Pesto is on my mind at the moment. A local friend who had a good crop of sweet scented Basil was off to England and gave me a huge bouquet of the stuff “rather than let it go to seed” So, the obvious solution was to make some Pesto.
Now I have made a fair few Pesto Type sauces before, from Sorrel, from Watercress and even Parsley, anytime I had a surplus of any of these in the garden, but strangely never have I had a sufficient surplus of Basil to make up the real thing. But then, before I lost the run of myself, I notice that the good Rory O Connell in his new cookbook claims that any of these other, non basil, substitutes, actually make a better “Pesto” than Basil and he says “I strongly believe that most people’s experience of the classic basil pesto is an unpleasant one,”
But seeing as how it was Basil I had I headed off to make it anyway.
Next problem was to get someone with some sort of accurate idea of the proportions needed- a whole lot of people I noticed shirked it with words like “handfulls” and “To taste” all cheaty recipe writer words for “I am too lazy to weigh it”. (I speak here from personal experience).
To my amazement the only person who went to the trouble of weighing was La Grande Dame herself , Elizabeth David, in “Italian Food” and here are her proportions.

For 150g of fresh Basil Leaves use 2 Medium cloves garlic peeled and sliced. 75 g of Pine Nuts, 75 g Parmesan (sliced) pinch salt and ground black pepper.
Put these into a food processor (she advises a pestle and mortar) and work into a paste. She then adds 75 ml of Olive oil and continues to work to get a smooth(ish) paste (I added twice that amount)
Pour into a jar and then cover and seal the paste with more olive oil and keep in the fridge. It will last, they tell me, for several weeks.
Now whether it is the quality of the sweet Languedoc Basil, or my less refined taste buds I found the result a long way from unpleasant, in fact it was superb. I have already used it with great success, mixed with butter and spread over opened mussels in the half shell, baked for about 10 mts in a hot oven before being sprinkled with coarse crisp roasted baguette crumbs and tonight it will be dribbled over a crustade of crunchy olive oil baked slices of pain de campagne, spread with melted onions and then topped with local delicious black skinned tomatoes and soft fresh goats cheese before a short sojourn in the hot oven. I am fairly sure it’ll go down a treat.