Homemade vegan pesto — Edwin Bongo

In over 10 years of cooking my own meals, I'd never actually made my own pesto until last week. Prior to going vegan, the amount of choice available in supermarkets stopped me ever bothering and post-vegan, thanks to Norwich's fantastic selection of shops for vegans, I'd found a couple of great brands I was happy with. Now I'm in North America, I've not been able to track down anything so I took the plunge and had a crack at it - I cannot believe I haven't done it sooner! It's the simplest thing in the world to make, you'll save some money and it tastes delicious!

Ingredients:

The leaves from roughly 2 whole basil plants
5 tablespoons of pine nuts
4 tablespoons of nutritional yeast
3 tablespoons of lemon juice
1 teaspoon of sea salt
5 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of water
6 tablespoons of olive oil

Instructions:

1) Peel and roughly chop your garlic cloves - I used 5 but I'm an absolute garlic fiend, use less if you're dating a vampire. This really is the only bit of prep you need to do.

2) Combine all of your ingredients, bar the olive oil and water, into your blender/food processor. I have both but find the smaller attachment for my smoothie maker to be more than up to the task. Add a couple of tablespoons of the olive oil and one of the water and blend. Keep adding oil and water as you go to achieve your desired consistency. I ended up using 6 of oil and 2 of water but really it's just down to personal preference.