Everybody's got a stereotype, and Italians are no different: wildly passionate one moment, indifferent the next. Political corruption? Cynical indifference. Matters of the heart? Passionate but fickle. Matters of the table? Ah, passionate to the core.

Seattlest's Italian restaurant friends get particularly incensed when American chefs misappropriate Italian culinary language and apply a name like "carpaccio" to a plate of sliced raw meat or "pesto" to any old green sauce.

So let's be clear: the word "pesto" comes from the Latin and means "crushed." Not chopped to smithereens by a whirling blade. We're not trying to stand in the way of progress here, but running parsley through the Cuisinart produces an industrial sludge that you might as well call Milk of Magnesia or Castor Oil; pesto genovese it ain't.

The distinction may seem trivial or irrelevant, but not for a few True Believers, purists, conservators, Keepers of the Flame. In this particular case, Italian cooks from Italy. With theological intensity, they argue that if you call something pesto, it has to be pesto. Not some metaphorical version of pesto, but the real thing, what Italians of all regions understand to be the genuine, traditional Ligurian recipe for pesto: the small leaves of Genovese basil, crushed by hand in a pestle, with garlic and olive oil, just before serving. Pine nuts optional.

Unfortunately, there's no legal protection for pesto or carpaccio or amatriciana, the way there is, say, for Chianti Classico--made from San Giovese grapes grown in a specific zone between Florence and Siena. (Notwithstanding that California's Gallo winery actually won a trademark infringement action against a Chianti Classico consortium for using the traditional logo of a black rooster, the emblematic gallo nero.) The Italians' point is, don't call a parsley-walnut sauce made in a blender "pesto."

All too often, Seattle dumbs it down. We compromise, we fudge, we dilute. In the end, we pretend it doesn't matter, we're left with a shiny surface. Looks like chicken, tastes like dogfood. Beware.