Recipes
A friend once said
I love Italian food because is honest. The recipes contain a few ingredients, so only ingredients of very good quality can give you a delicious dish.
Linguine o Caserecce al pesto
Pasta Linguine or Casarecce with pesto
200 g of semi whole-grain Linguine or Casarecce
(or another kind of pasta)
1 tablespoon of coarse salt (for boiling pasta)
25 g basil leaves
10 g pine nuts
25 g Parmesan
5 g semi-matured sheep cheese
25 g extra virgin olive oil
half a clove of garlic
1-2 g of coarse sea salt
eventually 40 g green beans
eventually 40 g potatoes
Wash the basil leaves and dry them with a kitchen cloth. Peel the garlic. Place half of the basil leaves inside a chopper, add half of the oil and blend. Then add the rest of the basil leaves and the rest of the oil, the pine nuts, the chunks of Parmesan and semi-matured sheep cheese, the garlic and the coarse sea salt. Blend until the ingredients are well mixed and you reach the desired texture. If possible blend at low speed for just a few seconds to avoid that the ingredients become slightly warm and therefore change the flavour of the pesto.
If you want to try the version with the green beans and the potatoes (very traditional as well), cut these two ingredients in small pieces and boil them for around 5 min with a pinch of salt.
Boil 2 L of water (1 L for every 100 g of pasta), add a tablespoon of coarse salt and mix with a spoon. Place the Linguine (or Casarecce) in the boiling water and stir gently with a spoon. Take aside a glass of the water in which the pasta is boiling, you might need it later. Taste the pasta and regulate the cooking time accordingly! Italians sieve pasta after tasting and feeling that it has the right texture, the so called scolare a sentimento. When the texture is right, i.e. al dente, sieve the water, put the Linguine (or Casarecce) back inside the pot, add the pesto and mix gently. Add eventually the green beans and the potatoes and mix gently. If needed, pour a bit of the water from the boiling pasta: the mixing needs to feel smooth and the pasta needs to sound "smoochy".
Serve on the plates, decorate with a couple of extra basil leaves and a few whole pine nuts and... Enjoy!
