Venus Rising

Food for SoulIssue: Virgo 07

Pass the Pesto!

As you walk through your garden or meander around your local farmer’s market, find the basil. Gently rustle the tops of the basil plants with your hands and smell the sweet and pungent fragrance you have released. It is the end of this herb’s season, and it is abundant. It is also in need of care before the cold nights arrive. One frost can darken basil leaves and leave them limp. Saving the basil can be done in several ways…drying upside down, blanching and freezing and, most notably, by making pesto. Once transformed into pesto, the basil can be frozen for later use. In the middle of winter, you can bring out the pesto and add it to a meal to remind you of the last days of the summer garden.      

Traditional pesto is a paste-like sauce made of fresh basil, garlic, salt, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, and olive oil, and is thought to originate in Italy. While the French may dispute this and claim that their version, pistou, came first, it is indisputable that Italian cuisine was well established long before France existed. In Italy, pesto is an ever-present condiment, a spin off of ancient garlic sauces. It is named after its method of preparation − crushing the ingredients in a mortar and with a pestle. It can also be made in a food processor for less work, but the traditional and best way is by hand because the crushing optimizing the release of the basil’s fragrance and flavor.

Liguria, the northwest region of Italy, is famous worldwide for its pesto. There it is still made as it has been for ages, in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle. Ligurians also pride themselves on using particular ingredients, including small basil leaves, and the local grassy green olive oil. Their pesto is vibrant and silky. While processor versions are made in abundance elsewhere and are quite good they can end up creamier and greasier than pesto made by hand. Whatever the preparation it is never cooked, unless added to dishes at the last minute, so as to keep its bright green color and fresh basil flavor. 

Basil is the base of pesto, originating in India and most common in Thai and Italian cuisines. In many cultures it carried great weight, was considered a charm against beasts and is still used as a venom cure, dubbed royal and only to be harvested by royalty. It was romanticized in that men were considered engaged if given a sprig of basil from their lover, and demonized when it was thought that smelling it would cause scorpions to grow in the brain. In India however it was and is called holy basil and is considered an ancient link between a household and the spiritual world. Today, in every culture it is considered the Royal Herb.  It is used culinarily in many ways, both alone and as an ingredient in recipes. But pesto is its most common use and generally the first thing considered when figuring out what to do with an abundant crop of basil.