Our camping trip this weekend was wonderful: great friends, a beautiful lake, a nice bottle of wine, and sleeping under the stars. The only thing that makes camping even better than all that, in my opinion, is amazing food!

My friend Giovanni is from a small town near Bologna, and in true Italian fashion, he decided his contribution to our fireside feast would be pasta with homemade basil pesto. While his recipe didn’t differ too much from the standard – basil, parmesan, salt, EVOO, and walnuts – he says the trick to pesto is all what happens after you cook:

“Even though you remove the pasta from heat, it still continues to cook. If you put fresh pesto straight on the hot pasta, it will burn the parmesan and won’t taste quite right.”

He transferred the pasta from bowl to pot about 10 times to cool it down before spreading on the pesto. And sure enough – delizioso! And much more sophisticated than hot dogs.

Thanks, Giovanni!