Noodle pesto!! This is definitely one of the most exciting
things I have come across in a while. This recipe is my invention, but was
inspired by Niki Segnit’s coriander pesto concept in the wonderful Flavour Thesaurus, under the paragraph
on coriander/peanut. The Flavour
Thesaurus is a truly wonderful book and I highly recommend it as gifts for
creative foodie people.
This Vietnamese style pesto has the same wonderful
consistency and richness of regular pesto, but with a flavour profile that
works wonderfully with noodles. It would also be a good way of using up fresh
coriander – it always seems to come in bunches that are just impossible to get
through before they go soggy and soapy. Just make a load of pesto and freeze
it.
When cold this pesto will be a little more solid than
regular pesto because the coconut oil solidifies, but don’t fret - it will
absolutely behave like pesto in all its wondrous ways once you introduce it to
some hot noodles.
Ingredients
Makes enough for 2-4 portions of noodles (depending on how
you like your noodle:pesto ratio)
1 handful roasted salted peanuts
2 cm lump fresh ginger, roughly chopped
1 medium sized fresh red chilli, roughly chopped – don’t
remove the seeds
1 handful fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped
2 handfuls fresh coriander, roughly chopped (pick out
particularly woody bits of stem)
3 tbsp coconut oil, melted.
Method
You could, I suppose, just put everything but the oil in a
food processor, blitz to pesto consistency and then add the oil. But here is
how I made mine:
Pound the peanuts in a mortar and pestle until they form a
coarse crumb, then add the chilli and ginger and pound to a dry-ish paste. Add
this to a large bowl with the herbs and blitz a bit with an immersion blender.
Add 2 tbsp of oil and blitz again until it looks more or less like pesto. Stir
in the rest of the oil, taste and see if it needs extra salt (depending on how
salty the peanuts were). You might want to add a bit more oil too.
What I then did with
it
I boiled up some soba noodles with frozen peas, and stirred
in some of the noodle pesto, and a splash of lime juice. This was then mixed
into a salad with quorn fake chicken pieces, shredded lettuce, some peanuts, chopped
mint and coriander. And it was delicious.