Grubby Recipes (Ebury Press, £20)
Photograph by Uyen Luu.
INGREDIENTS – Serves 2
60 g of cashews
1 Zucchini
200 g of rigatoni or penne
1 handful of basil
1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast
3 cloves of garlic
1 Lemon
100 g of sun-dried tomatoes in oil
Manata Rocket
METHOD
1 Pour the cashews into a large saucepan of boiling water and leave for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, cut the courgette into 1cm rounds and set aside for later. Using a spoon, remove the cashews from the saucepan and place in a bowl. Bring the pan of water back to a boil, add the pasta, and simmer for 10 minutes.
2 To make the pesto, peel and pepper the avocado and add the flesh to a blender, along with the almonds, cashews, nutritional yeast, garlic, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 150 ml of water. Squeeze in half of the lemon and blitz until smooth.
3 Heat a good amount of olive oil in a deep pan on high heat. Add the zucchini slices and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side until charred, then remove from the heat.
4 Once the pasta is cooked, remove it and return it to the saucepan over low heat, simulating the pesto, the zucchini slices and the sun-dried tomatoes. Warm through for 2 minutes.
5 Spoon the pesto pasta into serving bowls and top with a handful of fresh rocket, and a good squeeze of the remaining lemon.
