Pesto Sauce

Basil pesto is one of the most famous cold sauces of Italian cuisine. A good sauce can turn a simple ingredient into an inimitable masterpiece. A good sauce is a cry of the soul, the pinnacle of a cook’s craft joined with a gift from God. I have always wondered how the Italians manage to make such varied and amazing dishes, completely unlike each other, from something as simple as pasta. For some reason I remember those mountains of grated cheese and the people who make macaroni… G. Boccaccio, “The Decameron.”

The delicious sauce is sold in small jars, green and thick, and incredibly tasty. It is usually served with pasta or in soups, and spread on bread. Pesto comes from pestato, pestare, “to pound, to crush,” and originates in the north of Italy, in Genoa, in the Liguria region. Its Italian name is Pesto alla genovese.

Pesto has been known since the days of ancient Rome. The classic way is to grind basil, pine nuts, salt, garlic and the best olive oil with a wooden pestle in a marble mortar, adding Pecorino cheese.

The Italians say that the basil must be grown near Genoa, the olive oil must be Ligurian, and the pine nuts must be grown on the Mediterranean coast. That is a lot of categorical “musts.” I wonder whether all Italians really hold these canons sacred, and use a marble mortar and a wooden pestle and so on. It seems a bit unusual and doubtful.

Surely they chop the ingredients with kitchen appliances, use pine nuts or walnuts instead of the traditional ones, and replace Pecorino with Parmesan. But that doesn’t make the sauce any less tasty.

An interesting fact: Pecorino Siciliano is a hard Italian sheep’s milk cheese made in Sicily and aged for more than 2 years. It is hardly cheap enough to be used in mass production of jarred sauce. And still, Parmesan is more available and cheaper. Sicily is one thing, Genoa another… We always try to make pesto as close to the classic as possible, so that pasta with basil sauce turns out superb!