I wrote this back when I was happy, back in the summer when the real tomatoes were still to be had and the world was not so black:

Know what’s the best thing on earth on top of a sliced home-grown sweet, tart, juicy, beautiful beefsteak tomato? It just may be basil pesto. Sure, its old hat, it was one of the first food fads back before the Food Network, and everyone OD’ed on it in the 80s, but enough time has passed for it to become retro-chic, I think. And really, what is better on top of tomatoes than a little olive oil, basil, anchovy, and parmesan?
It’s August in New Jersey and I am overrun with one of the greatest joys of summer, home-grown tomatoes. I don’t grow them, but I have discovered several of the best of all vegetable stands, not the farm stand, but the front-yard picnic table with an honor box at which some hobbyist sells his home-grown tomatoes that were raised in the backyard stand You get the true, genuine home-grown tomato experience without ever touching dirt, and you know they’re genuine because you can see the tomato plants off in the distance. Its nirvana to me. My kitchen is bursting with them; I have an infestation of fruit flies, they rise in clouds from the bowl of tomatoes on my counter and dive-bomb my wine glass as soon as I pour. Makes for an interesting texture to my wine. But I digress, the only downside is, what to do with this surfeit of riches, you see, I cannot stop myself from stopping at these stands, I can’t control the urge. So I have to eat them.
As I was making my usual salad, with beautiful sliced beefsteak tomatoes, which I usually top with various sizes and textures of things like basil and anchovies and some cheese, usually mozzarella, the hard crumbly version of ricotta is great, too, and olive oil.
And as I was about to start, I realized, that’s just a deconstructed pesto, so why not go all the way and make a pesto?
So I made a pesto designed just for the purpose of complementing home-grown August in New Jersey tomatoes, a little spicier and more rich than a typical pesto. I made it with olive oil, crushed, smashed garlic, lots of fresh basil, freshly grated real parmesan cheese, pine nuts, a little bit of hot red pepper, a few anchovies, and a teaspoon of the oil from the anchovy can, and lemon juice, all just pureed in a food processor. Make an insalata caprese, sliced tomatoes topped with sliced fresh mozzarella, just a bit of salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, and its your choice whether to use an acid at all, and whether it should be lemon, wine vinegar, or balsamic. And then, as the last ingredient, the climax of the dish, speckle it all over with this pesto. The brilliant green pesto looks nice sprinkled, dotted, and drizzled from a squeeze bottle.
Its actually harder to think of things which wouldn’t benefit from a spurt of this pesto, than things that would. You can drizzle it all over a grilled steak, or a grilled or pan seared filet of grouper or halibut. It’s a pasta sauce, it can add richness and flavor to other pasta sauces, spread it on a sandwich, add it to plain vinaigrette for a great salad dressing, what the hell, put it on an omelette.
And as long as you have this pesto hanging around, you can try this amazing, rich, complex, but still fresh and simple pasta sauce: In a medium saute’ pan, do a gentle, slight browning thing with a tablespoon of olive oil, two minced or finely sliced garlic cloves, one finely sliced fresh tabasco or similar small thin hot red pepper. Then add one large tomato, diced fine, and two or three tablespoons of the pesto sauce. Take from the heat, there’s no need to cook it, just soften the tomato, then mash it with a fork. Add black pepper to your liking. Then add two tablespoons of grated hard ricotta (ricotta salata), and a bunch of chifffonaded basil. Cook two portions of plain old thick spaghetti, preferably DeCecco, and when its done, drain and throw it in the saucepan with the sauce. Turn on the heat just to medium and toss the pasta and sauce for a couple of minutes. The sauce is so complex and rich, despite being composed of all fresh ingredients and hardly cooked at all. It tastes almost like a meat sauce, somehow, its got umami. I think its the pesto. Pesto is Italian soy sauce.