Pesto Pesto!: Recipes for the Calculated, the Casual & the Emergency Gourmet

Rating:
Summary: Tasty, tasty, tasty!
Review: I just about DIED when I tasted a concotion Victoria had put in her book. Fabulous.

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Summary: Good humor and good food-ideas abound
Review: Victoria's book reads like a chatty letter from my Aunt Helen who keeps her lucky dinner guests in stitches throughout the meal. Even if you never used a single recipe, the book is worth its weight in chuckles. But it would be a shame to not cash in on the creative cooking ideas Victoria offers. If you think pesto is just something you toss with hot pasta, or that it's always basil-based, think again. I was fascinated to learn that "pesto" really means "ground or pounded up" and you can grind or pound up all kinds of tasty stuff and then use it as a seasoning in all kinds of food. It's made an efficient shift in my approach to cooking -- I've found it very handy to know how to toss a spoonful of pesto into a recipe instead of fussing with eight herbs and a bunch of slippery garlic cloves! Pesto now shows up in everything from my twice-baked potatoes to tomato soup to salmon croquettes or crusty barbecued pork chops. This book will really get your creative juices flowing as well as your salivary ones. There are even directions for how to mail-order Victoria's own innovative Bella Cucina pestos from the commercial kitchen on her Pacific Northwest farm.