Then dissolve it with good and abundant oil. Take a clove of garlic, basil or, when that is lacking, marjoram and parsley, grated Dutch and Parmigiano cheese and mix them with pine nuts and crush it all together in a mortar with a little butter until reduced to a paste. Basil is not mentioned by name, however, until 1863, in Giovanni Battista Ratto's cookbook, La Cuciniera Genovese: Contemporary writings tell us that this Roman pesto consisted of garlic, herbs, cheese, salt, vinegar, and of course, olive oil.įast-forward a few centuries, and we know from extant documents that during the middle ages, in Genova, people were making it with garlic and walnuts. Pesto, in its earliest form, dates back to the ancient Romans, who, like their later northern counterparts, simply named it moretum, after its method of preparation in a mortarium (mortar). which means 'boiled salad'! Watching the new year's sun rise from our apartment on Via dei Marsano in Genova was a beautiful experience. Naming a food after its preparation method is something I found a lot when we lived in Thailand - for example, som tam, which simply means 'sour pounded', or tom yam. Recognise the similar word there? Pestâ - pestle - pesto. Pesto, originally hailing from Genova in Northern Italy, owes its name to the Genovese dialect word, pestâ, which simply means 'to pound', and is simply a generic term for anything which is pounded in a mortar, using a pestle. This is my main vegan pesto recipe but I have many, many variations (and they almost always happen on the fly!). However, since my friends and family keep asking me for my recipe, I thought it high time I did something about it. Pesto is something I make so often, that until recently, it never occurred to me to blog it. For more information, please see my privacy policy.
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