I must admit, there is no pesto mentioned in Jess Walter's wonderful novel Beautiful Ruins. The novel takes place both on Ligurian coast in the 1960's and in modern day Los Angeles. Obviously, there is not much food in the Los Angeles part, but more disappointingly (only for purposes of this blog), there also is not much food in the Italy portions of the book. The only mention of food that really stuck with me was the description of an unappetizing fish head soup. Don't get me wrong, I love dishes made with "trash" ingredients, and I love a good culinary challenge, but fish head soup was not doing it for me. So I googled around a bit, and it seemed like, in the middle of summer, a classic Ligurian pesto was in order. More about the simple pesto and the book after the jump.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Beautiful Ruins and Classic Pesto
I must admit, there is no pesto mentioned in Jess Walter's wonderful novel Beautiful Ruins. The novel takes place both on Ligurian coast in the 1960's and in modern day Los Angeles. Obviously, there is not much food in the Los Angeles part, but more disappointingly (only for purposes of this blog), there also is not much food in the Italy portions of the book. The only mention of food that really stuck with me was the description of an unappetizing fish head soup. Don't get me wrong, I love dishes made with "trash" ingredients, and I love a good culinary challenge, but fish head soup was not doing it for me. So I googled around a bit, and it seemed like, in the middle of summer, a classic Ligurian pesto was in order. More about the simple pesto and the book after the jump.