Vegetables pesto

One thing that the Italians are very proud of is their food, and rightfully so. I like the Italian pesto sauce very much. It's a paste of olive oil, basil, garlic, pine nut and spices. It generally goes with pasta. I've discovered that pesto goes very well with cashew. I think it's because of the pine nut in the pesto itself. Now I'd like to try it with vegetables. And I pick long bean because it is quite a taste absorber. 


Recipe: Mixed vegetables pesto (for 2)


Ingredients:
- 15 long beans
- 1/2 small carrot, chopped to 1/4" cubes
- 1/2 small leaf of purple cabbage, sliced to short 1/8" thin strips
- 2 tablespoon (TB) broken cashew pieces
- 1-2 oz cooked pork or turkey, thinly sliced
- 2 TB pesto sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon chilly pepper
- salt to taste


Procedure:
1. Trim off 1/4" from each long bean's head and tail. Cut to 3" long pieces. Boil for 15 minutes (to remove toxin). Drain and cut into 1/2" long pieces. 
2. Heat 2 TB of pesto sauce with chilly pepper in a pan on medium heat. Add meat, carrot and purple cabbage and let heat up. Stir occasionally. Then add long beans and cashew and stir. When all the ingredients are hot, allow to sit on very low heat for 30 minutes to let the flavor get absorbed into the vegetables. Add 1 TB of water and mix if the pan seems to dry out. Note: vegetable absorbs flavor more slowly than pasta, so it's necessary to let the mixture sit for a while in warmth before serving.