Shortbread and sun-dried tomato pesto

I chair a children’s book selection committee – I won’t go into too much depth about what we do (because this is a food-related post) but, ultimately, the committee helps me review un-reviewed books so that we can decide if we want them to be part of Queens Library’s collections. When I started my job 18 months ago, I decided to bring breakfast to the meetings, mostly as a bribe so that they’d be nice to the new gal. As you know, I don’t like to bake. So I’ve always bought bagels at my local kosher place, or croissants and muffins from the local bakery. Not this past week, though. I wanted to actually make something for the committee, but I didn’t want to do a cloying sweet treat. Nope, like any dictatorial leader, I decided I’d make something savory and make them eat it out of fear of insulting me or hurting my feelings.

I needed something easy to transport and something that could be served at room temperature. And I also thought that, given the few Jewish and vegetarian members of our committee, it was best to avoid any meat products (I found some deelish-sounding proscuitto recipes). Epicurious came through for me again and I discovered Parmesan, Rosemary, and Walnut Shortbread. Per the recipe, it was recommended to top it with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto, which I also found a recipe for. I won’t put the whole recipes here because I don’t want this to the The Longest Post Ever – follow the links. Here’s how it all turned out:

The shortbread dough

Rolled in "logs"

In the oven (because I forgot to take one before I put them in there!)

The pesto

The finished product

It turned out delectable. The shortbread was buttery with a melt-in-your-mouth quality, and the pesto was the perfect foil, giving the shortbread zing and pizzazz. Not as many people ate them as normally wolf down the breakfast bakery goods I usually bring in, but I was very pleased with the praise from those who did give it a try. The pesto is super versatile: the recipe actually includes mixing it with linguine. It worked on the shortbread well, and it would also make a fab sandwich spread. The salty shortbread would be great with tomato soup (or any soup, I suppose).

I won’t do this every month when the committee meets, but I still had fun shaking it up a bit by combining my two favorite things: children’s books and food.

Eat, drink, and do something unexpected.