RECIPE: Love makes pesto

Way back when I was living in Baltimore, I used to keep a mayonnaise jar full of walnut halves on my desk. At the time, I was often parked in a creaky old office chair, writing something for a theory class or reading chapters for a literary class, and having no time to even think about cooking. The walnut jar became a quick and easy hunger basher that didn’t involve walking to the local Hardee’s for curly fries or putting up with the too small apartment kitchen that was prone to overheating.  That jar was as much a fixture as the Christmas lights around my window that never came down or the cats parked on my bed watching the birdfeeder outside.  No walnuts?  No studying.  No gaming.  No desk.

When JJ first walked into my apartment and spied the walnut jar, he actually balked. Up until then, things had been pretty perfect, so I was really puzzled about why he looked at my room like it had kicked his dog.   I thought maybe I hadn’t successfully eliminated the cat box aroma from the other room or that my roommate had left something questionable on the floor. When I asked him what was wrong, he revealed that he was severely allergic to nuts, his gaze fixed on the offending jar next to the keyboard. When he asked how often I ate them, he almost sounded melancholy. He was starting to fall in love with me then, and this could have been a, early deal breaker – the thing that would have killed the us before we even got a chance to be an us. Walnuts, my favorite of all nuts, turned out to be the absolute worst on JJ’s allergic reaction scale, a sort of 8.0 on the Richter Scale of food danger.  Would I give up eating them so the kissing could continue without random trips to the hospital?

The answer is pretty obvious, considering he’s now my husband.  In those early moments, I was falling for him, too. Hard. And on the love scale in my mind, JJ far outweighed my love for walnuts.  Or any tree nuts it would turn out. Or avocados (the pit leeches a nut oil that produces a similar reaction for JJ). I threw out the walnut jar the next day while the roommate just shook his head in disbelief. I stopped eating nut-laced desserts completely.  Menus became death lists and I learned to narrow down our dining establishments with a crude equation.  The avocados…well, those were a toss up. I have yet to give them up – I’m convinced California natives wither up inside without them. I just practice super vigilant food safety protocols when I have them in the kitchen. And speaking of the kitchen, I eventually learned to dance around his allergy with not a little skill, and to this day, he blames his weight gain on me coming into his life, as I reintroduced him to the joy of safe, home-baked scones, pies, cakes, and pastries.

JJ’s allergy effectively eliminated a whole bevy of foods from his diet, even if they were thought of as safe.  Friends’ cakes, for example, allegedly nut free, sometimes had ingredients that the well-meaning sometimes forgot were included (my mother’s last minute substitution of walnut oil in my birthday cake one year comes to mind.)  There were some things I considered essential that he generally went without. The risk vs. flavor just wasn’t worth it. Pesto is a great example. Most store-bought varieties (and the homemade ones) are made with pine nuts. He had sometimes made his own. But as a bachelor, it just wasn’t part of the routine. So one of the first things I planted for my Italian man when I moved in were basil plants. And every year, I make pesto. Lots of pesto. All nut-free and tasty for my anaphylactic husband.

I don’t have a recipe. There are no measurements. I just harvest a giant batch of basil, pick the best leaves off the stems, wash them thoroughly, twice, spin them dry, and then make with the processing.

The only other ingredients I add are garlic, copious, high quality olive oil, and parmigiano reggiano, with amounts to match the basil harvest, which is always different. I prefer not to add salt because these usually end up frozen in cubes and tossed into pasta sauces. No salt =’s better flavor control.  Cloves of garlic go into the bottom for faster incorporation.  Then I stack the leaves to the brim and pour a generous sploosh (maybe 3/4 cup?) of olive oil on top.  Whir the blades until pureed, add more leaves, whir again, add more oil and leaves, whir again, and continue until done.  I add, oh, about two tablespoons of cheese at then end and mix it up, giving one last long run on the blades to get it fully blended into a peppery green goop.

I spoon it carefully into the special pesto-only ice cube tray (pesto tasting ice cubes in your iced tea aren’t as avant as they sound…blech) and when they are hard enough, they go into a Ziploc bag for cold storage. Come winter, I’m still keeping summer around with sunny tasting pasta and herby meats, though I usually run out by January.

Basil’s prime season is starting to wane, but you’ll still find big $1 bouquets of it at the local markets well into September. If you don’t grow your own, acquire it in due haste and make with the mashings. Takes but a few moments and a good spinning blade, or a mortar and pestle if you want to go old school.  A short task with a long inpact.