Pesto
A quirky myth would have us believe that ancient
Greeks and Romans thought basil would grow only if you screamed wild curses and
shouted unintelligibly while planting
it.
To this I say phooey: the minute my
basil touched root to soil it erupted to enormous proportions - and I’m
quite sure I didn’t raise my voice even once. Basil has overrun my sunny
suburban porch in a tangled (yet fragrant) jungle and I must now hack through it
with a machete in order to find the grill. Luckily, my recipe for pesto demands
two packed cups of basil leaves, and batch by verdant batch, I vow to reclaim my
property.
One of the world’s
most-loved pasta foils originated in Liguria, the “Italian Riveria,”
whose capital is Genoa. The Genoese are known to be a tad overprotective of all
things local, but perhaps none more so than pesto. It is often said that there
are as many different pestos as there are homes in Genoa, but everyone agrees on
certain ingredients and standards. True Genoese pesto is composed of the small
leaves of a young basil plant, Italian pinoli, mild garlic, coarse salt,
parmesiano reggiano, and Ligurian olive oil (a mild, fruity product), all of
which are pounded into a paste by hand. The word pesto means
“pestle” after all.
Here is
where I stumbled. I was under the impression that I had been making absolutely
bellissimo pesto with just a pulse or two of the Cuisinart. But in article
after article on the subject, I read that I’d been missing out my entire
pesto-making life. Real pesto, true pesto, superior pesto can be made only by
hand. I was living a lie.
With this
earth-shaking knowledge in mind, I resolved to determine once and for all the
best method by conducting what I now refer to as the Test o’ Pesto. My
experiment was limited by the resources at hand. First, my basil is the
voluptuous American kind, not the paler, more diminutive Genoese kind. The
robust leaves of my basil plant would be looked at with distain by
traditionalists – they say that mature basil takes on an unpleasant minty
flavor, and can be oilier than the tender, nubile stuff. Second, I stumbled
across some especially heady garlic. Italian garlic tends to be smaller and
less pungent. In fact, Italian food’s reputation for being garlicky was
created in part because the garlic we use is much stronger, and we tend not to
adjust recipes for the difference. Third, I’ll be damned if I can get
Italian pinoli around here. They are supposed to be longer, more conical and
more delicate than their stubby Chinese cousins, but the later was all I could
find. Fourth, I cheated on the cheese. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t
bring myself to use my entire slab of $18/ pound Farmstead parmesiano reggiano.
I stretched it with some super market stuff (don’t worry, not from the
green canister, I’m not that bad). Fifth - and this is controversial
– I added some fresh flat-leaf parsley. It’s clearly not
traditional, but it is widely accepted as it ups the green in both color and
flavor.
On Monday, I whipped up an
emerald batch in the food processor. Three cloves garlic, a quarter cup toasted
pine nuts, two cups basil leaves, about 10 largish parsley leaves, a generous
pinch of coarse salt, a short stream of olive oil (maybe 5 tbs or so?) and a
quarter to a third cup parmesan. Jacob and I enjoyed this batch fervently over
some linguine. It scored high marks, but it’s hard to judge without a
comparison. I reserved some for the
face-off.
Last night brought the
contender. Lacking a real mortar and pestle, I fashioned a crude substitute out
of a mixing bowl and the butt end of a large screwdriver wrapped in saran. The
pounding began. I first made a paste with the garlic and salt, then added most
of the pine nuts, and a few torn basil leaves. I added the basil, a few leaves
at a time, pounding and grinding steadily for about a half an hour. When the
leaves looked decimated enough, I drizzled in olive oil, and lastly, stirred in
the cheese.
The Test o’
Pesto:
I smeared some of each pesto on pieces
of fresh bread. Jacob and I took turns sampling the
two.
The
results:
Pesto 1 was smooth in consistency. It
was pleasant, but gentler, flatter, and a bit oilier. In the dish, it tended to
separate so that a pool of bright green oil formed around the
solids.
Pesto 2 was chunky, with varying
sized leaf fragments (keep in mind – as if one could forget - that I was
using a screwdriver as a pestle). It did not separate. It had a strong
garlicky sting (though as I mentioned above, I think I hit a pungent clove). It
also had a rounder, deeper flavor. As Jacob said, “despite the garlic
bite, it tastes fresher.” I agreed. Pesto 1 was quite good, but Pesto
2 was somehow more complete.
Fred
Plotkin, connoisseur of music and food, writes that “esters (fragrant
compounds) are brought out more by a mortar and pestle than the violent action
of the blades of blender or food processor.” Hand-made pesto allows the
nuances of flavor to emerge while the food processor tends to dull them.
Interestingly, a lot of traditionalists will save time (and elbow grease) by
using a blender to make pesto, though they would never touch a food processor.
I plan to test this method as well – at least until I get my hands on a
real mortar and pestle.
For dinner last
night, we ate tuna steak sandwiches, in which the tuna was nestled into toasted
French bread, topped with lettuce and tomato, and slathered in a
pesto-mayonnaise. I used Pesto 2 for this mixture, adding just a dollop of
Hellmans and a little lemon juice. The tuna was seasoned simply with olive oil,
salt, pepper, and a drizzle of lemon juice, and was seared on the stove. The
heat of the tuna awakened the deep esters (thank you Mr. Plotkin) of the pesto,
and they melted into each other in each soul-satisfying bite.
Posted: Fri - August 27, 2004 at 12:09 PM