The Oregano Item

Jul 3 13:16 UTC 1994

Dan Romanchik is having a banner year for oregano.  I took home a bunch
of it after the walk yesterday.  In celebration of oregano, I'm entering
an oregano pesto recipe.  I haven't tried it, but it's from a truly
amazing cookbook so I have reasonable faith that it will come out OK.
The cookbook it comes from is called _Pestos, Cooking with Herb Pastes_.
It's written by Dorothy Rankin; published by The Crossing Press.  I've
called their toll-free number for a catalog of their cookbooks several
times, but they've never yet sent me a catalog.

Oregano Pesto
-------------
1/2 cup fresh oregano leaves
1 1/2 cups fresh parsley leaves
2 large garlic cloves
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup walnuts or pine nuts
1/2 cup olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper

Basically, you grind all the ingredients in a food processor.  The book
recommends letting it stand 5 minutes before serving.  They suggest serving
it with tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant, or adding cream and parmesan
cheese and tossing it with pasta.  Yield: about 1 1/4 cups.

(Buy the cookbook... buy the cookbook... it has recipes for using the
Oregano Pesto in calzones with herbed seasonal vegetables, in fresh clam
pasta sauce, and in lamb grilled with pesto marinade.)


Another pesto recipe in the cookbook adds 3 tablespoons of oregano leaves
to what's otherwise a regular basil pesto recipe.  Both sound yummy -- I'm
looking forward to trying these!

response 2 of 9:

Jul 8 01:08 UTC 1994

Well, I made oregano pesto and put it into the calzone recipe.
The calzones were OK (Rob liked them more than I did); and the pesto
itself is really yummy.  I've invented another oregano pesto dish, which
I'm eating and enjoying a lot as I type this.  (I should mention that I
like pasta with cottage cheese and ketchup as a topping, too, so I may have
really awful tastes in pasta toppings).

Valerie's Pesto Shells
=======================
Cook some pasta shells.  Stir in a bunch of pesto (maybe 1-2
tablespoonfuls) and some cottage cheese (maybe 2-3 tablespoonfuls).
Stir.  Chow down.

response 4 of 9:

Oct 16 02:13 UTC 1994

I tried some *fresh* oregano from our herb garden in the lasagna I
made this week.  I think it really helped the sauce.

response 6 of 9:

Oct 16 15:34 UTC 1994

Cool!  Carson is in the cooking conference!

I did a 'find "pesto"' to find all responses in this conference that
mention pesto.  Here are the results.  Several look like they'll include
pesto recipes or pointers to them.  For brevity I cut out all mentions of
"pesto" in item 75, since if you're reading this you've certainly found
item 75:

item 8 response 38:
      1: green linguine with broccoli and winter kale pesto.
item 8 response 68:
      1: Anybody know how to make a good pesto?
item 8 response 76:
      1: re 68: For a couple of good winter pestos, type
item 8 response 170:
     11: The last dinner I cooked was a tortellini in walnut pesto sauce.
item 9 response 35:
      2:       Tortellini with Walnut Pesto
item 9 response 37:
      1: the tortellini with walnut pesto sounds amazing!!
item 18 response 137:
      7: dried tomatoe pesto, peppers, goat cheese, etc.  The service was
      unusually
item 44 response 2:
      2: "pasta, pesto, and pine nuts".  the names are intended to be cute
item 47 response 6:
     12: Looking forward to a big pesto meal soon.....
item 47 response 7:
      1: I've never tried it, but supposedly you can freeze basil.  Dunno,
      pesto 4: make endless pesto.
item 87 response 37:
      4: Pesto bagel, which consists of tomato, onion, pesto, and smoked 

response 8 of 9:

Oct 17 00:34 UTC 1994

Hey, that sounds like it could turn into an interesting party.  Hm....