Pesto

Pesto is a cold condiment paste made from crushed ingredients: originally Pesto alla genovese, consisting of basil, pine nuts, garlic, cheese, salt, and olive oil, which is prepared in a mortar and never cooked.

Pesto is a cold condiment paste made from crushed ingredients: originally, Pesto alla Genovese, consisting of basil, pine nuts, garlic, cheese, salt, and olive oil, which is created in a mortar and never cooked.

The word itself reveals how it is made. Pesto is Italian for "crushed," from pestare, to crush and grind, which traces back through Vulgar Latin to the Latin pinsare, meaning the same thing. The Duden dictionary lists it as a culinary term with both genders in German, der or das Pesto. What exactly is crushed, the word leaves open. In Genoa, it is basil; in Trapani, Sicily, it is tomato and almond; and beyond that, there is pesto rosso made from dried tomatoes, pistachio pesto, and, in the spring, wild garlic pesto. Whoever says "pesto" without specifying usually means the green variety from Liguria.

The standard for how to make it has been set by the competition for the best mortar-made pesto, which is held in Genoa. Four bunches of basil—that is 60 to 70 grams of leaves of the protected variety Basilico Genovese—30 grams of pine nuts, 45 to 60 grams of long-aged Parmigiano Reggiano, 20 to 40 grams of Fiore Sardo (Sardinian sheep's cheese), one to two cloves of garlic from Vessalico, 3 grams of coarse sea salt, and 60 to 80 milliliters of Riviera Ligure olive oil, mild and fruity. The mortar is made of marble, the pestle of wood. The leaves are washed cold and dried on a cloth without crushing them. First, the garlic and pine nuts are crushed into a cream, then the salt grains and the leaves are added, which are ground against the sides of the mortar in circular motions until they release a bright green juice. Only then are the two cheeses added, and finally the oil in a thin stream. It must be done quickly, as basil darkens when exposed to air. The oldest printed recipe comes from a Genoese cookbook from 1863 and was more flexible: Dutch cheese alongside Parmesan, a little butter in the mortar, and where there was no basil, marjoram and parsley were used instead.

Basil itself is a protected designation of origin. Basilico Genovese grows along the Ligurian coast, and the consortium that protects the name attributes its distinctiveness to the microclimate and cultivation in natural soil; only those who adhere to the specifications may sell it under this name. At La Gallinara, this basil is at the top of the ingredient list, at 26 percent ahead of the olive oil, followed by Grana Padano and Pecorino Romano. This is the litmus test for any jar: the herb after which the pesto is named is listed first, and it has a number attached to it.

How do you eat pesto?

Cold, stirred into hot pasta, never heated in a pan. The heat of the pasta is sufficient, and a spoonful of the cooking water makes the paste smooth, just as the 1863 Genoese cookbook already suggested, using a little hot water without salt. In Liguria, pesto is served with trofie, the small twisted noodles—which the 1863 cookbook still called gnocchi—and with lasagna, which refers to thin pasta sheets there. Two to three heaped tablespoons per serving; the pesto already contains the cheese. A pesto made in a mortar should be eaten on the same day; a jar will keep in the refrigerator as long as a layer of oil covers the surface, and if any is missing, you simply top it up.

What can you use pesto for?

For anything that can take a dab of herbs, oil, and salt. A spoonful of pesto genovese in minestrone just as it is served. On toasted bread, on tomatoes, tossed with steamed potatoes, in a vinaigrette for green beans. Pesto rosso, with its 36 percent dried tomatoes, can carry a bruschetta on its own. A pistachio pesto from Sicily with 70 percent pistachios is more of a nut cream than a sauce and works well on ricotta or fish. The cannery La Perle des Dieux preserves sardines in an algae pesto, while Stonewall Kitchen stirs basil pesto into garlic mayonnaise. Wild garlic pesto from Königskind, handmade in the Oberberg region with 50 percent wild garlic, is the pesto of the few weeks when the forest smells of it.

What is the best pesto?

The one that comes closest to the mortar, and that is evident in the ingredient list. The original has seven ingredients: basil, olive oil, pine nuts, two aged cheeses, garlic, salt. The closer a jar comes to this list, the closer it is to Genoese pesto; the further away, the more it is its own kind of pesto—not necessarily worse. The Pesto Genovese from La Gallinara lists protected basil at 26 percent in first place. The Basilikum Pesto from Cipriani is organic, contains no garlic or cheese, and therefore tastes more purely of herbs. Filotea puts pistachios at 21 percent before the cheese, while Antica Bottega Siciliana makes pesto alla trapanese from 77 percent tomato, almonds, and red garlic from Nubia. A pesto alla genovese from Greenomic, produced in Tuscany, uses cashews and Parmesan in addition to basil. Ultimately, the best one is the one that suits your plate: the green one with the most basil for pasta, the red one for bread, and the pistachio one for fish.