My father’s father is from the seaport city of Savona in the Italian province of Liguria. It’s in the northwest corner of the country, bordering France.

I don’t have a lot of memories of him. He died when I was 9 in 1963.

But his legacy in our family – preserved by my mother, his daughter-in-law – was a pasta dish we thought belonged to us.

In this dish, the sauce is green. It’s made from basil, pounded with a mortar and pestle, along with olive oil, parmigiano reggiano (my brother, who knows better, says my Mom used pecorino Romano) and pine nuts. The sauce is mixed with a pasta – I think we tended toward linguine – and boiled potatoes (because our people never thought much about carbs). Some recipes include green beans; I don’t remember us doing that.

The sauce is called pesto from the Italian word for pounding or grinding

My mother, who had never had pesto as a kid, enjoyed my grandfather’s dish so much that she learned to make it herself. Thus continuing the tradition in the family. She often left the potatoes out – and my father complained that it wasn’t real pasta con pesto (that’s what we called it; pasta Genovese is more common) without them.

It was a dish we loved as kids. And we shared it.

My mother made it for her father, from whom I get my extremely picky eater genes. It was actually pretty funny to watch him try to eat it – this man who was the most distinguished looking person I’ve ever known picking at it like a kid. But once he started to eat it, he loved it.

So did my friends in high school when they came by for lunch. And so did my Mom’s friends.

But it was something that only we ever had. It was never in any Italian restaurant where we ever dined, because most of the traditional dishes were southern Italian.

Fast forward to 1984.

It’s dinner time at my job in an office above Grand Central Station. I go down to Zabar’s in the terminal. And I noticed that one of the choices is a pasta salad with chicken and pesto.

I was floored. I was determined to try it. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t my mother’s, but it wasn’t bad.

Throughout the ’80s, it amazed me to see pesto as a dish and as a flavor spread far and wide.

What’s my point?

In 1954, when I was born, the idea that Italian-Americans would blend into the mainstream of this country was not so certain. We were often depicted as crude, the subject of slurs and jokes, and stereotyped as mobsters and other criminals.

That applies to other ethnicities and other races. I’m sure many of you have felt it in your lives at some point.

But the diversity of this country is its superpower. And it often manifests itself in the food we eat – we adopt dishes brought here by others and adapt them to what we know.

And the result is spectacular. On my last trip to Chicago, I had chicken tikka masala tacos. They were amazing. Two dishes from two very different places combining in the middle of America.

That’s what happened to pesto. We Ligurians blended it into the mix and it joined the vast American menu.

My parents and grandparents would probably be a little surprised at how widely accepted something we thought was only ours has become. 

What would be more surprising is one of the people who carries on the pesto legacy in my family.

It’s my grandfather’s granddaughter-in-law. She makes absolutely fabulous pesto.

She was born in Hong Kong.

Happy St. Joseph’s Day!