Deliciously Ella’s Warming Pesto Butter Beans

  • Difficulty level : Easy
  • Type : Breakfast
  • Cuisine : French

A favourite recipe from my blog, which I hope you’ll love. it’s incredibly simple but very addictive the first time I made this I cooked it four or five times in the next two weeks! There’s just something about the mix of soft, buttery beans smothered in home-made pesto with sauted spinach, crunchy pumpkin seeds and sweet, juicy pomegranates that I can’t get enough of.

Ingredients

  • For the pesto
  • garlic clove 
  • 50g pine nuts 
  • handful of basil leaves 
  • 3 tbsp olive oil 
  • 1 lemon lemon juice 
  • A portion salt and pepper to taste
  • For the salad
  • 400g can of butter beans drained and rinsed
  • 100g spinach 
  • 1 lemon lemon juice 
  • handful of pumpkin seeds 
  • sprinkling of pomegranate seeds 
  • A drizzle olive oil 

Method

  1. Start by making the pesto. Simply peel the garlic and then put all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth. Set aside.
  2. Place the beans in a frying pan with the spinach and pesto and sauté everything in a splash of olive oil for 2─3 minutes until the spinach has wilted and everything is warm.
  3. While they cook, squeeze the lemon for the salad over the beans and add more black pepper.
  4. Place the pesto beans and spinach into a bowl and sprinkle the pumpkin and pomegranate seeds over the top.
  5. Tweak It - In hot weather, swap the wilted spinach for fresh rocket and serve this as a cold salad.Recipe extracted from Deliciously Ella Every Day by Ella Woodward, published by Yellow Kite. © Ella Woodward 2016. Photography Clare Winfield.