A Luminous Halo

"Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." --Virginia Woolf

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Location: Springfield, Massachusetts, United States

Smith ’69, Purdue ’75. Anarchist; agnostic. Writer. Steward of the Pascal Emory house, an 1871 Second-Empire Victorian; of Sylvie, a 1974 Mercedes-Benz 450SL; and of Taz, a purebred Cockador who sets the standard for her breed. Happy enough for the present in Massachusetts, but always looking East.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Not Your Purist's Pesto

What can I say? We had the pesto, the parmigiano, the potatoes, the cream, and the fresh green beans. We didn't have the trenette...but Amir and I were hungry, we'd been in enough stores for one day, and spaghetti we did have. With a salad of fresh red peppers, it looked, smelled, and tasted divine.

I used the last of the Farchioni unfiltered extra-virgin olive oil--from Umbria--on this dish. So bite me. Ligurian specialties aren't too easy to come by around here. I may have to make another trip to Italy.

Trenette al Pesto

I have a new cookbook, about which I'm fairly excited...The Greatest Dishes! by Anya von Bremzen. (She's one of the food editors at Travel and Leisure, and writes for other publications as well.) I picked it up and read the recipe for Persian chelo: totally authentic. I was sold.

I don't need anybody born in Russia, living in Queens, to tell me how to make chelo. But she'd won my trust, and I was curious what she had to say about the other 79 recipes in the book. One of which was pesto, a dish I'm very curious about.

Lots of good information here. "The proper basil for pesto is the basilico di Pra grown just west of Genova. Pra basil has small concave leaves and an aroma that is described by Ligurians as "lemony" rather than "minty"....Some of the favorite pastas for pesto include troffie...trenette...mandilli di saea...and pansotti....Most cooks, especially in Western Liguria, religiously degerm the garlic for fear of bitterness, since the garlic taste shouldn't be too pronounced....The oil, of course, is Ligurian extra-virgin." And so on and on.

Her recipe for trenette al pesto, genova-style, contains not only pasta and pesto, but boiled potatoes, green beans, heavy cream, and extra cheese. Guess what I'll be having for dinner tomorrow night? Or as soon as I can hunt down the trenette.