Recipes with basil

One name covers plants that do not substitute for one another. Genovese basil, with its large tender leaf, smells of aniseed and mild pepper; Thai basil, with its purple stem, smells of liquorice and holds up to heat; holy basil, harsher, only gives its scent once warmed. Swapping one for another does not ruin a dish, but it moves it plainly from one cuisine to another.

Hence two opposite uses. Italy wants it raw, or laid on something hot at the last moment: trofie with pesto pounds it without ever cooking it, insalata Caprese serves it as it is, and pizza margherita takes it out of the oven, not before. South-East Asia does the reverse: green curry drops its leaves into simmering coconut milk, where they release a scent the raw leaf never gives. South America, for its part, lets it stew in corn and bean pots — porotos granados and humita.

Basil blackens in the cold: a night in the fridge wrecks the leaves. Keep the bunch stem-down in water at room temperature, like flowers. And tear the leaves by hand rather than chopping them with a knife — cut edges oxidise faster and brown, which shows on a pasta alla Norma or a pappa al pomodoro.