Human Flower Project

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Stop in the Name of Pesto

If there were ever a reason to hold a plant back from blooming, it’s this pounded delicacy—the brainchild of the Genoans.

Isabella mourning the death of Lorenzo, a tale from
The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio
Image: C. Perellón

Why is this woman crying? You may think it’s that her mean brothers (upper right) killed her lover (below), and she’s resorted to cutting off her sweetheart’s head and burying it in a pot of basil. (That’s what Boccaccio’s thought, too).

But no. It’s because her basil plant is flowering.

This is tragic. Much as we dote on flowers, we try like the devil to prevent them from emerging on our basil because they mean the end of pesto season. These past few weeks, horribly hot as it’s been in Central Texas, two Ocymum basilium plants we have growing in pots, semi-shaded, have been thriving with some regular splashes of water. We wash the leaves and lay them on pizzas, the last topping between everything-else and the cheese.

Basil leaves drying, June 2008
Photo: Human Flower Project

And since our own sweetheart used his (still-attached) head and bought a food processor, pesto making is cinchy. The only time-consuming part is washing and drying the leaves, labor amply rewarded with fragrance.

Don’t toss out the water where you’ve “briefly” soaked the leaves. We’ve been putting the basil stems and leaf-rejects back into that pot and adding it all to our bathwater. Highly recommended.

There are centuries of lore associated with basil. Cure-all, aphrodisiac…. At the other extreme, some say “smelling the plant might bring a scorpion into the brain.” Let there be brainy scorpions!

Isabella with Pot of Basil (detail)
By William Holman Hunt, 1866
Image: via Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood

Such a highly aromatic plant would naturally come to be associated with head-trips of many kinds, including Boccaccio’s story from the Decameron.  Here is a detail from William Holman Hunt’s rendering of Isabella.  Lorenzo’s head, buried in that pot, seems to be doing wonders for her basil plant. (Do you see any trace of tears?)

If you’ve never tried making pesto, give it a go. It’s easy, with or without a food processor. The hardest part is disciplining oneself to keep pinching the basil plants so that they don’t flower.

The recipe below is from Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking:

Pesto

Pesto al Austinite
Photo: Human Flower Project

For the processor

2 cups tightly packed fresh basil leaves
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons pine nuts
2 garlic cloves, chopped fine before putting in the processor
Salt

For completion by hand

½ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
2 tablespoons fresh grated romano cheese
3 tablespoons butter, softened to room temperature

1. Briefly soak and wash the basil in cold water and gently pat it thoroughly dry with paper towels.
2. Put the basil, olive oil, pine nuts, chopped garlic and an ample pinch of salt in the processor bowl, and process to a uniform, creamy consistency.
3. Transfer to a bowl, and mix in the two grated cheeses by hand. It is worth the slight effort to do it by hand to obtain the noticeably superior texture it produces. When the cheese has been evenly amalgamated with the other ingredients, mix in the softened butter, distributing it uniformly into the sauce.
4. When spooning the pesto over pasta, dilute it slightly with a tablespoon or two of hot water in which the pasta was cooked.

(Hazan’s recipe includes, of course, a pound of pasta; it serves six. But pesto makes a delicious spread for tomato slices, sandwiches, or – this being Texas – chips. Buen provecho!)