Pesto with roasted potatoes and sirloin steak. Vegan variations of pesto can include mixes of fresh basil, nuts such as walnut or pine nut, olive oil, and the addition of miso paste and nutritional yeast to provide additional flavor enhancement to the dish. For reasons of expense or availability, walnuts, pecans, cashews or even peanuts are sometimes substituted for the traditional pine nuts. Also, while the nuts are traditionally used as is, some recipes call for prior toasting. While not preferable, other culinary nuts may be used due to the taste disturbances that some people may experience after consuming pine nuts
Bread sauce or chicken. The use of slightly stale bread is optimal, making it an economical way of using up leftover bread. The sauce is easy to make and uses readily available ingredients. Bread sauce can be traced back to at least as early as medieval times, when cooks used bread as a thickening agent for sauces. The utilisation of bread in this way probably comes from cooks wanting to use up their stale bread who discovered that it could be incorporated within sauces to make them thicker. Turkish cuisine also features a cold sauce made from breadcrumbs mixed with pounded walnuts