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Herbalism isn’t all double, double, elixirs for bubbles and tinctures for troubles.
It’s truly centered around health and wellness, and since all disease starts in the gut, we work a lot with food and diet too!
That’s especially true in the springtime; when little sprouts start peaking out of the soil and our bodies are starving for fresh, juicy greens after spending the winter digging deep with the starchy roots that get us through the non-growing season. Not to mention the seasons of sweets!
That doesn’t mean that we forego our herbal allies, in fact, we find every way we can to get them into our diets, including building delicious recipes around them! In this herbal pesto recipe, it’s about those beloved springtime herbs – Chickweed, Nettle, and Radish Greens.
You can use this with pastas and pizza, dip your pita chips, and slather on your gyros. YUM!
This herbal pesto recipe makes enough for 2-3 people to enjoy on pasta, or several to use as a dip.
3-4 cloves garlic minced
2 cups chickweed loosely packed
1 cups radish greens
1 cup nettle greens
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper (or to taste)
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup pine nuts or cashews
Place all of your ingredients into a food processor, a blender is also fine to use, and blend until it’s creamy! It may take a bit longer to blend than a typical pesto, but make sure that you blend it all the way!
Chickweed is our main ingredient in this recipe – and it can be used by itself if you prefer. It is rich in nutrition like iron, antioxidants, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin C. It helps to improve the body’s liver cleansing abilities, and it removes heat from the bloodstream, improving the working of the vital organs. It’s best used fresh to reap its benefits so this pesto is perfect!
Radish Greens are often cast aside from the tops of this springtime root, but we say use them here! They’re not great in a salad but they do add a bit of peppery spice and a nice texture to this pesto. Radish greens are loaded with calcium, potassium, vitamin A, and vitamin C. It has fatty acids and amino acids!
Nettles are an old familiar, and we use them in our Iron Woman Tonic too. There herbalists out there saying, “when in doubt, try nettles.” In the springtime, new baby nettle leaves start unfurling. This is the time when they’re loaded with the most active and potent vitamins a, c, and k. They have minerals calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium, along with fats, amino acids, and antioxidants.
Garlic provides a lot of flavor in this recipe because of the extra clove here. This antioxidant, amino acid building antibacterial helps to thin, stimulate, and cleanse your blood, helping to move all of the nutrients throughout your body.
Did you try this recipe? Tell us how you liked it in the comments!
This recipe is loosely based on the chickweed pesto recipe from Grow Forage Cook Ferment
Photo by Artur Rutkowski on Unsplash
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Berkeley Herbal Center
1250 Addison St., #G
Berkeley, CA 94702