Two Verbs

Saturday, June 14, 2008

In Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Marcella Hazan explains the origins of the word pesto, “Genoese cooks insist that if it isn’t made in a mortar with a pestle, it isn’t pesto…the word comes from the verb pestare, which means to pound or to grind, as in a mortar.” As I was flipping through Essentials… recently, I was reminded that pesto is not a recipe so much as a method - though I suspect Marcella would disagree (she insists that the purpose of pesto is to exhibit Genoese basil).  Thus, we have the first verb of our title: pestare. 

The second verb - from English, thankfully - is improvise, as I have been (re)reading Sally Schneider’s The Improvisational Cook.  Schneider’s premise is that improvisational cooking stems from taking recipes as starting points and then moving beyond them.  She takes a basic recipe, explains its inner workings, and then provides variations of and uses for it (obviously useful for cooking local, seasonal food).  Naturally, I began wondering how I could improvise with pestare. 

Using my typical pesto recipe to create a general formula, we get the following:  2 1/4 c. of herbs, 1/2 c. cheese, 3 tbsp. nuts, aromatic, salt, and a fat to emulsify.  This formula then frees us to do all sorts of variations:

Herbs (mint, chives, marjoram, fennel, basil, lemon balm, parsley)
Cheese (aged hard cheese and young semi-soft cheese)
Nuts (walnuts, pine nuts, hazelnuts, cashews, pecans)
Aromatics (garlic, garlic scapes, green onions, red onions, cippolini)
Salt (sea salt, kosher salt, herb salt)
Fat (I’m still sticking with olive oil and butter here)

A couple of notes:

1) I’ve found that some semi-soft cheese adds a nice, mellow note (not to mention texture) to the pesto.  Originally, I would use something like pecorino toscano or fiore sardo.  However, a local raw milk farmer’s cheese works well.
2) Depending on what type of nuts you use, you may want to toast them first.  If I’m using walnuts or pine nuts, I won’t, as I find the toasted flavor predominates.  However, I will toast cashews or pecans. 

Thus far, my improvisations have been dictated by what we find at the Headhouse Square Market and what comes in our Red Earth Farm CSA herb share. The uses (a condimento for pasta, meat, fish, poultry, or bruschetta) are as equally diverse.