I often wonder when creating if it is better to create one thing that is layered and interlocked or to combine distinct complete elements, that stand on their own and can be combined for something greater.
I first had lots of doughnut-centric ideas to discuss. But I think looking at pesto might be interesting. More interesting than doughnuts, I’m not sure anything is more interesting than doughnuts.
So Pesto is: basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil, Parmigiano Reggiano, salt, and maybe black pepper and lemon juice.
Do we keep the basil raw or blanch it? Do we add roughly sliced pieces into the final dish. Is the garlic raw, blanched, salted, pickled/fermented, cooked in oil? Are the pine nuts raw, roasted, cooked in oil, smoked. Are they chopped, pureed, or left whole? The olive oil, well that’s a huge variable. As for the cheese, is it aged, smoked, roughly chopped, pureed with oil to break it down? Then there is the salt and the couple of questionable variables of pepper and lemon juice. Are these last variables needed? What if we used jalapeno in place of black pepper? What if we used preserved lemons instead of lemon juice?
There is a lot going on in my spider web of pesto parts. I believe making the parts solid on their own and then combining them makes something magical.
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