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Pesto shrimp a perfect meal

JULIAN ARMSTRONG julianarmstrong1@gmail.com

At the beginning of a beautiful new cookbook comes a key tip for flavouring your meals with herbs: When substituting fresh herbs for dried or vice versa, figure on three to one. This works out to 1 tbsp (45 ml) of chopped, fresh herbs for 1 tsp (15 ml) of dried.

Author Yvonne Tremblay then issues two exceptions: With rosemary, use equal amounts of each, and with tarragon, only use half the amount of fresh as you would dried because this herb packs more flavour when fresh.

The book, Culinary Herbs: Grow. Preserve. Cook! (Whitecap, $34.95), should improve any cook's cuisine with its 200-plus recipes and plentiful tips.

Examples: It's best to add fresh herbs at the end of the cooking time and never in a fried dish; make an herb-flavoured salad dressing well in advance so the flavours have time to blend; buy dried herbs in leaf form, rather than ground or powdered.

The Ontario nutritionist's shrimp dish calls for 1/2 cup (125 ml) of her basil pesto. The pesto recipe makes 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) and will keep for a week if refrigerated, and six months if frozen. I skipped the option to use curly parsley, as flat-leaf parsley has much more flavour.

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2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

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