Name: Celery leaf pesto
Yield: 2 C / 500 ml
Ingredients: 4 large handfuls celery leaves (you can use bits of stalks too); 1 1/4 C / 310 ml mild-tasting extra virgin olive oil; 2/3 C / 100 g toasted almonds (you can use toasted cashews too); 3 small cloves garlic; 1 tsp garlic confit or roasted garlic; Juice of 1 lemon; 2 tsp nutritional yeast (you can substitute 2 tbsp toasted pine nuts for the nutrional yeast); 1-1 1/2 tsp grain pink Himalayan salt or sea salt (I used 1 1/2 tsp)

Today, I’m adding to the (ever-growing) pesto recipe collection on the blog (see also dairy-free pistachio pesto and roasted red pepper pesto) – let me introduce to you the newest member of the family – celery leaf pesto!

The perfect condiment if you’re passionate about reducing food waste, but still want to eat delish food.

You’ll never throw away a single celery leaf again and I’ll even bet, that from this day forward you’ll specifically look for the bunches, with the leaves still on – this pesto is THAT good!

Will it pesto?

This all started last year, when I’d been to the farmers market and bought a big beautiful bunch of celery – with the leaves on!

I wanted to use the leaves to make broth, but with A LOT of leaves, and me quickly realizing, that actually I didn’t like that many celery leaves in my broth (intense flavor!), I didn’t know what to do.

Should I toss the leaves? It seemed like such a waste.

Google to the rescue!

As it turns out, there’s quite a lot of things to do with celery leaves. Pesto being one of them.

Knowing that celery leaves were indeed a pestoable ingredient (yes, totally made that word up and quite frankly loving it!), I whipped up a diary-free batch in minutes.

Yum. Just yum!

With a very characteristic yet mild and subtle celery flavor, the pesto pairs wonderfully with most potato and egg dishes, it’s especially good with tomato and cucumber veggie-wise, it’s yummy on bread and in sandwiches, potato pizza is a given and it’s so good in many pasta dishes too (make a pasta salad, toss with spaghetti and serve with some seafood, etc.).

Pile it high – say hello to your newest obsession: open-faced sandwiches

I love love love Danish ‘Smørrebrød’ (open-faced sandwiches) and in the summer time, nothing beats a potato sandwich! Butter up some sliced bread (preferably really dense rye bread with lots of seeds), layer slices of boiled new potatoes, add a healthy amount of celery leaf pesto, some marinated red onions, a sprinkle of good quality salt, black pepper (you could use onion salt too!) and enjoy. It’s such a treat!

It’s amazing with slices of juicy flavorful tomato or sweet crunchy cucumber too, just saying.