By Danielle DeSimone

For me, summer means pesto. It's usually our go-to, last-minute dish. It's the "There's-Nothing-In-the-Fridge-But-People-Are-Coming-Over-In-Ten-Minutes" dinner that is thrown together in a flurry of crushed garlic, clanging pots, and the hiss of boiling water. Now that I no longer live close to my family, it's the dish that I always request when I come home, falling back into familiar patterns, arms, and smells.

Unlike many stories of Italian American cooking, I was not taught at the stove by a mother, a grandmother, aunt, or sister in the enclaves of Italian communities like New York, basil plantNew Jersey, or Cleveland. I've been taught by my father, in southern Virginia. The Italian side of my family is from the grey, factory-studded hills of upstate New York; before that, Puglia. But with my father in the military, I've known so many homes that I've lost count of them, and the homes of my ancestors can sometimes seem distant and untouchable.

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