November 3, 2021

NTC 008: The SECRET of PESTO 👻🥬

My apologies for my absence over the past few weeks; I have found myself preoccupied with trying to buy a large and unwieldy musical instrument. Obviously there’s still the pandemic, regular life, attending university, and living in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language properly, all of which take up my time.

Friends, I am tired. Adding “buying impossible to move instrument” to my to-do list was a mistake, let alone trying to do it in German, a language that I have a basic awareness of. Trying to arrange the delivery of a 550kg musical instrument in German is like asking the neighbour if I can borrow their mother for a night of erotic fun - unlikely to succeed and deeply annoying for everybody but me. Es tut mir leid, aber kann dein Oma küssen mich an mein popo? Vielen Dank fur dein Verstandnis.

Because of these demands on my time I’ve been making simple things. Food which leaves left-overs, food that can be taken to work the next day, or mixed into something else to make a full-size meal. One of those things has been pesto, so today I am going to teach you the secret of pesto. And yes, pesto has a secret.

(above: abendbrot, the German's favourite meal of 'evening bread', with salsa, pesto, hummus, and a left-over aubergine)

Pesto is made up of four things: nuts, fresh leaves, cheese and oil. The green pesto we normally eat is basil, pine nuts, and olive oil, with a tiny smattering of Parmesan. This is the classic pesto from Genoa, and it’s fantastic, but it exists in that form because the Genoese have loads of those ingredients around their city. What the modern use of the word ‘pesto’ means is a herby paste that you can put on your food. That’s why the pesto shelf in the supermarket has all the different colours of pesto.

Making your own pesto is always better than buying it in the supermarket. You can slam all sorts of herby things together and make your own pesto quite cheaply, or you can go out and buy expensive ingredients for your pesto. It’s going to taste better and be cheaper.

Most of the time, the expensive part of pesto is the nuts. Pine nuts are so crazy expensive that you should forget about them. Use any other kind of nut you want, even those bags of almonds or hazelnut that come all ground up. I often get given big bags of walnuts by friends with walnut trees in their gardens, and walnuts are fine to use. I recently brought a new cartridge of toner for our laser printer, and to get free postage from Amazon I brought a 5kg bag of peanuts at the same time. You know what? Peanuts are also fine for pesto (although try and find unsalted).

All of those alternative nuts are going to get me in trouble with the Genoa board of pesto, but wait until what I say next: it doesn’t matter what green herb you use. In fact, you can even roast peppers and use that instead. I regularly use up parsley by turning it into a quick pesto, because I buy big bunches from the smaller shops here. I could probably write a whole post about how the supermarkets and smaller shops work here in Austria (in the UK this subject is often covered by the email newsletter Vittles), but lets just say it’s worth tracking down a big bunch of parsley wherever you live.

(this week I preserved an enormous amount of lemons. I have no idea what to do with my salty lemons that will be ready in a months time. Why did I do this)

If you don’t have a big bunch of parsley, the cooking writer Samin Nosrat suggests using rocket, spinach, sage, mint, Swiss chard, or even broccoli or cauliflower. Is there anything left on the vegetable shelf that can’t be used in pesto? Nosrat even suggests using kale, a vegetable that I find tastes of farts - if you think you can make a nice kale pesto let me know. Please don’t ask me to taste it though.

Finally, the cheese and oil: I am as loose with my suggestions for cheese as I am with every other part of the pesto. Use whatever cheese you have to hand, or even leave it out. The oil is supposed to be olive oil, but considering all the other flavours in there you might find it’s fine using a regular vegetable oil. In science terms, you’re using the oil to make a suspension of all these other ingredients, so you can smear it on your toast or pasta and have delicious food without much effort.

You will need:

• A blender, either a stick blender or a kitchen mixer.

• A bowl to put your pesto in afterwards

Ingredients:

OK, I’m going to give you some numbers for a rough guideline as to how much you need, but really you’re just going to have to eyeball it. You’re going to have to look at how much herbs you’re using and work it out from there by tasting your food as you go along

• A bunch of herbs

• About 60 grams of nuts (maybe more, maybe less)

• 50 grams of cheese (again, maybe more, maybe less)

• 100ml of oil (don’t make me say it)

• Some salt

• You might like some garlic or some lemon juice as well

Instructions:

Put everything in the blender and turn the blender on. When it is wet and smushy, taste it: is the pesto salty enough? Does it need more oil? Would you like to put some garlic in it, or a bit of lemon zest? That’s literally it.

Congratulations everybody, we learned the secret of pesto. Never tell the people of Genoa about this.

Support:

Did you know that a funeral costs an average of £4000 in the uk? If you did know that, I’m sorry for you, and if you didn’t know I’m pretty sure you can’t deal with that huge number. Four thousand pounds! That’s like going into a shop and buying four macbooks! And you don’t need four macbooks, but you definitely need to have your relative buried! You can’t just keep them in the freezer for two years!

There’s a real problem with the cost of funerals in the UK, and the Funeral Poverty Alliance is trying to stop people falling into poverty owing to the cost of funerals. This used to be a huge problem in Austria, and the government had to step in and almost nationalise the funeral system. There’s a great museum in Vienna’s biggest cemetery which details all the ways that funerals gouged money out of people. Now, in every main street in Austria, there’s a council-run funeral service.

If you want to help, follow the link above and educate yourself. Maybe it won't be you that needs help, but somebody you know.

Next week: squash soup? Squash soup. It's autumnal enough for squash soup.