Zucchini with Pesto & Tomatoes

Zucchini has somehow become one of the most consumed vegetables in our house.  I have become completely enamoured with its raw power and it has grown on the whole family.

On Sunday night, to accompany our steak for dinner, I created the most amazing raw salad with zucchini as the main ingredient.  I was hoping to have some left for my lunch on Monday but between the six of us we devoured the lot.  I’m going to use the word salad loosely here too because a big bowl of this on its own would absolutely cure any pasta craving you might have with a whole lot of vitamins, protein and essential fats with a huge decrease in the simple carbohydrate department.

If you don’t have one of these veggie noodling gadgets it is simple enough to create ribbons using a peeler or show off your knife skills and simply julienne the zucchinis.  I bashed up the pesto in my mortar and pestle but feel free to use a food processor instead.

Zucchini with Pesto & Tomatoes – Serves 6 as a side or a few hungry people on its own

Ingredients

4 largish zucchinis

2 punnets cherry tomatoes

1 bunch asparagus (feel free to omit or switch for a different green vegetable because Australian asparagus is right at the end of the season and the imported stuff is starting to creep into stores unfortunately)

Pesto

1 bunch of basil, leaves picked to give  1 ½ - 2 cups

½ cup macadamia nuts

¼ cup EVOO

50g parmesan cheese cut into rough chunks

Juice of ½ - 1 lemon

1 large clove garlic

Freshly ground black pepper

Method

Put all the pesto ingredients into the mortar and pestle and bash it all about until you have a consistency you are happy with.  I kept it pretty chunky for this salad.

Wash your zucchinis and turn them into noodles or ribbons, pile into a large bowl.

Wash the cherry tomatoes and throw them in, you can cut them in half if you want to.  I couldn’t be bothered.

Pile the pesto in on top

Quickly blanche your asparagus, or other green vegetable, and throw it in on top.  The heat from the asparagus will help to loosen the pesto.

Stir everything together and dig in.

So...have you tried raw zucchini before?  Are you game to give it a go?

Tatum xx