Cilantro Pesto

As promised, here is a handy little cilantro pesto recipe, good for using up leftover bunches, sneaking cilantro into your children’s diet for its detoxifying effects, or both. You may notice I was relying heavily on the “use it up” excuse this time, as my cilantro was getting a little wilty. So much so, that I figured it wasn’t even worth it to try to pick out the good parts from the bottom half, I just chopped it right off.

Of course, even when you try to take the lazy way out, you still end up having to pick out tons of thick stems from the top part. Learn from the error of my ways, people.

Once you’ve got a tightly-packed cup’s worth of usable leaves, throw them in the blender, and add 1/2 cup of Bob’s Red Mill ground almond meal. Or grind up your own almonds in the food processor, but really, that’s so much more work. And you already did all that work pulling out the stems, you deserve a break.

Add one clove of minced garlic…

2 Tablespoons of lemon juice…

And 6 Tablespoons of olive oil.

Now make a bunch of noise with your blender, and pray it doesn’t wake the kids up from their nap.

If it’s too thick, you can add a little more liquid. Just remember to keep the ratio of lemon juice to oil at 1:3. So one 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice…

And three 1/4 teaspoons of oil.

Repeat as necessary until you have a lovely green paste. The lemon juice acts as a preservative, so it will keep in an airtight container in the fridge for weeks. Dip tortilla chips in it, use it as a spread for burgers, add some extra oil and toss it with rice pasta, or mix it into ground meat–whatever your kids will let you get away with.

Happy Eating!

Cilantro Pesto

1 cup packed fresh cilantro
1/2 cup of Bob’s Red Mill almond meal
1 clove of garlic
2 tablespoons lemon juice
6 tablespoons olive oil