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Mini-Cookbook of Pesto Recipes
My kitchen renovation has just begun. The demolition is complete, the electrician has made a lot of holes and drawn many wires, and Armando is skim-coating the ceiling as I write, while Ramon is putting the last electrical box in the wall, the one for the stove hood that he missed. I will keep you updated another time. I’ve already written an essay about how to begin a kitchen renovation. This is the sixth kitchen renovation of my life. I think I know something about the process. I think the most important thing I've learned is to watch carefully. Be diligent. Be there. We’ll see how it works out with me being my own designer and contractor.
Meanwhile, it’s still hot as hell outside, and who wants to cook anyway. It’s the time of year to apply as little heat to our food as possible. To that end, I thought I’d offer up a little cookbook of pesto recipes. They go on pasta. Some can go on toast – bruschetta. They’re made ahead. They keep in the refrigerator.
The most famous pesto is the Genovese, from Liguria, the northwestern-most region of Italy. It’s the pounded sauce of basil, pine nuts (or walnuts), garlic and Parmigiano-Reggiano that you know so well. But Southern Italy also has its pesto sauces, always featuring particular local ingredients – such as fresh or sun-dried tomatoes, capers, anchovies, nuts and, of course, herbs. Some are traditional and some have been contrived in modern times. Some of these recipes were excised from my last book "The Southern Italian Table." Only the Pesto Trapanese and Matarocco made it onto the pages.
PESTO TRAPANESE
TRAPANI PESTO
Makes 3 cups, enough to sauce 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of pasta
Sicily has nothing if not almond trees, which is why the island’s cuisine uses them in everything from antipasto to dessert. Anyone who has traveled in Sicily has probably encountered this pesto. It comes from the northwest corner of the island but it is now made in many of the restaurants that cater to tourists.
6 ounces blanched almonds (1 1/3 cups)
3 large cloves garlic, peeled
2 cups firmly packed fresh whole basil leaves
1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
1 pound very ripe tomatoes (can be cherry tomatoes), washed
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
In a food processor fitted with the metal blade, combine the almonds and garlic. Process until very finely chopped, almost a paste.
Add the basil and salt. Process again until the basil is very finely chopped.
Add the tomatoes and oil and process one more time until the mixture is a fine paste. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if necessary.
Use to sauce 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of spaghetti, linguine, or a tubular pasta such as penne or ziti. The pesto may be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week, but it is best eaten the day it is made. The sauce is also delicious as a topping for bruschetta, or to dress hard-cooked eggs and/or boiled potatoes. It is also good on grilled lamb, steak, or chicken. If serving with lamb, you may want to substitute some mint for part of the basil.
PESTO DI CAPERI
CAPER PESTO
Makes about 1 cup
In places where they commercially grow most of the world’s best capers, it’s only natural that they would use these precious pearls of the field in some prolific manner. On Salina and Lipari, the two big islands of the Aeolian archipelago between northern Sicily and Calabria, and on Pantellaria, the Sicilian island near Tunisia, they make a pesto like this, or something like this, and it’s sold in jars to the tourists.
Capers being as expensive as they are, this is nearly as luxurious as caviar, but saltier. It’s salt content makes it perfect to spread on bland crackers, bruschetta or crostini to go with drinks, or to toss on pasta, or to spread on a sandwich of, say, tomatoes and mozzarella. Or to dab on top of a cross-cut cherry tomato for a cocktail party. It’s also great on fish, and as a vegetable dip—raw red, orange, and/or yellow pepper strips are particularly good. On Lipari, I even ate cold sliced tongue dressed with a caper pesto like this, making me feel it’s an excellent topper, too, for a carpaccio of tuna, or raw roast beef.
4 ounces (2/3 cup) salted capers, rinsed well
2 anchovy fillets
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup loosely packed parsley
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 tablespoon white or red wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
In a mortar with a pestle, pound together the capers, anchovies, garlic, parsely, oregano, and hot pepper. When the ingredients have formed a coarse paste, add the vinegar.
Keep working the pesto with the pestle, then add the oil and continue grinding and pounding until the pesto is relatively smooth, or you get tired, whichever comes first.
The pesto can be served immediately, but it is better after it sits at room temperature for a few hours. It can be stored for several weeks in a tightly closed jar in the refrigerator.
PESTO CETARESE
PESTO FROM CETARA
In Cetara, a small fishing town at the top of the Amalfi Coast, pesto is made with the salt-preserved anchovies the town is famous for, and with colatura, the town’s most esoteric product -- a liquid essence of anchovy expressed by the fish when they are preserved in layers of sea salt. Add to the anchovies some walnuts — the fat and flavorful Sorrento walnuts from the peninsula are famous -- pine nuts, fresh basil and parsley, and salt-preserved capers, another regional favorite food.
This mixture is sold in jars in many of the tourist shops along the Amalfi Coast, but short of a trip to Italy, you can make it easily at home in a food processor.
1 rounded tablespoon pine nuts
1 rounded tablespoon walnuts
1 tablespoon almonds
1 large clove garlic
4 loosely packed cups basil, well-washed and dried
1 loosely packed cup parsley, well-washed and dried
3 tablespoons condiment quality extra-virgin olive oil
1 3.5-ounce can or jar of anchovies, drained of oil or 8 to 10 salted anchovies, filleted and rinsed
2 rounded tablespoons salted capers, rinsed and soaked a few minutes in cold water, and drained
Colatura (optional)
In a mini-processor, finely chop the pine nuts, walnuts, and almonds with the garlic.
Add half the basil. Process until finely chopped.
Add the remaining basil, the parsley, and the olive oil. Process again briefly. Stir up from the bottom, then process again until all the herbs are a fine paste.
Add the anchovies and capers. Process again, until homogenous. Season with colatura, if desired.
MATAROCCO
GARLIC PESTO FROM MARSALA
Makes about 1 1/4 cups
Enough for 1 pound of spaghetti, linguine, or any macaroni
When I get to a city, town or village, it’s my fun to search for the dish that locals love but that hardly anyone outside that city, town or village knows about. There usually is one. Sometimes there are enough dishes that locals think are local (but maybe not) that recipe books have been compiled to the glory of, for instance, la cucina ennese (Enna, Sicily), or la cucina sanita (that would be the food of Benevento, in Campania), or (and there are several large volumes on this one) la cucina salentina (the food of the southernmost provinces of Puglia, the Salento peninsula that we think of as the stiletto heel of the Italian boot.
In Marsala, on the west coast of Sicily, the same local dish was cited by everyone I asked: Matarocco.
The old Matarocco is a pounded sauce of garlic, basil, parsley, tomato, pine nuts (sometimes), and olive oil. The more contemporary Matarocco is diced tomato, olive oil, garlic and basil left to marinate for a few hours (page 000), which goes by other names in other places. Okay, I’ll give the Marsalese this: They use much more garlic in their Matarocco than other Italians would in the same sauce.
Matarocco, by the way, is the name of a small town just outside Marsala, and the same sauce in some Sicilian cookbooks is also called pesto Siciliano, or pesto alla Favignana, referring to the romantic resort island, one of the Egadi archipelago, whose silhouette you can see across the lagoons of Marsala.
Whatever the name, there are two ways to combine the ingredients. The old way is to pound everything together in a mortar with a pestle, in which case the sauce is a true pesto. It isn’t a pretty pesto. Even with tomatoes, it turns out beige. But what it loses in looks it gains in a creamy quality that the other form of Matarocco lacks. If you don’t enjoy pounding, you can make a reasonable reproduction in a min-processor. Either way, Matarocco is always made in the morning and allowed to sit at least until midday, to mellow and sort of cure.
Old recipes for Matarocco, call for one head of garlic per person. I wondered about this huge amount. Most contemporary recipes use just a few cloves all together. Seeing small heads of spring garlic at my local farmers’ market, however, made me remember that not all heads of garlic are as huge as those in American supermarkets, or necessarily as piquant. As it happens, spring garlic turned out to be perfect for this sauce. More aggressive mature garlic should be used with more care—2 small heads using the same measurements for the other ingredients. Old recipes also always call for olive oil “from the latest harvest,” meaning the cook wants you to use oil that is strongly flavored, as recently pressed oil is. There is, indeed, truly great olive oil produced near Marsala. It holds an official DOP designation of “Mazzara del Vallo,” the name of the city just south of Marsala, and it is available in the States under several brands; Monini is the one I find in my markets. That would be the perfect oil to give this pesto the flavor of western Sicily.
3 small heads spring garlic, or 2 small heads mature garlic, each clove peeled
1 loosely packed cup basil
1/2 loosely packed cup parsley
A few celery leaves, if available
1/4 cup pine nuts
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper or a rounded 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 pound round tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and juiced
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Combine all the ingredients, except the olive oil, in a large mortar. Grind and crush the ingredients until you have a rough sauce.
Alternately, put all the ingredients into a mini-processor and grind to a loose paste.
Add the olive oil and continue to work the ingredients, whether in a mortar or processor, to make them finer, the pesto creamier.
Let stand for at least 3 hours before using.
ZOGGHIU
MINT AND PARSLEY PESTO
Makes 2/3 to nearly 1 cup
Originally a sauce used by the fisherman of Palermo to season grilled fish, zogghiu is now used as a condiment for other foods as well. The word zogghiu seems to be related to ogghiu, which is Sicilian dialect for olive oil.
With all its mint, zogghiu is particularly good doused on grilled or broiled lamb, and it is also an excellent dressing for simply roasted or grilled chicken. I like to make sauces like this in a mortar and pestle, the traditional method, which is why these sauces are called pestos. Besides being fun to make the old-fashioned way, they are creamier than when done in a food processor. Still, you can throw it all into a machine with good-enough results.
1 1/2 loosely packed cups fresh mint leaves, preferably spearmint
1 1/2 loosely packed cups fresh parsley leaves
1 very large clove garlic (or 2 small)
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
Few grinds black pepper
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar (or more to taste)
Combine the herbs, garlic, salt, and pepper in a mortar. With the pestle, crush the leaves and garlic until they are a reasonably fine paste.
Add the oil and continue working the mixture until it is creamy. Add the vinegar and work it in, pounding, stirring, and grinding.
Alternately, put the herbs and garlic in a mini food processor and chop them finely. Then add the oil, work the mixture even finer, then add the vinegar and process another few seconds.
You can serve the sauce immediately, but it’s better after mellowing for an hour or so.
