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.
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. 
