Have I mentioned how much I absolutely love pesto? Yeah, I have. Well, here’s something really cool about pesto that I’ve discovered since I started food blogging: you can make it out of all kinds of things. Traditional pesto is made with pine nuts, garlic, and basil. But you can switch up the nuts, and often nobody will be the wiser. In fact, I often do just that, because pine nuts are a bit pricey (this recipe uses walnuts). The basil is where I tend to get a little stuck. You can substitute all kinds of herbs, greens, veggies… you name it. But the whole garlicky basil combo is basically what I really love about pesto. So while making pesto out of all kinds of crazy colorful veggies sounds like fun, I’m always a bit disappointed at the lack of basil-y flavor. That’s where recipes like this come in. Veggies and basil go great together, so why not combine them in one seriously amazing pesto? I did this last year with kale pesto. Now I’m doing it again with pea pesto. Peas actually work great in combination with basil pesto, because the sweetness adds a whole new layer of flavor, and they also give it a nice chunky texture. I thought about stuffing some shells with just pea pesto, but I thought that would be a little intense, and I’d also miss my good old vegan cashew-tofu ricotta that I love so much in recipes like this. So what I did is whip up a batch of pea pesto, then whip up a batch of ricotta, and mix half of the pea pesto in with the ricotta. The other half of the pea pesto went into a creamy sauce that the shells were baked up in. My shells turned out to be rich, creamy, packed with flavor, and just a bit of sweetness, thanks to the peas. They made for a very comforting dinner that was perfect for the early days of spring.
