Pea Shoot Pesto

Have you tried pea shoots yet?

They're my new favorite addition to the porch garden. These little greens are low maintenance, relatively heat tolerant, have a quick turnaround from planting to harvest, and are delicious!

The greens, as you can imagine, taste like peas!

An obvious choice would be to add them to salads and sandwiches. However as you can see, it's going to take a ton of salads and sandwiches to use all these pea shoots. I planted these, and we had several days of showers afterword that these guys just LOVED. I also have some green onions growing nearby, and since peas are climbers, I found I had to cut away the little tendrils that were pulling my onions!  Like I said, pea shoots grow FAST.

See the little tendrils? I didn't think I needed a trellis for baby greens!

So when life gives you rain, make some pesto.

Snag a few handfuls of pea shoots.

After a good rinse, chop coarsely. (I had roughly four cups of shoots, if you're measuring.)

Four cups down, and there's still leftovers! Talk about efficient gardening for small spaces!

Toss the shoots in a food processor with some toasted walnuts, Parmesan cheese, a sprinkling of kosher salt, and a couple cloves of garlic. Process while adding about 1/3 cup of oil, to the desired consistency.

You're drooling. :)

Add liberally wherever you normally use pesto: pasta, caprese salad, serve with bread and radish slices as a dip, just eat it out of the jar with a spoon...

It's that good, just trust me. This pesto is light and earthy, and just tastes like spring. Although don't let that stop you - I'm making this year round! You can bet I'll have pea shoots inside near a window this winter!

I've given this to friends who don't like the standard basil pesto, and they loved it! But if you'd like a little inspiration for what to do with the stuff, I'll add some recipes in the coming posts.

Pea Shoot Pesto

Ingredients:
4 c. pea shoots
1/2 c. chopped walnuts
1/2 c. shredded Parmesan
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/3 c. olive oil
Kosher or sea salt to taste

Toasting the Walnuts
Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and add walnuts. Toast for about 10 minutes.
I  usually just gauge it by smell. Crack open the oven around the ten minute mark. Do they smell toasty and delicious? Then they're good. Take them out and let them cool while you assemble the rest of the pesto.

Making the Pesto
Coarsely chop the pea shoots.
In a food processor, combine pea shoots, shredded Parmesan, garlic, and (cooled) walnuts.
Pulse until roughly chopped. Add salt to taste.
Further process the mix while adding oil. Continue to process until the desired consistency is reached.

This will keep for a few days in the fridge. Just spoon it into a jar and cover with some olive oil for storage. If you're like me and have more pea shoots than you know what to do with, you can also freeze the pesto if you wish.