Back in the early days of ES, I once ranted about the trend of making every thing on earth into a pesto, thinking that the old-fashioned basil kind could not be beat. However, one of our first ever commenters, John James Anderson, set me right:
After living in Italy for over a year there are about half a dozen pestos out there for sale on the shelves of Roman grocers; all are defined by region. Pesto basically means something that is ground. So, anything can be made into a pesto. The walnut variety of which you wrote typically should be mixed with sun dried tomatoes, garlic and Parmesan cheese (piu olio, sale e nero, claro!). Others are made with olives, onions, spinach and ricotta. But, Pesto Genovese (above) will always be king.
OK, fine. I don’t really know anything. I just pretend to be a food snob. And now that we’ve had everything from arugula pesto to nettle pesto on the blog, I’m officially a convert — anything green is better ground up and mixed with cheese, nuts and extra virgin. So when I saw sunflower shoots at the far mar this weekend and bought them on impulse, I knew immediately what I was going to do.
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