Pesto and Pasta alla Genovese

We are having bright, hot, sunny days in Colombo, and my herb garden is thriving. Without exaggeration, I have a forest of basil on my rooftop right now. Ok, so that’s a slight exaggeration… 12 pots do not quite a forest make. I’ve been growing basil in my little potted herb garden since we moved into our place in Colombo – it is a delightful plant to grow, mainly because it requires very little care to do well. A cool drink every day and plenty of sunshine and it grows faster than my toddlers. As a relatively inexperienced herb-gardener, the abundance of basil didn’t always send me into a pesto-making frenzy. In the early days, I was so thrilled that my herbs were not just surviving but actually thriving, that I naively refrained from too much pruning. This was a mistake because the more vigorously one prunes basil, the more verdant and lush it grows. I now prune enthusiastically, which means that I have a constant, fresh supply of these fragrant, emerald leaves to hand.

The most obvious thing one can make with basil is pesto, of course. Before my herb garden came into being, I was most decidedly not a fan of pesto, detesting the often insipid, watery and uninspiring contents of ready-made jars. But with the first bumper crop of succulent basil leaves, I decided to give home made pesto a try and I have not looked back since.

While the building blocks for pesto are simple, for a great result, the ingredients must be of the best quality. This means super fresh basil and garlic, great, sharp and zesty parmesan, good quality olive oil and freshly, goldenly toasted pine nuts.  The fresher the basil, the better, as the leaves bruise easily and discolour very, very fast when processed and left open to the air. So I try to cut the leaves just before I actually make the pesto. A really stellar pesto also depends on getting the ratio of saltiness, nuttiness and fresh herbaceous-ness just right. It is vital to taste and taste again to make sure the flavours are perfectly balanced. 

I could use pesto on almost any savoury dish – to jazz up creamy, just-about-set scrambled eggs, to create a green base for pizza which tastes as vibrant as it looks, to flavour a creamy chicken stir fry. But one of my favourite uses for pesto is also perhaps its most authentic – in pasta alla Genovese – that lovely, simple-but-oh-so-good pasta dish hailing from Genoa, the biggest city in the gorgeous coastal region of Liguria in Italy. It is simply a dish of pasta cooked until al dente, tossed with a pesto sauce that is loosened with a bit of the cooking water from the pasta, with a handful of boiled potatoes and green beans thrown in. I was lucky enough to taste pasta alla Genovese for the first time in Genoa itself, and the recipe I use is from a close friend of my parents’ who lives there. I use the term “recipe” loosely, as it is nothing more or less than a few simple guidelines for producing this dish. There are no set quantities, just suggestions. Much like making pesto, it depends on the cook's palate and what, through much tasting and tweaking, that cook will decide is the perfect balance. It might seem like starchy overkill to add potato to a bowl of pasta, but the combination really works, especially with the addition of green beans for textural contrast.

When I make pasta alla Genovese, I am always transported back to that wonderful old city, with its paved, winding laneways, wide piazzas and beautiful old churches and buildings. Cliché though it may be, it is not hyperbole to say that this dish really takes me on a journey. To me, pasta alla Genovese represents Italian food at its best – a few, fresh, great quality ingredients with very little done to them, the finished product singing with honest depths of flavour.