News You Can Bruise for 2004 July 22

My customary pre-recipe Googling turned up no actual recipes for this dish; only intimations that it was used in various fancy restaurants, often as a garnish for steak. Well, what's good enough for steak is good enough for pasta, says I. Last night I made pesto with Parrano (one of the all-time great cheeses--it tastes like Parmesan but has a semi-soft texture like Gouda) and blue cheese. I wouldn't make it with only blue cheese, but making it with 1 part blue cheese to 3 or 4 parts other cheese gives the pesto the fighting spirit for which blue cheese is renowned. Obviously walnuts are better in this pesto than pine nuts.

Side note: why is this obvious? I don't know! I can't describe this pairing without resorting to terminology like "meaty" and "woody" that seems very unscientific. But at the same time I think that the statement "walnuts go better with blue cheese than pine nuts" is closer to objective fact than to totally arbitrary opinion or taste. If I knew more about food I could find out what compounds give those two foods their flavor and say that they complement each other, but that doesn't explain why and it can't be made into a useful general rule. This drives me crazy.