"pesto" news and stories

Traditional Italian pesto is a blend of basil, Parmesan, olive oil, garlic and pine nuts. Kitchen Daily expert Lauren Braun Costello's version uses Asian ingredients to complement rice noodles. Cilantro, mint, basil, garlic and peanuts give the sauce a jolt of fresh flavor and complexity. To make the dish a complete meal, she suggests adding vegetables, grilled shrimp, or even pork.

No basil at the farmers market yet, and you're jonesing for pesto? Go out on a limb, grab some pea shoots, those delicate, swooping leaves from a pea plant, and get cooking. Walla Walla, Wash.'s laura_pants (whose kitchenilliterate blog chronicles her experiments and screw-ups along with the aha moments) combines pea shoots with spring onions, parmesan cheese, pine nuts and olive oil for a pesto that's all about the season, and serves it with whole-wheat fettucine. (Her recipe comes from the folks at Coconut & Lime.) If you love peas, the intense flavor of these shoots will make you a very happy eater.

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Ah, pesto. Moderation flies out the window when it comes to that combo of basil, garlic, olive oil, pine nuts and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Bring it on. Throw a dollop on a baked potato, add another to a plate of fresh fettucine, dip a cracker in it, eat it by the spoonful. Blogger/photographer DeathByBokeh prefers his pesto with grilled vegetables, and we second that motion. Or try Kitchen Daily contributor Adeena Sussman's roasted-vegetable-and-tofu sandwich (pesto slathering called for).

You can use more than one variety of basil to mix up the flavor, as in this Gourmet recipe that uses Italian, bush and lemon basils. And if you're a true pesto fanatic, grow your own basil so you can put up batches of pesto and freeze it, bringing it out in February so that the taste of summer can once again blow your mind.

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Food fanatics like to play the "last meal" game: What would it be? Who would cook it? Which wine would you drink with it? What would you be wearing? For me, eggplant with pesto is on the short list. (OK, that and mashed potatoes, but that's for another day.)

Jules from Stone Soup provides a simple recipe for the dish, along with some rules to cook eggplant by. She prefers not to salt hers, as some maintain that salting removes moisture and bitterness. It's your choice.

This pesto is a traditional basil-and-pine-nut mix, but she also offers a recipe for a beetroot variety that is gorgeously ruby and sounds well worth the experiment. Use the eggplant and pesto leftovers in a sandwich. That is, if it's not your last meal.

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Juicing a lemon for a recipe? Zest it first! Here's a list of things you can do with zest to brighten up any number of dishes.