Ah, spring! Yesterday it was warm and sunny, with gentle zephyr breezes, and drifts of swirling white dogwood petals. Luke the wonder dog and I sunned ourselves on the back porch, placidly watching as the crazy robins bobbed and weaved at the birdbath, while the territorial mockingbirds and the alarmist wrens shouted from the sidelines. Today it is raining, with spewing wind gusts, and the new, minute chartreuse leaves on the pecan trees are whipping back and forth in the wet. Not a good day for walking a dog who does not like to get his feet wet, but an excellent day for the nascent basil farm we planted this weekend.
Mr. Sanders and I generally keep a basil plant on the windowsill by the kitchen sink. One of us will remember to water it, usually. I like to take cuttings and root them in small clear glass bottles alongside the mothership basil plant, just to give the cuttings a clear, aspirational example of what we expect from them. That way we will always have a bounty of basil for our insatiable summer pesto appetites. This weekend I planted a batch of rooted cuttings in the new planter we made by the front door. The basil leaves are already adding bright green to the re-purposed copper fire bowl that we filled with Martha-approved dirt, and planted with candy tuft, alyssum, pink petunias, nasturtium seeds, some trailing variegated vincas and electric blue lobelia. Beautiful, and practical: our own tiny victory garden. Maybe this weekend we will get around to planting some tomatoes in the raised bed out back, though first I need to redistribute the tulip and daffodil bulbs, now that they have blazed through their springtime beauty.
Mr. Sanders introduced me to pesto back in our courting days. He was so sophisticated, with a knotty pine shelf of spiral-bound Time/Life Foods of the World cookbooks. Obviously, I was easily impressed. We still have the Italian cookbook – the other books have been lost over time, and this is the recipe that we continue to follow.
Pesto alla Genovese
Makes about 1-1/2 to 2 cups
2 cups fresh basil leaves, stripped from their stems, coarsely chopped and tightly packed
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 to 2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
2 tablespoons finely chopped pine nuts or walnuts
1 to 1-1/2 cups olive oil
1/2 cup freshly grated imported sardo, romano, or Parmesan cheese
Combine the coarsely chopped fresh basil, salt, pepper, garlic, nuts, and 1 cup of olive oil in the blender jar. Blend them at high speed until the ingredients are smooth, stopping the blender every 5 or 6 seconds to push the herbs down with a rubber spatula.
The sauce should be thin enough to run off the spatula easily. If it seems too thick, blend in as much as 1/2 cup more olive oil. Transfer the sauce to a bowl and stir in the grated cheese.
Nowadays they are many variations on the pesto theme. You can stick with the traditional basil pesto (and the mortar and pestle, although now we use a small food processor) or branch out to spinach pesto, even kale, or parsley, or arugula. Sometimes we skip the pine nuts, which can be expensive. But we never skimp on the garlic. Ever.
When you get your bumper harvest and make huge batch of pesto sauce one evening, pour the rest in a jar, and stick it in the fridge for emergencies. You can add it to your Friday night pizza, or spread some on leftover bread with Monday night pasta. It even makes a deelish baked potato topping.
It might be a damp and rainy day today, but the basil is enjoying the rain, which means we can look forward to the first joyful summer meal. And then some.
“To share a table with someone is to share everything.”
― Paul Krueger
