When my children were toddlers, I found that by adding a little bit of pesto to their food made them much more likely to eat it! One of those mummy tricks you learn quite quickly. However when it became obvious that my youngest was severely intolerant to dairy products, we needed to find a pesto that they could all eat, without any compromise on taste. This dairy-free walnut pesto is simply delicious and your kids will adore it. It is full of great essential fatty acids from walnuts, which are also rich in omega-3, and cold pressed extra virgin olive oil.
You can add this lovely garlicky, salty pesto to gluten-free gnocchi, brown rice pasta and quinoa. We often use it as a topping on salmon, white fish or chicken. We sometimes use it as dip for carrots, cucumber and red peppers. I have also used it in salad dressings and to liven up sandwich fillings.
You can freeze this pesto in ice cube trays. Once it is frozen, transfer into a plastic bag in the freezer. It defrosts extremely quickly so can be used as a great last-minute stand-by to liven up a meal.
- Place all in the ingredients in your high-speed blender (you can use a hand-held stick-blender) and blend until smooth.
- Add some more extra-virgin olive oil if you want to make the pesto thinner.
If your child has gut problems and therefore has trouble digesting and breaking down nuts, then try activated walnuts. These are walnuts that have been soaked in salted water for 8-12 hours and then dried in a dehydrator at 42 degrees for 12 hours. This process takes away the bitter after-taste that you can get with some walnuts and helps the absorption of the nutritional goodies from the nuts. You can buy walnuts that have been already activated from health food shops and online. [printme]
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