Nonna's Fresh Basil Pesto Pasta

In Carlton, Melbourne's Little Italy, where Italian immigrants settled in waves from the 1950s onward, my friend's Nonna Rosa has a massive basil plant growing in a pot outside her apartment. It's not decorative - it's functional. Every summer evening, she picks a handful of leaves, makes fresh pesto, and tosses it through pasta for a quick dinner that takes 15 minutes but tastes like love. "People buy pesto in jars," she says, shaking her head. "Why? Fresh basil, good oil, nuts, cheese, garlic - five minutes to make, infinitely better."

Nonna Rosa arrived from Genoa in 1962 when she was nineteen, bringing recipes from her mother and grandmother. Pesto alla Genovese - Genoese pesto - is one of northern Italy's greatest contributions to world cuisine, and like all simple recipes, it's only as good as its ingredients. Nonna Rosa's pesto uses fresh basil picked minutes before making it ("wilted basil makes sad pesto"), the best extra virgin olive oil she can afford ("this is not the place to cheap out"), pine nuts ("traditional, expensive, worth it"), fresh garlic ("not from a jar!"), and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese ("Parmesan from the can is an insult").

The traditional method uses a mortar and pestle - pounding the ingredients releases oils and creates a texture that's creamy but still has substance. Nonna Rosa has a giant marble mortar that came from her mother's kitchen in Genoa, and she'll use it for special occasions. But for weeknight dinners, she admits a food processor works fine. "The purists will hate me, but at seventy-eight, my arms tire. The machine is faster and still tastes beautiful."

The key to great pesto, she teaches, is the balance and the technique. Too much garlic and it burns your throat. Not enough cheese and it's bland. Too much oil and it's greasy. Not enough salt and it's flat. The basil must be absolutely dry before processing or the pesto turns watery. The nuts should be raw, not toasted - toasting changes the flavor profile. And most importantly, you must save some pasta cooking water to loosen the pesto when tossing with pasta.

Nonna Rosa serves her pesto simply: just pasta (always a short shape like trofie, trenette, or penne - "long pasta is for tomato sauce"), pesto tossed through with a bit of cooking water to create a creamy sauce, a final grating of Parmesan, and sometimes green beans and potato chunks cooked with the pasta (the traditional Genoese way). No cream, no chicken, no sun-dried tomatoes - those are Australian additions she tolerates but doesn't approve of.

Every summer, when her basil plant is at its most abundant, Nonna Rosa makes big batches of pesto and freezes it in ice cube trays. "Winter pesto," she calls it - each cube enough for one person's pasta. This recipe represents Italian-Australian cooking - maintaining tradition while adapting to a new home, using what grows well here (basil loves Australian summers), and sharing the simplicity and quality that defines Italian cooking. When I make Nonna Rosa's pesto now, her voice echoes: "Fresh is best, simple is best, good ingredients need nothing fancy."