Most pesto recipes get the ingredients right and the oil wrong. The basil, the pine nuts, the garlic...those are easy. But pour in a flat, forgettable olive oil, and you've just made a sauce that tastes like everyone else's!

Pesto is one of the few recipes where the oil doesn't hide. It carries everything.

This version comes from Culinary Director Alyse Baca, and she made one choice that's worth paying attention to: lime juice instead of lemon. A small swap, but an intentional one. Where lemon brings a clean citrus brightness that sits on top, lime settles in underneath the basil! Slightly warmer, a little more rounded. It keeps the green looking green, the same way lemon does, but the flavour lands differently. Once you taste it, you'll notice.

The other thing she reaches for is Spicewalla x Le Vigne Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Chef Meherwan discovered Le Vigne on a family estate in Umbria and became the first person to bring it stateside (because once you taste it, it's hard to leave it behind). Cold-pressed, early harvest, with polyphenol levels nearly double what most high-quality oils clock in at. That early harvest timing is what gives it the grassy, faintly peppery character you can actually taste when the oil isn't cooked. Pesto is exactly the right place for it.

Nothing in this sauce ever touches heat, which means every quality of the oil comes through intact: the fruity aroma, the velvety texture, that gentle bite at the back of the throat. You can make this in about ten minutes. Serve it the day you make it, or keep it in the fridge for up to a week with a thin layer of oil over the top to slow oxidation.