Tag Archives: pesto

And Pistou?

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IMG_20141009_214332It never ceases to amaze me how most people know exactly what pesto is yet when you mention the term pistou, it’s blank faces all round.  This no-nut French cousin of pesto is just as delicious and even easier to make.  No toasting of pine nuts required here.

So, as pistou forms one half of my blog’s title, I thought it was about time we did it justice and featured its many attributes in a post dedicated to this most provençal of accompaniments.  Commonly associated with the dish soupe au pistou, a hearty, chunky vegetable soup which will feature on this page soon, pistou uses basil as its flavouring as does the classic pesto, but there tends to be more cheese and garlic than you would see in the Italian version.  Just as recipes for pesto nowadays use all manner of herbs and nuts, I’ve gone for a sage pistou here as it’s a great match with autumnal courges (squash) many varieties of which seem to be on display everywhere I look right now. If you want to stick with basil for your pistou, just use twice as much as I’ve quoted for the sage in the recipe.

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Regardless of your choice of herb, pistou comes with a warning: it is very garlicky, so use a little less than I’ve recommended if you’re anxious about it.  Traditionally made in a pestle and mortar, this recipe works just as well in the blender and frankly I suspect you are more likely to try this quicker method at home.  As with pesto, pistou is to be added to hot soups and pasta and should never be cooked on its own.

The sage pistou is a great match for the green gnocchi in my last post and would be lovely drizzled over just-out-of-the-oven, roasted autumnal vegetables.  Or why not stir a generous spoonful into a homemade pumpkin or squash soup? Not quite soupe au pistou but warming and satisfying all the same.

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Sage Pistou

10g sage leaves, torn roughly
15g garlic, crushed
50g parmesan, finely grated
100ml extra virgin olive oil
A pinch of salt

Place all the ingredients in a blender and whizz for a few seconds until everything is combined.  Taste and add more salt if necessary.

The sauce will keep for a couple of days in the fridge or longer if you cover it with a thin layer of extra virgin olive oil.

Tomatoes, cobnuts and rocket – late summer pesto

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IMG_20140903_160429It’s full-on tomato season here in Dorset, and hugely satisfying to see so much ripe, red fruit both in the garden and the greenhouse.  We might even be saved from the usual gallon of green tomato chutney this year.   Over the summer we’ve munched our way through successive pickings of wild rocket grown from seed.  The flavour is so fresh and peppery, the leaves so crunchy when just picked so it’s been a delight to mix up simple salads with this come again crop.  Out in the lanes behind the house, blackberries and cobnuts are suddenly ready for picking, but if yesterday’s blackberry hunt with the kids is anything to go by there will be more eaten along the way than brought home for cooking. Anyway, more on the blackberries in my next post.

One of the recent comments that came back when I asked friends and family what they thought of the blog was that I should probably write a bit more about pesto and pistou.  That is the blog’s title after all.  Good point.  So I’m sharing my recipe for oven-dried tomato, rocket and cobnut pesto, a great sauce for late summer and a tasty way to use up a glut of ripe tomatoes. The tomatoes take three hours to dry out sufficiently in a low oven but you could use jarred sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil if you’re in a hurry. Go for pine nuts if you can’t get cobnuts.  Kentish cobnuts are available now in the UK but the season is pretty short.

No need to serve the pesto with anything complicated. Simply scoop a generous spoonful over linguine, add a few rocket leaves and top with a dollop of ricotta or a few torn strips of mozzarella. Why not add a spoonful to a bowl of fresh tomato soup or spread some over a fillet of grilled salmon or chicken?

Let’s raise a glass to all this delicious late summer produce.  Mine’s a soft red to go with the pesto –  a Barbera from Piedmont I reckon and lightly chilled.  Salute!

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Late Summer Pesto

For oven-drying the tomatoes:

500g ripe plum tomatoes, sliced in half lengthways
Salt and pepper for seasoning
Extra virgin olive oil for drizzling

Place the tomatoes on a greased baking tray, sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle generously with the extra virgin olive oil.  Bake in a low oven – 140°C – for three hours but do watch them to make sure they are not burning.  Remove from the oven when done and leave to cool.  NB You can also jar up these dried tomatoes, cover them with olive oil and add a selection of herbs such as bay leaves, rosemary and thyme, and then you have your own oven-dried tomatoes to use during the winter.

For the pesto:
(makes approx. 300g)

The oven-dried tomatoes from the above recipe or 150g sundried tomatoes, drained of oil
25g rocket leaves
50g cobnuts (about 150g before shelling), chopped and toasted (or the equivalent of pine nuts)
50g pecorino romano
1 large clove of garlic, crushed
75ml extra virgin olive oil
A pinch of salt

Place all the pesto ingredients in a blender and whizz until mixed.  Add more salt and oil as required.

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A rather English pesto

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IMG_20140718_150045These last two summers I have successfully grown watercress from seed in large tubs at home, starting the crop in the greenhouse and then moving it outside once the threat of a late Dorset frost has passed in May.  When I first mentioned to friends and family that I was experimenting with this tangy, peppery green leaf, there was much raising of eyebrows and several snorts of derision.  Watercress? In the garden of a country home? Doesn’t watercress need meadows and constant running water?

Well if my experience is anything to go by the answer to those questions is a resounding ‘NO’, but in the early stages I was inclined to think that these doubting Thomases might be right.  For weeks after sowing the seed nothing happened.  Finally a few specks of green appeared in the tubs, but I managed to convince myself that they were probably weeds.  By July, however, a healthy crop of strong-tasting watercress was flourishing and replacing itself quickly after initial pickings.  Admittedly my homegrown watercress does need constant watering, but this is a small price to pay for fresh, peppery salads, and the surprise on friends’ faces when presented with a pot of homegrown watercress pesto.  My 14-year-old daughter, chief pesto taster and aficionado, claims it to be the best pesto I’ve made and I make a lot, be assured.

My recipe is below.  We love to drizzle it over roasted salmon, but our most recent discovery is to boil a few new potatoes, toss them in a generous spoonful of watercress pesto, and top this mouthwatering mixture with a few freshly podded peas to finish.  This warm potato and pesto salad idea comes courtesy of my cousin Belinda who told me about her potato and mint pesto salad – another delicious, summer combo that we shall soon be trying.

Watercress Pesto

50g watercress, thick stalks removed
25g macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
20g pecorino romano, finely grated
1 clove garlic, crushed
A pinch of salt 100ml extra virgin olive oil

Place all the ingredients in a food processor and whizz on high speed for a few seconds to form a paste.  Stir in more olive oil if you like a slightly runnier consistency.

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Pesto Pistou…how it all started

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Tomatoes & Pesto

Since a stint living in Nice in the 1990s, I am often drawn back the distinctive flavours and very individual recipes of the Riviera coastline which stretches from Nice in France, across the Italian border into Liguria and on to the Tuscan border, passing Genoa, the home of pesto, along the way.  Whilst it’s not possible to truly recreate the ‘cuisine of the sun’ miles away in the UK, I’ve set up this blog as a way to record my experiments with similar ingredients albeit with a British twist from time to time.  Thrown in too, some tasting notes on the local wines, little known away from the Riviera itself.  How I look forward to being back there again…..

So, where to start? It would seem apt to kick things off with a post to explain the name of this blog so here’s the lowdown on the provençal sauce, Pistou and its Italian cousin Pesto Genovese.  Their recipes share many ingredients, namely garlic, basil, olive oil and cheese (usually pecorino and/or parmesan).  Writing in his book Cuisine Niçoise, former Mayor of Nice, Jacques Medecin explains the key difference between the two – it’s all about which side of the Franco-Italian border you reside on:

“I make no attempt to settle the question of whether pistou migrated from Nice to Genoa, or vice versa, but let me simply say that the Ligurians like to add 100g of pine nuts to the ingredients pounded in the mortar”.

The reference to the pounding of the sauce in the mortar is an important one.  Pistou, a word from the Nicois dialect, means “pounded” as does the Genoese word Pesta.  To this day, purists use a pestle and mortar believing that the use of a blender causes the capillaries in the basil leaves to close up which stops them from releasing their full aroma.  The blender method has become acceptable in today’s modern kitchen however, and the speed of making it means there is always fresh pesto (or pistou) in my fridge just waiting to top a bowl of pasta or a vegetable soup.  The pounded version is well worth it when time allows.

Pasta & Pesto

Recipes for both pistou and pesto vary widely depending on the cook or the village where it is being made, and the debate about whose sauce is best rages on.  How much garlic should be used? Which cheese works well and how strong should it be? In Liguria, some add cream, others ricotta.  One thing that everyone is clear on though: the sauce should never be heated up on its own prior to serving.  Simply stir a spoonful into hot pasta or soup at the very last minute.

Here is my version of basil pesto which will keep well in the fridge (best used within two days of making) and the freezer if frozen the same day. I’ll be posting a variety of pesto recipes in the coming months together with ideas for dishes they can be added to.  But we won’t just concern ourselves with pesto here.  The blog is about the food (and wine) from across the Riviera – think socca v farinata and salade niçoise v cappon magro – and we will touch on tips for travelling in the region as well.

Thanks for taking the time to look at the blog.  Feedback will be happily received!

Basil Pesto

25g basil leaves
20g pine nuts, toasted in a dry pan
10g pecorino romano
10g parmesan
1 small clove garlic, crushed
40 ml extra virgin olive oil
tiny pinch salt

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and whizz on high speed for a few seconds to form a paste.  Stir in more olive oil if you like a slightly runnier consistency.

Basil Pesto