Pesto isn’t always green

Pesto is one of our favorite Italian foods. For years, Mike has been creating pesto sauces from scratch – doing his best to capture the vibrant flavors of basil, pine nuts, and garlic that we love so much.

About five years ago we were sitting (as we always do) on the balcony of our friends’ beautiful home in Trebiano. The plan that night was to gather with our old colleagues from La Spezia and reminisce over a giant meal and bottles of wine.

The plates of antipasto came out first. Piles of pecorino, cured meats, bowls of taralli, and local jams. The bbq was warming up with fallen branches from their olive trees. The first course came out and I had never seen what was in front of me. A giant bowl of handmade pasta with a brown sauce. I had seen red marinara, creamy carbonara, and green pestos – but brown was new to me.

I asked my friend what it was and she casually said, “pesto”. She could obviously see the confusion on my face and started to explain. One thing about Italians, they love to tell you where things come from. Everyone knows the history of their food and will share the background with anyone willing to listen. And I am always willing to listen.

Turns out that pesto has nothing to do with basil or the color green. The word pesto comes from the Italian verb “pestare” which means “to pound or crush”, usually with a mortar or pestle (note: “pestle” is also derived from pestare). And really anything can be crushed – herbs, cheeses, nuts.

In this case, the dreamy brown sauce was a crushed concoction of walnuts, sheep cheese, and local olive oil. It was AMAZING. And reminded us why we love exploring and sharing Italian foods; even when we think we have a pretty good understanding of a dish, we are completely surprised by new flavors.

Walnut pesto is now a staple at our annual Thanksgiving dinner. In Liguria it is traditionally served atop pansotti – a ravioli-like pasta stuffed with local greens – but we like to pair it with fresh ricotta ravioli from Pasta and Co.

The recipe we use is from Accademia Italiana della Cucina’s La Cucina; The Regional Cooking of Italy. The title is a mouthful but the cookbook and the academy are significant. La Cucina represents the first effort to collect and preserve traditional Italian cooking from each region. The job was so expansive that it involved 7,000 associates spread out across hundreds of Italian villages to interview everyone from farmers to nonnas and transcribe their recipes. If you have any interest in Italian cooking, I would recommend adding this to your collection. (Like all things – you can find it on Amazon). Some of the recipes are frustratingly vague (e.g. instead of including instructions like, “cook for 25 minutes”, the text will read “cook until the edges are golden”) but the richness of the history and the unique preparations are worth exploring.

Becker Family Favorite: Ligurian Salsa di Noci from La Cucina

• 2 cups walnut halves
• Bread from one roll, soaked in milk and squeezed dry
• 1/2 cup pine nuts
• 1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 marjoram leaves
• Coarse sea salt

Grind the walnuts in a mortar and pestle, adding the bread, pine nuts, garlic, and a pinch of coarse sea salt; grind until you have a thick paste. This can also be done in a blender on low, beginning with the walnuts and then continuing with the other ingredients. Put the mixture in a bowl and work in the Parmigiano-Reggiano with a wooden spoon. Add the marjoram last.

A few of my personal notes for making this sauce:

1. Save your pasta water. The paste is THICK. Make sure to reserve a cup or two of the pasta water to thin the sauce as-needed.
2. Forget about dietary restrictions. I tend to avoid gluten and dairy but there are some recipes that a substitute just won’t do. There are thick gluten free breads that might work for this recipe but non-dairy milks mess with the richness of the flavor. If you want to make a dish that is mainly gluten-free, I recommend using a brown rice or cassava flour pasta from Jovial which is typically stocked at QFC, Whole Foods, and PCC.
3. Buy your Parmigiano-Reggiano whole and then grate it as part of the preparation for the walnut sauce. When you buy pre-grated cheeses at the grocery store, they typically have additives which impact the taste and just aren’t great to put in your body.

And for those of you Pesto Traditionalists, no one has a better, greener Pesto alla Genovese recipe than our friend Enrica in Genoa.

Buon Appetito!