If you eat with your eyes first, feast on this: hot pink beet pesto.

Traditional pesto is infused with basil, making it green and aromatic. The following pesto recipe, however, nixes the basil and replaces it with beets, resulting in a sauce that brings a deep, earthy, and rounded flavor as well as a vibrant color to all of your pasta dishes.

Beet works very well as a base to this pesto sauce, mainly because the root vegetable is dense. When cooked, beet becomes tender but remains firm. It then blends beautifully into a creamy sauce that can be flavored as you wish.

Often, I’ll blend cooked beet with fresh ginger and coconut milk for a makeshift detoxifying soup. Recently, however, I’ve been making the following beet pesto recipe to pair with my favorite pastas (gluten-free varieties). I blend the cooked beet with other common pesto ingredients, including pistachios and parmesan cheese, and voilà! Dinner is served.

If you are still craving pesto’s iconic basil flavor, you can add a small handful of the herb to the mix before blending. However, I find that this beet pesto recipe works better when the beet’s natural sweetness and unique flavor shines through. Basil may dominate the flavor profile.

Beet Pesto Recipe

Serves four to six

• 3 large beets
• 3 garlic cloves
• ½ cup shelled pistachios
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 cup finely-grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• 1 pound uncooked spaghetti

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Wrap the beets in aluminum foil and place them into the oven. Let the beets cook for approximately 45 minutes to one hour. Set them aside to cool. Once cool, skin the beets and rinse them clean under warm water.

Transfer the beets to a food processor or blender. Add in the garlic, pistachios, lemon juice, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Blend until smooth. Adjust the seasonings according to your taste preferences.

Cook the spaghetti according to package instructions. Drain and rinse the spaghetti and return it to the pot in which it cooked. Fold in the beet pesto until it evenly coats the spaghetti.

Serve and enjoy!

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The post Beet Pesto Recipe for Hot Pink Pasta appeared first on EcoSalon.

Move over basil.

My mother is known for always having a couple of homemade spreads on hand. In fact, if we’re out of pesto to put on open faced sandwiches in the morning (we’re Swedish after all) she has been known to make a fresh batch at 6 a.m. Completely normal in a food appreciating household.

Which is why I was in no way surprised when I recently came home and in the midst of trying to come up with an appropriate crust recipe for a gluten free appeltaart, she exclaimed, “oh! you have to try the beet pesto!”

Of course.

What’s fun about beets is that you get an intense color, and a taste that blends well with the olive oil and feta in the recipe. And it’s perfect served with Five Seed Crackers. And although I had nothing to do with coming up with this recipe, my mother is nice enough to let me publish it here.

Beet Pesto

Ingredients:

• 4-5 small beets
• 3 tablespoons feta cheese or chèvre
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• 2-3 mint leaves
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• dash of pepper

Directions:

Rinse and cut off the tops of the beets and put them in a saucepan. Add enough enough water to cover the beets. Bring water to a boil and then simmer with the lid on for 20 minutes, or until soft enough to poke with a fork.

Place in food processor and mix until a smooth consistency. Add in rest of ingredients.

Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Want more food inspiration? Check out the rest of our Sunday Recipe series. 

The post Sunday Recipe: Beet Pesto appeared first on EcoSalon.

I admit, I’m an impatient person though I prefer to view myself as a fan of efficiency. I sigh when a driver in front of me insists on waiting for the seas to part before attempting to cross a lane and recently, when making a shopping return, I insisted on re-hanging the items for customer service in order to shave off three minutes.

You’d think that this impatience would naturally make me and other type-A people far from gardening candidates, but there are a number of plants that are perfect for us that either grow quickly, offer great returns, or are simply worth the wait. Sunflowers, basil, and the butterfly bush are my top three.

From 0-5 Feet in Under 70 days

Sunflowers require very little care other than occasional watering, they can survive the heat and I like the fact that they can go from 0-5 feet in under 70 days. And talk about sustainable: you can enjoy their  bright colors, surround yourself with multiple pots to create a fortress and when their season has come to an end, sunflowers can be dried and displayed, their seeds roasted and eaten or harvested for next season.

Pesto Anytime

Quick growing, tasty, and aromatic, basil is actually a member of the mint family. Basil grows well indoors and out, which makes it perfect to keep near the kitchen. According to herbgardening.com, leaf production slows or stops on any stem that flowers, so you should pinch off flower buds to keep the plant in production or leave some to bloom for decoration or seeds. For a fantastic pesto recipe, try my very favorite from the Mossewood Cookbook.

Susan’s Pesto (Ironically not this Susan. Just coincidence)

Best served immediately, but it will keep refrigerated for 3 or 4 days. Yields: one cup. Total cook time: 10 minutes

1 cup well-packed fresh basil leaves
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1 garlic clove, pressed or minced
1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts *
½ teaspoon salt

* To toast pine nuts, spread in a single layer on an unoiled baking sheet and bake in a conventional or toaster oven at 350° for about 3 to 5 minutes, until just slightly deepened in color.

Rinse and drain the basil leaves. In a blender or food processor, combine the basil, tomatoes, garlic, pine nuts, and salt and puree until smooth. You may need to stop several times to scrape the sides of the blender or processor bowl with a rubber spatula.

PER 1 OZ SERVING: 13 CALORIES, .7 G PROTEIN, .7 G FAT, 1.6 G CARBOHYDRATES, .1 G SATURATED FATTY ACIDS, .3 G POLYUNSATURATED FATTY ACIDS, .2 G MONOUNSATURATED FATTY ACIDS, 0 MG CHOLESTEROL, 135 MG SODIUM, 3 G TOTAL DIETARY FIBER.

Reprinted from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites, Copyright ©1996, Moosewood, Inc. Clarkson N. Potter, publisher, New York.

Portable Spring

In the northeast, butterflies begin to emerge with the warmth of spring. There are a number of flowers that will attract them that vary in size, color and scent. According to BirdsandBlooms.com, plants with different heights will draw a diverse crowd of butterflies as they offer nectar flowers at different levels. This can be accomplished by mixing plants with different growing habits, such as trailing, bushy and upright. BirdsandBlooms.com suggest a butterfly bush in a container with coral bells and garden verbena or sweet peas spilling over the edge.

Top Butterfly Picks for Containers:

Annuals

• Floss flower
• Globe amaranth
• Heliotrope
• Lantana
• Moss rose
• Salvia
• Sweet alyssum
• Sweet william
• Zinnia

Perennials

• Agastache
• Aster
• Butterfly bush
• Butterfly weed
• Candytuft
• Chrysanthemum
• Coreopsis
• Delphinium
• Dianthus
• Gaillardia
• Goldenrod
• Liatris
• Oregano
• Penstemon
• Phlox
• Purple coneflower
• Rudbeckia
• Salvia
• Scabiosa
• Sea pink
• Sedum
• Verbena
• Veronica
• Yarrow
• Wallflower

Please send us your favorite container garden combinations!

Image: Plutor

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