Everywhere I go I find a pal
Peter Weinschenk, Editor, The Record-Review
The pleasures of the summer garden abound.
First, my wife, Susan, and I enjoyed lettuce leaves for salads. Then came spinach and, later, kale.
Now, under the baking sun of July, we have basil, pungent and flavorful.
The herb is great. It has licorice-kind of sweetness, yet is savory. It is strong and delicious.
A couple leaves of basil will turn an ordinary cheese pizza into a gourmet delight. It is perfectly married to tomato sauce and garlic. Besides that, it is a tomato dish’s perfect match on the other side of the color wheel. A mozzarella cheese pizza with basil leaves creates Christmas in July.
The pinnacle use of summer garden basil is in fresh pesto. I had some on Sunday’s meal of campanelle pasta. Fantastic.
Making a good pesto is an art form. A recipe can get you there, but a really good pesto happens when you create the mixture, taste, add a little bit of this and that and, once again, taste.
Pesto is a blendered combo of great things: basil, parmesan cheese, parsley, fresh garlic, olive oil, pan roasted pine nuts and arugula.
The mixture is nutty, savory, oily and pungent. It wakes up your senses and it has a terrific mouth feel. It is creamy but not fatty.
To make pesto, I make a special trip down in our basement to retrieve our blender. I set up the machine and feed in the ingredients. There is no measuring. I use a handful of basil leaves. A handful of parsley. Et cetera.
The next step is to emulsify the ingredients. That’s not so easy. I need to get a long wooden spoon to smoosh down all of the basil leaves and parsley into the blender blades. The blender slowly turns all of the ingredients into a green, cheesy paste. Once this task is complete, you need a knife to release all of the pesto from the blender blades. You don’t want to waste even a single spoonful.
Maybe some people like a thin coating of pesto on their cavatappi. Not me. I enjoy lots of pesto on my pasta. To spice things up even further, I’ll dump on a small heap of red pepper flakes. Once again, the meal is red, white and green.
The general wisdom is that pesto can keep in the refrigerator for months. That’s true, but, for me, pesto is best fresh. A bright green mix on steamy spaghetti is just supremo.
It is the taste of Italian food for sure. But, more importantly, it is spicy and bold with a touch of mystery thrown in.
It is the taste of summer. And it is great.
