packed fresh basil
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons pine nuts
- 2 tablespoons almonds
- 4 cloves garlic
- A sprinkle of Himalayan/Sea salt
- Use a julienne peeler or spiralizer to turn zucchini into noodle-like strips. The julienne peeler can be bought in kitchen stores, and cuts things in long strips.
- Put all the zucchini noodles in a bowl and sprinkle with ½ teaspoon salt. Use your hands and stir it well, mixing the salt evenly. Allow the noodles to sit for about half an hour so that water can be drained.
- To make the pesto: Combine the basil, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, pine nuts, almonds, garlic (peel first) and salt in the blender. Blend until it’s completely smooth.
- Once you see water leave the zucchini noodles, drain out as much water as possible. If the noodles are too salty, you may want to rinse it. Pour the pesto into the zucchini and stir it well.
- Transfer it on a plate and add some extra basil leaves on top.