We’re a food start-up, headed by self-confessed food fanatic Michael Hawkins. It’s fair to say we’re slightly obsessed with pesto.
Disappointed with the quality and imagination of supermarket pesto, we decided to do something different.
We believe that every cuisine has an array of ingredients to make their own perfect pesto, so join us on a road trip exploring the world’s most exciting cuisines via the medium of the world’s greatest sauce.
Before the paint on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel had dried, artists realised that The Masters had reached perfection.
There were no more artistic difficulties, technical or otherwise, to be resolved.
A new artistic movement, Mannerism, emerged. It didn’t aspire to surpass anything created by Michelangelo and his contemporaries, but it needed to be different.
It was time to forge a new path.
Fast forward three centuries, travel 500 km north, and the recipe that we know today as pesto Genovese was first published.
Of course, every Ligurian, from the rich to the poor, already knew that they had the perfect array of ingredients growing in abundance all around them: the creamiest pine nuts, world-class basil, garlic to rival the French, and the inimitable Parmesan. They had reached pesto perfection.
So, while we can knock up a basil pesto to rival the best of them, we think it’s time to take a leaf out of those Renaissance artists’ books by accepting perfection and forging a new path.
We’ve taken the unspoken but accepted ‘rules’ of Italian pesto: oil, cheese, nuts, herbs, garlic, and a little salt, and ventured into different cultures to produce products with a unique twist that not only respects tradition but, we hope, adds something to the evolution of the world’s greatest sauce in the process.
While you can buy a jar of pesto for 59p, it’s no surprise that those manufacturers are cutting corners big time. A recent Which? study identified bamboo fibres, potato flakes, sugar, and even water added to some supermarket pestos. Ouch!
The reason our sauces are so premium is simply because we don’t skimp on ingredients. We couldn’t forgive ourselves for making a Spanish pesto without Manchego, but because this cheese has a protected designation of origin, it’s inevitably expensive.
We’ll never stop stirring lashings of pesto through big bowls of fusilli or eating our body weight in pasta bakes, but we strongly advocate using pesto in a much wider variety of settings.
Our pestos make great marinades, stuffings, and toppings; and while there are some pretty radical ideas out there for new ways to use pesto, we draw the line at pesto ice-cream.
Buy hey, if that’s your thing, go for it. We’re not the boss of you.
