Pesto, pesto, pesto

When I was growing up, my mom would make a sauce that I now think of as "winter pesto." It was made from parmesan, nuts, garlic, olive oil... and large quantities of dried basil and parsley. Sometimes the nuts were walnuts, sometimes even sunflower seeds. Regardless, the result was a chunky, nutty, garlicky sauce that I loved- my mom's pesto on spaghetti was my favorite meal for a long time.

Then, in the early 1990s, I traveled in Europe with a friend. One of our stops was Cinque Terre, along the west coast of Italy. We stayed in a youth hostel in the town of Riomaggiore, which offered bare-bones lodging (8 beds per room, "bathrooms" on the roof, each stall covered only by a shower curtain that billowed in the frequent breezes). But it did have a communal kitchen, and on our first night there we ventured out to see what we could find for our dinner. We ended up in a market where we bought some dried pasta. Then a flash of bright green caught my eye from behind the glass of the deli case. The label in front of the bowl said "pesto" but it didn't look like the pesto I knew. We bought some. The woman behind the counter dolloped a generous amount of pesto onto a square of wax paper, then brought up the sides of the paper and twisted them together to make a neat little packet. We added some fresh tomatoes, a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine to our purchases, and then headed back to the hostel to cook our simple meal. We carried our plates out to a rocky hill overlooking the Mediterranean, and ate what I still remember as one of my life's most perfect meals as the sun set over the ocean.

That pesto was incredible. The color was glorious, the basil scent heady, the texture nearly smooth. It tasted of the ocean, the basil flavored by the salty sea air in which it grew. I'd never had anything like it. And when I got home, I was on a mission to duplicate it- or at least come close.

Now, over 10 years later, I've made many, many different recipes for pesto featuring fresh basil. Each varies a bit in terms of the ratio of ingredients and the method for making the pesto, but all have been good. Nowadays I don't use a recipe, but I do follow a specific method. I'm not sure I'll ever capture the flavor of the Mediterranean sea in my pesto, but I like my version a lot and make it in quantity every year. It freezes beautifully and allows us to taste summer all year round. As a food fad, pesto may have come and gone, but I still love it.

Here's how I make mine. I start with a few ounces of cubed parmesan cheese (parmigiano reggiano when I have it) and a few handfuls of pine nuts, plus a large clove of garlic.

The nuts and cheese go into the food processor first, where I pulse them until they are finely ground. Then, with the machine running, I drop in the peeled garlic clove and let it bounce around on the blade and get minced into the mixture.


Next I add the basil- a large bunch, about 3-4 loosely packed cups- and a few pinches of sea salt.

I pulse the machine a few times to start getting the basil mixed in; then I start drizzling extra-virgin olive oil through the feed tube. I let the machine run while I'm drizzling in the oil, stopping occasionally to scrape down the sides of the work bowl. I know I've added enough oil when there's a subtle change in the sound the pesto makes as it whirls around in the bowl- there's a little "glurp" noise as the mixture becomes a thick liquid. A few more pulses, adjust the salt to taste, and you've got pesto!