Probiotic Chlorella Pesto with Wild Spruce Tips and Activated Walnuts
Spruce tip season always means making batches of epic pestos where I live. It’s really the easiest thing to make if you want to max out your nutrient intake on a daily basis by adding a spoonful to your meals, and the apple cider vinegar really helps preserve the pesto for long-term storage in the fridge and acts as a convenient source of probiotics for your gut flora.
Pre-made pesto usually contains terrible factory-farmed dairy or has been sitting stagnant on the shelf for months and can get expensive, often tasting bland. Not this recipe, though! With homegrown or wild foraged ingredients (as opposed to store-bought and mono-cropped on some large-scale farm), not only do you save lots of money but these tend to be the most nutrient-dense ingredients grown in quality soils. I regularly douse it on nearly everything I make, from zucchini pasta to wild-caught salmon, grass-fed and finished meats, pasture-raised eggs, as a salad dressing, as a dip for sweet potato fries, and even directly off of the spoon. It’s that good.
Spruce tips
Imagine my excitement when I discovered that I had a young spruce growing right in my backyard to carefully and sustainably forage a few tips from. Collect tips in early May in the Northern Hemisphere for just a few weeks, and preserve in salt or freeze them for long-term use. You’ll be able to notice the new growth: soft, vibrant and feathery, with a citrusy flavour. Spruce tips are packed with vitamin A and C, and loaded with antimicrobial and antibacterial properties. No species of spruce are poisonous, but some taste more bitter than others. Fir tips and pine shoots are also edible. Avoid the yew tree as it’s toxic! Do not over harvest from one tree, especially if the tree is younger, and avoid harvesting from the top of the young tree as this can stunt its growth. Spruce tips make for great trail nibbling food, and you could also make a tea with them, place them on a cake or in a big salad, or use as a garnish.
This recipe should be versatile, and you don’t even need to use spruce tips—just go for whatever’s available in your region and in your season, follow the ratios roughly, and harness the power of local greens in this delicious nutritional powerhouse. This recipe is very forgiving, easily blended, and can accommodate really any meal you can think of. All you need is a food processor, 5 minutes, and a glass Mason jar!
Ingredients
Don’t be afraid to use substitutes with whatever you can access. This batch turned out great, but I don’t even make it like this very often.
3-4 cups fresh organic parsley, arugula, kale, or sustainably foraged wild ramps
3-4 cups fresh organic mint or basil
1 cup of other type of green, such as fresh organic broccoli microgreens, or organic green peas (optional)
1/3 cup wild spruce tips (optional)
1/3 cup high quality biodynamic or organic extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup organic hemp seeds or flax seeds
1/3 cup organic walnuts (ideally activated), or other nut or seed such as pecans, Styrian pumpkin seeds, or inexpensive sunflower seeds. If you can access high-quality, grass-fed goat or water buffalo parmesan cheese where you live, and it works for you, go for it and use the same amount.
juice + zest of 1/2 organic lemon
2 tbsp raw apple cider vinegar, with the ‘mother’
1 tsp sea salt or Peruvian mountain salt
organic fresh cracked black pepper, to taste
2-3 peeled cloves organic garlic or more, depending on how garlicky you like it
2 tsp chlorella or spirulina (in my Root to Sky Kitchen blog post collab I used the Wild Bloom Botanicals spirulina and barley grass juice powder blend)
1 tbsp wild pine pollen (optional)
Method
Place all ingredients into a blender or food processor except for the olive oil. Blend until reduced into a fine paste with an even texture.
Add in the olive oil a little bit at a time, and continue to blend until well combined. Scrape the pesto into a mason jar, and serve!
Tips
If you’re not using apple cider vinegar, pesto keeps for about a week in a glass mason jar with an airtight lid. If you are using apple cider vinegar, this will ferment the pesto slightly, preserving it in the fridge for longer (several weeks!) and providing powerful bonus probiotic benefits.
Any combination of seasonal greens and nuts will work here. As long as you keep the general ratios, the taste will turn out amazing.
Freeze the pesto for longer-term storage, it’ll keep about 3 months in the freezer. Place the pesto in ice cube trays (silicone), and pop it into soups, stews, smoothies, etc.
Activate the nuts (stimulating the early germination and sprouting process and reducing anti-nutrients that cause mineral deficiencies and health issues) by placing them in a bowl of filtered water with a pinch of sea salt, and leave overnight or up to 24 hours. Overnight will suffice. Drain and rinse, then use immediately.
The quality of your olive oil will make or break your pesto. Opt for biodynamically grown or organic and authentic.
