Pesto

The thing about achieving a real stand-alone example from  standard, classic recipes is striking a balance with the measurements. The other thing is sourcing the freshest and best quality ingredients for your chosen dish.

Sometimes there are little tricks to elevating recipes, but often cooking really is a pretty much that simple. Or, perhaps, you have to take a little care to make it that simple and not taking care can often lead to way overcomplicating things either by not having your shit in order in the kitchen, or by having to inject flavor into crap ingredients (excuse my language here,  but just trying to liven-up this preachy sermon).

A pesto recipe is an example of these principles. We had an abundance of basil I grew (the only thing I was able to grow this year as we travelled around quite a bit) from a pot on the window-ledge and a fairly good source of olive oil, pine-nuts and parmesan from a great Italian supplier we found on our recent stay in London.

Here, can I just say that in a place so big, even if (as we have) you’ve lived there for years, it takes ages to find the right shops, cafes; etc, as there’s just so much to choose from. I guess that’s half the fun of living here.. But just last week we managed to find an incredible pasta made by an old Italian couple who export it from their home in Switzerland.  So in the end, job done; anything tastes good with this pasta and I mean, just about any kind of cobbled together sauce.

Of course, a truly correct pesto would actually be much more of a labour of love to prepare. Firstly, you’d want to assemble it all by painstakingly grinding all the ingredients with a mortar and pestle (I suggest you purchase yourself one good Italian grandmother for this job otherwise) and then what we think as good provedance of an ingredient over here is just micky-mouse to the kind of way Italians can be picky about things. I once went out with an Italian girl, well I should say she was very much an Italian Lady actually, from the home of Pesto in Italy, Genova.

Anyway, I remember her father telling me that the only true Pesto Genovese had to have been grown in this particular area of Genova itself, but not only that, from a particular street and then the sunny side of that street. Well, maybe he was pulling my leg, but I wasn’t going to argue with girls’ father and wasn’t ready to hear about the necessary originations of the other ingredients.

Pesto (serves 4)

3 cups basil leaves

3/4 cup pine nuts (very lightly toasted)

1 cup Parmezan (grated)

1/2 cup Olive Oil

¼ cup Lemon Juice (not 100% traditional; I like it – Theresa doesn’t)

Place all ingredients in a food processor and pulse a few times until smooth or spend a half hour with a mortar and pestle grinding it.