Audrey Hepburn’s Gstaad’s Pesto

I cannot for the life of me remember why I decided to make Audrey’s Pesto, but I am guessing it was because I had some basil hanging around in the fridge. I don’t know about you, but as an urban fourth floor flat dweller with no herb garden, I am forced to buy fresh herbs in dinky little packets. I know this is incredibly wasteful and daft, but I often need a little bit for a recipe, and then I am left with the rest TAUNTING me from the salad drawer.

Audrey’s recipe is very forgiving. It’s in a lovely book called Audrey at Home which I have written about at length over on the Eat Drink Films website. Her son Luca writes how she once wanted to make pesto for a crowd but couldn’t get hold of enough basil where she was living in Gstaad so beefed up her recipe with parsley. I did the same as there was some parsley in the depths of the fridge too.

Luca writes of how Audrey forced her beau Robert to “travel up and down the three valleys near Gstaad, stopping at every shop in every village, to scrape together all the basil leaves that were available. All the same it wasn’t enough. My mother was obstinate but pragmatic, ready to make compromises. She replaced the missing basil with parsley, and the resulting “Gstaad-style” pesto was a success.”

I had some of Audry’s pesto on spaghetti – it wasn’t as garlicky as shop bought pesto but it was FRESH and lovely.

I had the rest on toast. Never tried pesto on toast? Do it!