Pesto is the general name for a (usually thick) sauce used to flavor anything from toasted bread to fish to pasta. You can rub or spoon it over grilled meats and vegetables or you can stir it into soups and stews.
Classic Italian pesto is made with fresh basil, pine nuts, garlic, parmesan and olive oil. You can experiment with the proportions to find your favorite, but here's the general ratio:
2 cups packed basil leaves
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 small clove garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
Purée the first four ingredients together in a food processor and then drizzle in the olive oil while running the machine. Season to taste with salt and pepper and you're done.
Using the proportions above as a starting point, keep in mind the general formula for pesto:
herb + hard cheese + nut + onion/aromatic + oil
Experiment with less classic combinations to make a delicious sauce using whatever you have on hand. Here are a few suggestions:
basil + pecorino + walnuts + olive oil + garlic
parsley + parmesan + pine nuts + olive oil + garlic
cilantro + manchego + almonds + olive oil + garlic
Making and freezing pesto is a great way to use up an abundance of late summer herbs.
Recipe: Mint Pesto (Cookthink)
Recipe: Garlic Scape Pesto (VeganYumYum)
Recipe: Broccoli Pesto (Ann Cooper)
A purée is a thick, soft dish that's made by pressing cooked foods through a sieve, or mixing them in a blender or food processor.
Vegetable purées are either used as a base for soup -- thinned with water or stock -- or eaten as a side dish. Tomato purée, used for sauces and soups, is made by removing seeds from lightly cooked tomatoes and straining the pulp. Fruit purées are used to make sauces, mousses, soufflés and other preparations. Purées can also be made from anchovies, chicken livers, shrimp or salmon, and used as a filling for canapés.
Recipe: Butternut Squash And Banana Puree With Whiskey And Pecans (Cookthink)
Recipe: Parsnip And Orange Puree (Cookthink)
Reference: Tomato paste vs. tomato puree vs. tomato sauce (Cookthink)
Sorbet is a fruity frozen dessert that was invented before ice cream but tastes like it (minus the dairy). It has a soft texture and is made from fruit juice or purée that is mixed with a sugar syrup and sometimes alchohol. Italian meringue may be added to sorbet to enhance its volume.
American sherbet is a close cousin of sorbet, though it contains a small amount of milk. Sorbet is actually a Frenchified word for sorbetto, its Italian name. The Italians learned about sorbetto from the Arabs, who'd learned about it from the Persians, who'd learned about it from the Chinese. The first sorbets were made from honey, aromatics, fruit and snow.
Sorbet is as sweet as ice cream but lighter. It's eaten as a snack or dessert and is sometimes still served at elaborate French meals as a palate cleanser between courses (with a bit of alcohol, replacing the shot that was once served between plates).
Bisque is currently used as a general term for a thick puréed or otherwise creamy soup that's usually made with cream or crème fraîche. Traditionally, "bisque" refers to a complex shellfish soup that is classically made with lobster, crab or crawfish.
To make a classic bisque, shellfish is cooked in a mirepoix, flamed with cognac and reduced with white wine and stock. The shellfish is allowed to cool, then shelled and the flesh is chopped to use as a garnish for the soup.
The shells are pounded, then mixed with cooked rice and the flavored broth to form a purée that is strained, thinned with more stock, boiled and then enriched with butter and cream and garnished with the reserved shellfish.
Recipe: Watercress Bisque (Washington Post)
Recipe: Shrimp Bisque (Cookthink)
Why are they called navy beans?
Why are they called navy beans?
Navy beans are small and oval and cook relatively quickly (which, as Aliza Green notes in The Bean Bible, has made them popular with commercial baked bean manufacturers).
Known as Boston beans, the white coco, pea beans or alubias chicas, navy beans are perfect for dishes that don't need the full bean shape to shine: purées, soups, stews and baked beans.
Navy beans get their name because of their role as a staple food for the U.S. Navy. The beans were first mixed with molasses and canned in 1875; Heinz introduced canned beans with tomato sauce in 1895.
Bangers and mash is quintessential British comfort food. Traditional pub grub and a common everyday dish on British tables, the bangers are traditional British pork or beef sausages, and mash is slang for mashed potatoes. Bangers and mash are traditionally served by placing fried sausages on a pile of mashed potatoes and dousing them in an onion gravy.
While bangers and mash is a classic working class dish, it's also found gussied up on gastropub menus where it may be prepared with any number of fancy sausages or gravies.
The term "banger" is said to refer to the sausages' tendency to explode -- or bang around -- in the pan when cooked over high heat.
Pistou is the French answer to pesto.
A Provençal condiment made from basil, garlic and olive oil, it's primarily used to flavor a vegetable, bean and vermicelli soup known as soupe au pistou.
Traditionally, pistou does not include parmesan, but in a borderless Europe, the neighboring cheese sometimes makes it into the mix.
A velouté is the French term for a soup traditionally thickened with egg yolks, butter and cream, though it is now also used loosely to refer to soups that are thickened exclusively with butter and/or cream.
A velouté sauce is a white stock-based sauce thickened with roux that is one of the five "mother sauces," meaning that it is the basis for a number of other sauces. Velouté sauce is sometimes enriched with egg yolks or cream.
