Walnut and Vegetable Pate

I have been experimenting with a lot of nut cheezes recently. Today I decided to see what I could do with walnuts. I had originally intended to use this as salad dressing but then changed my mind and used the sprouted quinoa salad instead. After tasting this spread I knew it would be great with raw veggie dippers. It would also work well in place on mayonnaise on a sandwich. Here is what I made tonight.

Walnut and Vegetable Pate

Makes 16 servings – approximately ¼ cup each

Ingredients:

2 cups walnut pieces
4 cups filtered water to soak walnuts
2 stalks celery, cut into chunks
1 carrot, cut into chunks
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into chunks
1 clove garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons onion, peeled and chopped (start with 1 T if you aren't a fan of raw onion)
4 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped fine to help the food processor
1 pinch salt, or to taste
1 pinch freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
1 pinch celery seed, or to taste
1 pinch cayenne pepper, or to taste

Directions:

Soak the walnuts for a few hours and drain thoroughly. Place everything in your food processor and process until smooth. Serve cold.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 103.77
Calories From Fat (78%) - 80.43

Total Fat - 9.61g
Saturated Fat-  0.91g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 38.33mg
Potassium - 135.66mg
Total Carbohydrates - 3.71g
Fiber - 1.51g
Sugar - 1.35g
Protein - 2.51g

Comments:

This worked well with vegetable dippers but would also be a good salad dressing or sandwich spread. If you aren’t crazy about raw onion you may want to start with one tablespoon and go up from there. I happen to like onion, but not everyone does. This spread gets very smooth if you process it long enough. The texture is similar to whipped cream cheese. The color is close to salmon mousse. Next time I may season this will Old Bay and add dulse flakes to play with the salmon color.

Each serving of this salad contains approximately 1,150IU of vitamin A, 20mg of calcium, 20mcg of folate, 60mg of phosphorus and 30mg of magnesium. You can see how this would make a fairly nutritious sandwich spread in place of mayo that doesn’t contain any of those nutrients.

Unrelated note:

This is going to be my last post tonight. I hope you aren’t snowed in like us.  Have a great evening everyone.