Walnuts Sauce Trenette – Trenette con salsa di noci
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!
















