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Published July 15, 2008 05:40 pm - Pesto. It’s one of those foods that just sounds sophisticated. The sort of thing that some young couple living in an elegant apartment in New York would say to another young couple also living in an elegant apartment in New York. Got a crush on pesto? Process is time consuming, but rewarding By Mike Pound
mpound@joplinglobe.com Pesto. It’s one of those foods that just sounds sophisticated. The sort of thing that some young couple living in an elegant apartment in New York would say to another young couple also living in an elegant apartment in New York. “Scooter and Babs. You must stop by this evening. Prescott and I will whip up his famous pesto and we can talk about opera.” Oh, and both young couples likely wear sweaters around their necks. But guess what? Pesto is not so sophisticated. Pesto, it turns out, can be made by just about anyone. Even someone like me. That’s right. I made a batch of pesto and I liked it. There! I said it. I like pesto. Darryl Altmon taught me and several other food-curious folks gathered at the Webb City Farmers’ Market last week to learn all about pesto. First of all, pesto, which gets its name from the Italian verb “pesta,” which means to pound or crush, has been around forever. The name is appropriate because to make a pesto the authentic way, the ingredients — most often basil, garlic and nuts — are crushed using a marble mortar and pestle. It’s a time-consuming, yet rewarding process much like kneading and rolling out your own bread dough. Of course, time-consuming is not always the way folks want to go in the kitchen so it’s also possible and quite acceptable to use a blender or food processor to mix the pesto ingredients. The key to any pesto is fresh basil. I suppose you could make a pesto using dried basil leaves, but I’m not sure the pesto gods would approve. But I’m guessing even a pesto made with dried basil leaves would be pretty good. With the basil you also want to add some fresh parsley, garlic cloves, pine nuts and allspice berries. Olive oil, Parmesan cheese and kosher salt round out the list of basic pesto ingredients. Altmon said since pine nuts tend to be some what pricey, it’s perfectly acceptable to substitute another more common type of nut such as almonds or walnuts. You may also use black peppercorns in place of allspice berries, Altmon said. The great thing about pesto is that it can be tweaked to suit your individual tastes or preferences. For example, Altmon’s basic recipe for Pesto Genovese calls for four to six cloves of garlic ... which is fine if you’re a garlic lover and don’t plan on going out in public for at least 24 hours. But if you’re not a huge garlic lover or if you don’t need to ward off vampires any time soon, you can opt to cut the amount of garlic. You may also add sun-dried tomatoes if you prefer a red pesto paste as opposed to the traditional green paste. 
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