The Genoa-style pesto is a pasta sauce that’s typically used with traditional pasta shapes such as trofie or trenette. Find this and many more recipes on the Giallozafferano App in English http://itunes.apple.com/app/giallozafferano-recipes/id384387249?mt=8
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Hi everyone and welcome to the GialloZafferano kitchen. Today we’ll take a virtual flight to the Italian region of Liguria to prepare Pesto Genovese. Pesto Genovese is a pasta sauce that’s typically used with traditional Ligurian pasta shapes such as Trofie, Trenette or Trofiette. Naturally, each Ligurian family has a special way to make pesto and with a secret recipe. However we’ll be making ours from the official Genovese recipe. Let’s see what we’ll need:
• 7 tbsp of olive oil, preferably from Liguria
• 1 oz of grated pecorino romano cheese
• Just over 1/3 cup of parmigiano reggiano cheese
• ½ oz of pine nuts • 2 cloves of garlic, preferably sweet or fresh garlic
• A pinch of coarse salt
• 1 ¼ cups of fresh basil leaves
Let’s prepare our pesto Genovese!
The old Genovese recipe calls for the basil to be smashed with a marble mortar and wooden pestle. Begin by adding the cloves of garlic and some grains of coarse salt to the mortar. The salt will help grind the garlic to the necessary smoothness. Now bash it up! Once the garlic has gotten to a paste-like consistency, add the basil leaves to the mortar. Add a little handful at a time and each time add a few grains of coarse salt. Bash the basil to a paste and try to move the pestle like you’re stirring, alternately to the right and to the left. If you can, move the mortar in the opposite direction to your pestle.
Once the basil leaves have given been crushed down to a lovely green paste, it’s time to add the pine nuts. Once you’ve done that, crush them into the basil.
Once you’ve smashed the pine nuts into a paste you can add the cheeses and oil alternating the two. Keep mixing!
And here is our pesto ready to be used. If you can’t find a mortar and pestle, you can prepare the sauce in a blender, but remember, it’s important that the blender doesn’t heat up the sauce. What you can do is put the blender pitcher and blades into the refrigerator to cool for at least an hour before you prepare the pesto. Then when you’re using it, use the pulse setting or let it blend for a few seconds, stop and start again until you’ve reached the proper consistency. From Sonia and GialloZafferano, buon Pesto and see you next time!