Kale and Hemp pesto pasta

By Amy and Duart

We are so excited to be partnering with Faithful to Nature an incredible organic online store that sells a humongous range of environmentally friendly, vegan, plastic free and local products from food to beauty to home decor and clothing.

I must say I had such decision anxiety trying to decide what to buy but eventually decided on a little of everything as you can see in the photo below. Stay tuned for recipes including the rest of these amazing brands. Except maybe my Puresmile toothbrush.

For this recipe I decided to use the Happy Earth People chickpea pasta and Soaring Free Superfoods hemp oil and hemp seeds

Serves 4 generous portions

Ingredients:

• A small handful of shelled hemp seeds
• Happy Earth people chickpea pasta – Cook in boiling water with some oil and salt until al dente

For the pesto:

• 3 cups kale leaves – take off the big stems
• 1 cup basil
• 1/3 cup raw cashew nuts (You can also use sunflower seeds or pine nuts)
• 60 ml Soaring Free hemp oil
• 1/14 olive oil
• 2 tables spoons soaring free shelled hemp seeds
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Put all these ingredients into a blender – and blend until quite smooth but still has texture. You can add more oil or a little water if it struggles to blend. I used my Omniblend V

For the tomatoes:

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 400 g heirloom tomatoes – I buy mine from Woolworths
• 1/2 teaspoons crushed garlic – I pop a bulb in my nutribullet and keep it in oil in the fridge
• a pinch of salt
• On an extremely low heat and let them slowly simmer away until they open and their sweet juice mixes with the olive oil. Keep this liquid to pour over the pasta.

For the mushrooms:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 250 g Brown mushrooms
• 1/4 tsp dried chilli
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• Fry the mushrooms along with all the ingredients in a pan until the mushrooms are soft. I like to keep mine quite hard to that the don’t get too watery and are substantial to bite into.

Drain the pasta and add the pesto into the bowl and mix until the pesto covers all the pasta. Then add in half the mushrooms and stir them in. Dish onto plates and add the rest of the mushrooms and tomatoes on top. Drizzle with hemp oil and sprinkle hemp seeds on top and garnish with basil leaves. Hope you enjoy it!