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
Zanthoxylum piperitum the aroma. The young leaves are crushed and blended with miso using "suribachi" (mortar) to make a paste, a pesto sauce of sorts, and then used to make various "aemono" (tossed salad). The stereotypical main ingredient for the resultant "kinome-ae" is the fresh harvest of bamboo shoots, but the sauce may be tossed (or delicately "folded") into sashimi, clams, squid or other vegetable such as "tara-no-me" (angelica-tree shoots). The immature green berries, blanched and salted, are called "ao-zanshō" (). The berries are traditionally simmered into dark-brown "tsukudani", but nowadays are also available as "shoyu-zuke", which is just steeped in soy