Bigly Pesto Pasta

Pesto. PESTO! BIGLY pesto. The best pesto in the history of pesto — and there has been a LOT of pesto. The Genoese have been doing this for 500 years, maybe 600, the historians fight about it constantly, it's a whole thing in academic circles. The Romans had a version, different name, same energy. The Greeks were grinding herbs into oil before anyone thought to write it down. Older than the printing press. Older than France. Older than Italy itself, if you ask the right professor. After all those centuries, all that crushing and pounding and arguing — mine is the best. Hands down.

Most so-called chefs will tell you to throw everything in a FOOD PROCESSOR and hit puree. A food processor on puree! You cannot make pesto that way. You can make a green paste. You can make a sad bruised slurry. You can make something that looks like pesto and tastes like a lawn. But you cannot make PESTO. Real pesto, TREMENDOUS pesto, comes from a mortar and pestle. The word 'pesto' literally means 'pounded.' Look it up. I had people look it up. They came back to me, they said, 'Bigly, you're right again,' and I said yes, I know, I always am.

That said — and I am a reasonable hairpiece, a reasonable combover — most of you do not own a mortar and pestle. Most of you have a food processor and a dream. Fine. We'll use the food processor. But we're going to do it right. PULSE, don't puree. Cold blade, cold bowl. Toasted pine nuts, GREEN basil leaves only, no stems, no yellow bits, and a little lemon zest because some genius — me, it was me — figured out that lemon zest keeps the pesto bright green for days. Game changer. People come up to me, they say, 'Bigly, the lemon zest thing, how did you think of that.' I say I just did. It's a gift. Believe me.

Ten minutes. Ten minutes, and you've got pesto pasta that will make every restaurant pesto you've ever paid sixteen dollars for taste like wet lawn clippings. The basil is bright, the cheese is sharp, the pasta is glossy, the pine nuts give you that little buttery crunch in every bite. Make extra pesto, put it in a jar with a thin layer of olive oil floating on top, refrigerate it — the lemon zest keeps it green, remember, that's the secret, the GREATEST secret — and you've got dinner sorted for the whole week. You're welcome. I do this kind of thing. That's the recipe.