Where Does Your Basil Grow?
It Makes a Big Difference
SOMETIMES I THINK THAT pesto is hardly a recipe at all, because so much depends on the quality of the basil. Around Genoa, which is the home of pesto as well as the particular basil that makes it, the center of cultivation and quality is Prà. Up on the town’s largely built-up hillsides, basil is grown year-round in greenhouses, where the controlled conditions favor high quality. Beneath the glass, the dense, low plantings resemble a lawn. Compared with that basil or what I grow myself, North American basil is almost inevitably disappointing; I avoid it.