Silence makes pesto.

Silence Dogood here. Maybe this seems ludicrous for someone who loves to cook as much as I do, and who loves and grows as many kinds of basil as I do, but before this past Sunday, I’d never made pesto. In fact, until maybe six months ago, I wasn’t even sure I liked pesto. How could that be?

Simple: Often, when I was served pesto, it was bitter. Really, hatefully bitter. And it was often served on undercooked, bitter, floury whole-wheat pasta. Ugh!!!

I don’t know about you, but from my perspective, bitter is bad. Floury, undercooked pasta is bad. And every kind of whole-wheat pasta I’ve ever tried is bad.

It’s not like I have something against whole wheat. I love a dense loaf of whole-wheat bread. Yum!!! But the thing about pasta is this: It should be springy. And the only pasta I’ve ever found that had the same springy quality as “regular” pasta was Jerusalem artichoke pasta, which tastes just like regular pasta, has the same texture as regular pasta, but adds protein. All right!

Anyway, at some point, our local supermarket started carrying their own-made pesto. At this point, I can’t even remember what made me decide to try it. But I found that it made a quick, luscious pasta sauce for those nights when you can’t face cooking something elaborate but still want something hot. Just cook your pasta, drain, return to the pot, stir in the pesto and shredded white Cheddar cheese, and serve it the second the Cheddar melts with a green salad and a side of cooked broccoli with butter and lemon juice. (Or snow peas or sugar snap peas or mixed green and yellow wax beans.) 

Hmmm. This pesto wasn’t bitter at all. It was delicious. Why was that? After looking at the ingredients, I concluded that it was because, being a store brand, they’d left out the expensive pine nuts that are often included in pesto, so there was no resinous afterbite of pine tar. (Some people like to use walnuts instead, but walnuts are also bitter and oily.)

However. One busy night, I made pesto pasta for our Friday Night Supper Club. Our friend Carolyn grabbed the carton of pesto and read the ingredients list, then exclaimed with undisguised horror, “This uses canola oil as well as olive oil!” Well, gads. Somehow she managed to choke it down anyway, but obviously she wasn’t happy.

As faithful readers know, the past few weekends our friend Ben and I have been taking our puppy Shiloh to the Emmaus Farmers’ Market in nearby Emmaus, PA. Our own basil is just beginning to get big, but several stands at the farmers’ market had marvelous bunches and bags of homegrown organic basil. I simply couldn’t resist.

Gulp. Now here I was at home with tons of fresh basil, which as you all know doesn’t keep at all well once cut from the plant. What to do?!!

Normally, I love to use fresh basil leaves in salads, stir-fries, pasta sauces, curries, and layered with fresh tomato slices and fresh mozzarella in caprese salads. But with this much basil, I had to do something more. I determined to make my own pesto.

Mind you, normal people whip up pesto in their food processors as easily as they toss scraps in their garbage disposals, frozen entrees in their microwaves, or dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Being a Luddite, I don’t have a garbage disposal (we compost our scraps or feed them to the chickens), microwave, or dishwasher, and I wouldn’t know how to use a food processor if you cracked me in the head with it. So I reached for my trusty blender.

Not that I’d recommend this, having done it. If you know how to use and have a food processor, use that. If you don’t, perhaps shredding the basil with a sharp knife before tossing it into the blender would help. I did neither, and ended up with fantastic pesto, but it took longer than I’d have expected and made quite a racket while it was doing it. Shriek.

Anyway, for all brave souls who are willing to follow in my footsteps, this is what I did: I first poured a half-cup of extra-virgin olive oil into the bottom of the blender, then filled it to the top with washed basil leaves, pounding them down with a wooden spoon. Then I turned the blender on “chop.” It made a hellish racket but didn’t do a hell of a lot. I alternated turning it off and mashing the basil leaves further towards the bottom with running it on “chop,” or, for variety, “pulverize.”

Eventually, it occurred to me that maybe I should add more olive oil, so I dumped in another half-cup. This somehow galvanized the process, and the basil finally mashed itself into puree. More olive oil and another blender full of basil leaves, on top of the original puree, resulted in a good cup or so of premium pesto. But I wasn’t quite done.

To finish the pesto, I minced four large garlic cloves and tossed them in the blender with the pesto, then sprinkled in a generous teaspoon of Trocamare (a spicy herb-hot pepper-salt blend) and a quarter-cup of grated Parmesan. One last minute of pureeing, and the pesto was ready to go. And it wasn’t bitter at all!

Yum, this homemade pesto was perfect in my easy pesto pasta sauce. (As noted, all you do is cook up spaghetti, fettucini, or shells, drain them, and while hot, stir in the pesto and sharp white shredded Cheddar and serve.) Our friend Ben is especially fond of spreading a thin layer of pesto over a lightly-oiled pizza crust before adding the tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings. The pesto adds rich flavor and complexity to the pizza.

It also makes a luscious dipping sauce for bread, as we discovered when our friend Sarah came to visit the next day. I added two tablespoons of the pesto to a bowl with a liberal amount of olive oil, then mixed in hot sauce, dried herbs (basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary, sage, and winter savory), a mix of dried red and black pepper, and salt (we like Real Salt), stirred, and let it sit while I made the salad, cut the breads, and set out the cheeses. One last stir, and I placed the pesto-oil mix out as a dipping sauce for the bread.

Talk about a hit! Not only did Sarah, OFB and I enjoy it, but even our friend and fellow blog contributor Richard Saunders, who had dropped by just in time for the treat and who, as you’ll recall, only likes highly flavored foods, thought it was terrific. The bread and dipping sauce vanished so fast, you’d have thought they were dollar bills dumped on the sidewalk.

Tonight I’m making veggie lasagna for our famous Supper Club, and I am oh-so-tempted to layer some pesto in with the other ingredients. I know it would make the lasagna even better! But then again, I wouldn’t have any pesto left for later… hmmmm… decisions, decisions… 

Anyway, if you’re getting a bumper crop of basil right now, I suggest that you make a batch of this pesto for your family. (But, ahem, I’d also suggest that, unlike me, you shred the basil before adding it to the blender or use a food processor.) I have a feeling it would freeze or can beautifully if you want to save it for later. But once you try it stirred into hot drained pasta with shredded cheese, or spread it on homemade pizza, or make it into dipping sauce, you may find that there’s really not enough basil in the world for fresh use now!

             ‘Til next time,

                       Silence