Instead of populating the world with more resource hogging American babies,¹ part through our peculiar life circumstances and the rest by subsequent choice, and by sharing a single almost sensible traditional passenger car, the ani and bob show realized as it was cruising into/through middle age that it was not entirely (at least financially) insane to take advantage of winter airfare bargains when airlines practically give away transatlantic tickets and do long weekend vacations in Europe. Ani being an American wage slave with precious few annual vacation days, a chunk of which are usually reserved to meeting bob during his academic summer visits to Rome, just never has the time to do real European vacations. [Dare we admit this in public? Okay, we're still guilty of abusing the world with our middle class lifestyle.] So with Philadelphia's direct European destination list growing, our winter flight choices have broadened considerably.
Munich was a logical choice. bob had spent 9 months living in its Schwabing neighborhood at the beginning of the eighties when there was still a "West" Germany officially, and as the millennium was approaching, our Roman astronomer/astrophysicist friend Piero was working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) headquarters right next to the Max-Planck-Institüt für Astrophysik in the suburb village of Garching where nonastrophysicist dr bob had been a guest, now connected to the city center by subway. Allowing us to easily buzz on out to Piero's place for our parting Saturday night dinner. The bus driver helped us get off at the right stop in town minutes from the end of the U6 line, and a pizza place person helped us find his apartment building address. All in English. German internationalism.
bob confesses that he was not entirely confident of Piero's ability to deliver on this dinner thing. So when the mascarpone-filled avocado halves came forward followed by the terrific pesto pasta made with the Braun super hand blender system we'd helped him decide to buy earlier that day, bob was really impressed, as were Helene the Dutch-Brit colleague and Gordon the Canadian collaborator from Bezerkeley, another old stomping ground of dr bob before the prefix got added. (dr.) And of course Ani the Lebanese Armenian cooking team partner. We're apparently hopeless internationalists. The pesto had been an earlier improvisation of Piero in when he was closer to us back in America, perhaps influenced by Annette the Scotch Canadian astrophysicist companion, now in England, an annoying commute. The old dual career couple problem. Anyway, enough of this culture name dropping. This pesto recipe will be the one concrete reminder of our Munich trip that will linger on with us the remainder of our culinary days.
By coincidence Ani's Israeli colleagues Penina and Binyamin had had a bumper crop of tomatoes the preceding summer, the surplus product of which they had had the good sense to convert to sun dried form. A bit of which found its way into our supply cabinet due to their generosity. Waiting for some idea of what to do with it. International kitchen collaboration to the max.
We are regular pesto feeders. We make a big batch and freeze the extra. Comes in handy when a quick supper fix is required. Our recipe guidelines were set by Anne Willan's Look and Cook Perfect Pasta Sauce from her every recipe step, ingredient and kitchen tool fully photographed cookbook series, modified by Marcella's 1/3 Romano cheese substitution to give it more bite, supported by our Italian cooking library sources. Piero used linguini but we had no long pasta on hand, so we stuck with our usual fusilli standard initiated by Anne's choice.
¹Okay, we admit it, it's a dirty job and somebody has to do it. Just not us.
We like kids though. Are we excused?
So Piero made us the dish for lunch at his home this summer and added some capers and a bit of anchovies to spice it up a bit. We loved it. Only boomers remember Dan Quale, a loser Vice-President in the first Bush administration. In the meantime "red pesto" has finally arrived in our supermarkets, losing the connection with sundried tomatoes that characterizes this Sicilian pesto. Bob imagined that Piero had explained that his nonna made this sauce for him, but apparently that was a false memory. Italian supermarkets offer literally dozens of different variations of pesto. Finally another favorite, pistacchio pesto, has finally made it to an American supermarket near us after years of enjoying it in Italy.