John Myers
Ingredients for 6 servings:
- 450 g pasta (busiate) or other short pasta
- 30 g pine nuts, lightly roasted
- 30 g skinless almonds, quartered, lightly roasted
- 12 tomatoes, dried, finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove(s), very finely chopped
- 75 ml Sicilian olive oil
- 2 tbsp capers
- 6 anchovies in oil, finely chopped
- 3 tomatoes, aromatic
- 30 basil leaves
- 50 g Pecorino, ground
- 100 g ricotta
- salt and pepper
- 1 pinch of cayenne pepper
- 1 tbsp paprika powder, sweet
Instructions
Working time approx. 15 minutes; Rest time approx. 30 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 11 minutes; Total time approx. 56 minutes
Serve as an appetizer. If you’re not having anything else, almost double all the ingredients, especially the amount of pasta. Blanch the almonds in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then rinse to remove the skins. Then put them in a blender with the toasted pine nuts, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil. If the tomatoes are very hard, soak the mixture for 30 minutes, then blend well. Now add the capers, anchovies, fresh tomatoes, and basil and blend again. Then add the pecorino, ricotta, and seasonings, mix well, and season to taste. Cook the pasta al dente. Just before the end of cooking, stir the pesto with a few spoonfuls of the cooking water until smooth, and then toss it into the pasta. Pesto is probably familiar to anyone who has ever traveled to Liguria. When sailors from Genoa landed in the port of Trapani in Sicily, they were looking for ingredients for their green pesto. In Sicily, however, they had to modify some of the ingredients. This is how pesto rosso came about. It goes perfectly with a Sicilian pasta called busiate, which has a hollow interior. Those who can’t find it can use other hollow varieties.
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