creamy vegan pesto, with white beans and braised garlic

Like I promised, here's my pesto recipe! It's almost the same pesto as in my post about white bean pesto and heirloom tomato salad stacks, but it's a complicated (and delicious!) enough recipe that it deserves its own post. (Also, the pictures in that post, other than the tomatoes, leave much to be desired.) 

I depleted my basil plants to make this pesto, and it was worth it! (Especially since they seem to be recovering.) I put it on pizza: I made the same slow-rise crust, spread the pesto on, covered in more tiny, sliced grape tomatoes, and baked. YUM. 

Braising the garlic is optional, as are the herbs, though if you have time, and fresh herbs on hand, it's worth it. Sautéing the garlic so there's not 1-2 heads of raw garlic in the pesto would be a good idea, or leave it out. (And anyway, when basil and pine nuts are pureed together, I find it difficult to go wrong!) 

Other than the braising, this recipe is fast and rewarding. It's recipes like this that make me so, so glad to have a food processor. (There was one time I picked over 3 full grocery-sized bags of basil from my CSA, then spent over 3 hours chopping by hand, and nearly destroyed my computer in the process. Long story.) 

 CREAMY VEGAN PESTO WITH WHITE BEANS AND BRAISED GARLIC

Stovetop-Braised garlic:

1-2 heads garlic 

1 tsp minced fresh rosemary 

1 tsp minced fresh thyme

olive oil

White Bean Pesto: 

1 cup cooked white beans

stovetop-braised garlic, above

2 tsp minced garlic (in addition to the braised above) 

2 - 3 cups fresh basil, or as much as possible!

a handful of chives, snipped

1/4 - 1/3 cup pine nuts

1/4 - 1/3 cup water 

2 -3 tbsp olive oil (optional) 

1 tsp ground pepper

1 tsp sea salt 

To prepare the garlic: Trim the root and top ends of the garlic head. Separate the cloves, but don't remove the peels. Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a frying pan (cast iron works best) to almost smoking point, then turn down heat as low as possible. Add the garlic, skin and all, to the pan. Roll the cloves in the olive oil and cover the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes. Then check the garlic: it should be light brown and smell absolutely amazing. Shake the pan to turn the cloves. Cover the pan and cook for another 5 minutes. After this, add the rosemary and thyme, then leave the lid off as you carefully stir the garlic for another 5 minutes. The skins should be falling off as you stir, and be incredibly fragrant. 

If not braising, chop the garlic roughly (it'll end up being pureed anyway) and saute with the herbs, if using, until golden. 

To make the pesto: In a blender or food processor, combine the beans, the braised garlic, minced garlic, basil, chives, pine nuts, water, oil (if using), pepper, and salt and blend until smooth. 

homemade pizza, with bechamel sauce, fresh basil, mushrooms, and grape tomatoes

This pizza is half the white pizza from 500 Vegan Recipes, half the slow-rise pizza dough on vegan yumyum and 101 cookbooks (originally from the completely amazing The Bread-Baker's Apprentice), plus a few extra percentages of my favorite pizza ingredients.

Since that dough is already beautifully detailed and illustrated in two prominent places on the internet, I won't bother repeating it here. That recipe makes 6 small pizzas. I found that making half the batch gave me the amount of dough I wanted to make a pizza for 3 people. You may find otherwise, and besides, if you make the whole batch, you can always freeze what you don't use and then you'll have delicious pizza dough on hand whenever you want.

As for the toppings, these are my favorites. I meant to add pine nuts, but I didn't remember until after I took the pizza out of the oven (we topped our slices with raw pine nuts, and it was just fine). The 500 Vegan Recipes version calls for fresh basil, sliced white onion, and smoked tofu slices as the topping. I'm sure this dough and sauce would be delicious with any veggie toppings you desire!

BECHAMEL SAUCE
1/2 cup earth balance
1/4 cup all-purpose flour 
1 cup plain soy milk
1 tsp garlic powder 
1 tsp dried basil

PIZZA
1/2 recipe slow-rise pizza dough 
1 recipe bechamel sauce (ingredients above)
20-30 fresh basil leaves, or even more if you have them! 
1/2 pound thinly sliced mushrooms
1 cup grape tomatoes, sliced in half
1/4 cup pine nuts (not pictured) 


Preheat the oven to 450 F.

To make the bechamel sauce: in a pot, melt the earth balance. Whisk in the flour until smooth, then add the soy milk and continue to whisk until the sauce thickens (about a minute or two). Remove from heat and add the herbs, and salt to taste.

Roll out the dough according to instructions on either of the slow-rise pizza dough recipes linked above.

Layer the basil leaves on top of the dough. Pour the bechamel sauce over the basil, spreading evenly. Add any other veggies or toppings you're using, in this case mushrooms, grape tomatoes, and pine nuts.

Bake for about 10 minutes, until the crust is golden.