Pesto* is a cold-prep green sauce made with herbs and alliums suspended in oil. Most pestos call for some form of nut or cheese. In the general sense, chefs may specify “loose pesto” when there are neither cheese nor nuts in the sauce, or when the sauce has an abundance of oil. In general, pesto is made from herbs in the mint family, almost always from basil. The * distinguishes a generalization to the traditional meaning of the word.
Recipe Template
The recipe shortcode wraps a recipe body in the theme’s recipe card.
Use ordinary Markdown inside the shortcode so the recipe remains readable
in source form.
For a full recipe page, you can also write plain Markdown in a page with
type: recipes and let the layout wrap it automatically.
{{% recipe %}}
## Basil Pesto
**Chef:** Gastrophysics Demo
**Yield:** 1 Quart
### Ingredients
- 2 bunch basil
- 8-10 cloves peeled garlic
- 3 cups extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 cup seasonal tree nuts
- 1/4 cup grated parmesan
- salt and black pepper
### Directions
Puree everything except the parmesan, then fold in the cheese.
{{% /recipe %}}
The same template is used by Basil Pesto, Pesto Aioli, and Chicken Salad.
Pesto Grammar
In the minimum useful sense, pesto behaves like a small graph of green ingredients, fat, allium, texture, and optional dairy:
$$ \textrm{pesto} \approx \textrm{herbs} + \textrm{oil} + \textrm{allium} + \textrm{texture} + \textrm{salt} $$