Irishfairy's Kitchen

I love food of Liguria. Liguria is one of the smallest regions of North Western Italy, very close to the city I come from, Cuneo. There are so many delicious foods you can eat in Liguria, that I’m not really sure where to start from: first, I would say my favourite, is focaccia, a very oily, salty and yummy hand-made bread, followed by basil pesto, farinata (chickpea flat bread), torta pasqualina (spinach and eggs pie), borage’s ravioli and so on.

Therefore, at the end of the day, I decided I would need a cookbook of Liguria’s food. And it went like this: I bought it and now I hope I’ll find the time to cook as many dishes as I can. And, considering that it is always necessary to start from somewhere, the first recipe I tried is something I never had before, just to have a new experience. The recipe is the “salsa di noci”, aka walnuts sauce, delicious to toss pasta, hand-made or not, but also amazing with toasted bread and crackers.

Nevertheless, this is the recipe, whoever of you decided to prepare it, just let me know wht you think about it

Ingredient – serves 4

150 g of walnuts (weighed without shells)
4 unsweetened rusks (or fette biscottate)
Milk
2 to 3 tablespoons of grated Parmigiano Reggiano
2 tablespoons of oil
Salt & pepper to taste
Opt: 2 tablespoons of cream

Directions

Let the walnuts boil in hot, boiling water for approx 15 mins.
In the meanwhile, crumble the rusks, place them in a big cup and add enough milk to cover them completely.

Drain the walnuts, let them cool down and peel them, using a small knife. This step may be boring and very long, so most of the time I simply avoid it. No matter, nothing really happens to the fnal taste of your sauce, so if you don’t want to waste too much time, just jump over or buy peeled walnuts, if you can find them at the grocery.

Put the walnuts (peeled or not) in a mixer bowl, add the rusks (without squeezing them), add salt and pepper.

Add the grated Parmigiano.

Add oil and couple of tablespoons of milk (fine, if you have some left from the previous step).

Mix until creamy, adding some more milk (little by little) if you see it’s becoming not soft enough.

Cook pasta: I would suggest to choose a long shaped pasta such as linguine or trenette, a typical pasta of Liguria, but any sie will be fine. Toss the pasta adding 2 o 3 tablespoons of hot water (the one used to cook pasta), which will allow you to mix it thoroughly. Or, if you like it, add cuople of tablespoons of cream (just remind that original recipe is totally without any cream!).

Enjoy!

A very simple way to dress pasta, the longest and most complicated step is made by oven, roasting the peppers. The cream of tuna and roasted peppers was born by merging several different recipes that I found on the Internet, during the last months. This dip can be spread over a slice of toasted bread, maybe you can remove pines and add instead a little bit of extravirgin olive oil, rubbing the bread with some garlic.

Ingredients – Serve 4

320 g of fusilli shaped pasta
160 g of can tuna (in olive oil is fine, but better if you choose the one in brine)
2 teaspoons of anchovies cream (but four anchovies in olive oil will be fine)
2 teaspoons of capers
2 big red bell peppers
2 teaspoons of pines
1 tablespoon of oregano, dried one will be perfect (its flavour is more intense and you will be able to clearly taste it in the finished cream)
A pinch of chili pepper (I used the dried one)
2 tablespoons of black, pitted olive

Directions

Rinse the peppers, cut them in two halves and remove all the whiteparts and the seeds, and cut them in four/five parts each.
Place all the pieces of peppers on a baking pan covered with parchment paper and put into the oven for about half an hour, or until the skin is dark brown and crispy.
Take out, let cool down and remove the skin from the peppers, just peel it off.

In a bowl, put the drained tuna and the anchovies cream (or the anchovies cut in small pieces)

Mix thoroughly and add the capers.

Put the peppers in a mixer bowl and add oregano and chili peppers.

Mix until smooth and omogeneous.

At same time, heat a pan and add pines. Toast them a couple of minutes, always moving them a little bit to avoid the stick to the pan.

Mix the peppers with tuna.

In the while, cook pasta, drain it and dress it with the cream, adding two tablespoons of boiling water (tip: water used to cook pasta would be perfect!).

Add pines and olives (I’ve used olive taggiasche, which usually are not pitted but they fit perfectly this recipe because sometimes I find black olives too sweet).

Mix thoroughly.

Enjoy your meal, and be always happy!