As happens early every summer in my fields, basil has raced out ahead of its soulmate, the tomato. I'm up to my ears in the anise-scented leaves—purple, Genovese, and Greek (aka Spicy Bush Basil). But only a trickle of ripe tomatoes with which to pair those leaves. The very same predicament some very resourceful Ligurian peasant overcame long ago, in the golden age of culinary history, when peasants were the only ones willing to take their chances on the breath-defying garlic bulb. Garlic? Basil? Indeed, I am talking pesto. Back in my gardener days, before I started selling all the good stuff from my fields and serving the split tomatoes and wormy ears of corn on my own table, I considered myself a pesto aficionado. Last week, with a little time to spare as my tomatoes refused to ripen, I put myself to the task of making the best batch of pesto I could from ingredients in my field and around the house.
Basil
The more bite the ingredients have, the better the pesto. Which is why I used the tiny-leaved oh-so-fragrant Greek or Spicy Bush Basil. Lacking the infinite patience of a worthier cook (or a battalion of kitchen interns willing to hunker down and bide their time), I pulled the confetti-sized leaves off in bunches along with the thinnest stems, rather than one leaf at a time, which would have taken forever, until I had two cups of leaves.
Garlic
The ingredient with the most bite is garlic. A bulb of garlic fresh from the garden is like a tomato fresh from the garden. Once you've had one, it's hard to go to the grocery store for another. This is why some garlic fanatics start gnoshing on "spring" garlic before the bulbs have even begun to form. Or garlic scapes. Unfortunately, I forgot to plant garlic back in October. But I was in luck, because my friend Dan Sullivan (www.GarlicDan.com) had planted some of his excess stock in my field. Nine hardneck varieties in all—German White, Musik, Hungarian Red, German Extra Hardy, Metechi, Legacy, Chrysalis Purple, Spanish Roja, and Pskem. I thought that the garlic I stole from Dan's patch was German White but the color of it tells me it might be Chrysalis Purple. Three small cloves packed enough pungency for my batch of pesto. Check out your local farmer's market for the fresh new garlic bulbs that will start to appear soon if they have not already appeared. At Union Square Greenmarket, where I sell my vegetables, the rocambole garlic at Keith's Farm is legendary and has some real bite to it. Garlic Dan is also a senior editor at The Rodale Institute's New Farm website, an excellent resource for in-depth information about organic farming.
Pine Nuts
The only pine nuts I could find at the grocery store were overpriced and they had those rancid looking brownish-black tips. So I dug out my stash of last year's foraged English walnuts. Still better than any walnuts I could find in a store. In the middle of the picture of the ingredients above, I placed two halves of a growing walnut, complete with shell, that I picked today from a tree. The clear liquid inside the shell is what eventually hardens into the walnut, much the same way molten bronze solidified into Perseus inside the mold Benvenuto Cellini made for it. Mother earth, too, is a great sculptor. I used about half a cup of Pennsylvania walnuts.
Olive Oil
No olive oil to be foraged from the hilltops of Pennsylvania. But I still had some of the fragrant gold-green stuff that I was on hand to watch as it was cold-pressed from the olive trees at Parco Fiorito, on the Umbria-Tuscany border, when I was in Italy last November. Wrapped inside my dirty laundry, many bottles of the stuff came home with me. Roberto Russo, the chef, cookbook author, and gentleman farmer who owns Parco Fiorito, is passionate about his olives, grapes, guinea hens, and even his pigs. Roberto teaches cooking, too, and a trip to the olive press with him and his olives is something I can only describe as a classic Slow Food experience. I used about half a cup of Roberto's extra virgin olive oil. For more about Roberto Russo's farm/kitchen/cooking school and the region in which it's located, check out www.parcofiorito.it and www.theenthusiastictraveler.com.
Lemon
OK. I broke down and went to the grocery store for this. Two tablespoons did the trick. Parmigiano. Reggiano Parmigiano is still the best and always will be. After I roughly blend together all of the other ingredients (no, I don't use a mortar and pestle) and mix them with the steaming, drained pasta, I like to shave half a cup of Reggiano Parmigiano over the works, so I can watch the cheese melt as the smell of basil and garlic and parmigiano envelopes me.
Pasta
Radiatore, the nookiest of pastas, is the best for capturing bits and pieces of pesto.