AUNTIE PASTA: Nuts to You

SARONNO, Italy – The mud slides and floods that have devastated Liguria, and in particular the Cinque Terre, this week, got me thinking about the unique cuisine, a cucina povera, that is also part of the cultural heritage of this area. One of the most delicious dishes that developed in Liguria is pansotti with nut sauce. Nut sauce is simply a combination of crushed nuts, milk soaked bread and a few flavor enhancers like garlic and marjoram. 

Ligurian Nut Sauce

If you have traveled around Italy you know how different the food can be from one region to another. You probably already know that you won’t find Tuscan specialties like pappa di pomodoro (see Auntie Pasta: Viva la Pappa 6/2/2011), or saltless Tuscan bread in Turin, nor will you find Piedmontese specialties like bagna caộda or raviolini del plin with fonduta (see Auntie Pasta: Restaurants of Turin, 9/9/2010) in Florence. 

Given that the regional cuisines developed around the raw materials that were available, in my humble opinion the Ligurians, who had the least to work with, a few herbs and nuts and olive oil, ended up with one of the best cuisines in Italy. Salsa di noci, (nut sauce) known as Tocco de nux in Genovese dialect, is a perfect example. Here’s the simple, but delicious recipe. 

Salsa di Noci

1 glove of garlic

250 ml of whole milk

Marjoram, (one stem of fresh is best but a sprinkle of dried marjoram is ok too.)

250 grams of walnuts

½ wine glass of olive oil

40 grams of soft, white bread (no crusts) cut into small cubes

40 grams of Parmigiano Reggiano

30 grams of pine nuts (optional)

Salt (q.b. quanto basta or - to taste)

To make the nut sauce (1) first blanch the nuts in boiling water for at least 5 minutes so they are easier to peel. Then drain them and let them cool. In the meantime  (2) put the cut up bread in a bowl and cover with the milk, and (3) when they have absorbed the milk, squeeze them dry and put them in another dish, keeping the milk apart.

Peel the nuts, one by one (4) and put them in a blender (or in a pestle if you are using a mortar and pestle), together with the pine nuts, garlic, cheese (5) and oil (6).

Add the soggy bread and the marjoram (7) and whiz it all together in the blender adding a little milk (from the milk you set aside)  if needed, until the mixture is creamy and dense (8), then add salt.  The nut sauce (9) is then ready to use.  

If you are using a mortar and pestle, be sure to pound the mixture energetically, adding a little oil or milk (the milk you set aside earlier). You can also save yourself a little work by buying already peeled walnuts in the grocery store. If you are not fond of garlic just leave it out.  While this recipe is not exactly like the original, it still very good. 

Pansotti with Salsa di Noci

 Salsa di noci is most often served with pansotti alla Genovese which are a type of ravioli filled with a mix of herbs and a bit of ricotta.  

If you read this blog with any regularity you know that everything you eat and eat with here in Italy, has a story behind it, and salsa di noci is no different. It seems the sauce was invented by Ligurian farmers to go with their pansotti, a ravioli that was given this odd name because it is a little paunchy, or ‘un po panciuta’.

In the past, pansotti were filled with whatever herbs and vegetables the farmers had at their disposal. It was never the same and so the combination – whatever it was – became known as ‘preboggion’. Pregoggion could be made up of whatever herbs were in season like Swiss chard, borragine,  pimpinella,  dente di cane,  raperonzolo, l'ortica,  cicerbita and parsley. And other than the Swiss chard, dandelion and parsley, I don’t have a clue what the others are.

Borragine

As for the nut sauce, you can put it on almost any type of small, vegetarian ravioli. It will keep in the frig for a couple of days, but not much longer. If it gets too thick, thin it with a few drops of milk. 

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AUNTIE PASTA: Fantastic Farinata

SARONNO, ITALY - It’s these long and lazy hot days of summer that set me dreaming of the Italian Riviera. I long for those bygone days when we would set off from Genoa Nervi for Santa Margherita Ligure to eat heaping plates of fried fish, or Recco for focaccia al’ formaggio, focaccia with cheese. And sometimes we would head for Savona, on the other side of Genoa, for my favorite, the delicious and totally irresistible farinata, the poorest of all poor man’s food.

Freshly Baked Farinata

In the narrow carruggi of Genoa’s historic center there are any number of hole in the wall farinata shops. Along with farinata they also sell stuffed vegetables like zucchini and tomatoes that have been hollowed out and filled with flavored bread crumbs. They may also sell French fries and other things but to tell you the truth I never really paid attention to what other things they had, my focus was always on the farinata.

Farinata is nothing more than chick pea flour, water, olive oil and salt, mixed together into a loose batter and baked on a round pizza pan in a very hot oven. After it is cooked, it is roughly sliced into pieces, piled high on plates and…. devoured.

There is regular yellow farinata, made with traditional chick pea flour, and white farinata. I don’t know what the white farinata is made of, and I’m not all that interested in finding out. The only thing I really want to know how fast can they bring me a plate of the stuff. 

I must confess however, it was not love at first taste. I lived in Genoa for quite a few years not really giving much thought to the bevy of farinata shops I passed every day. It wasn’t until the day Tracy and Daniele got married in Savona that I became a farinata fanatic.
Savona City Hall

My conversion to farinata almost didn’t happen. The day of their wedding a horrific storm came in off the sea and brought Savona to its knees. The wedding ceremony, which had taken place in the City Hall, went off as planned but because the streets of the city had turned into rivers, we were stranded there. It was late afternoon before the rain stopped, but once it did it didn’t take long for the roads to become passable once again. The reception was on.

The trattoria was at the end of a long and winding road up on the top of a hill high above Savona. There were many slippery patches and a few times I thought we were going to slide right off the road into the ditch. But the problems of the day were soon forgotten for when we got to our destination the tantalizing odor of freshly baked farinata greeted us at the door.

It is such a simple dish, just chickpea flour, water and olive oil baked in a thin pancake and eaten with your hands but it is the one thing I crave when I’m sitting at home in land bound Milan.

Legend has it farinata was created in 1284 on board a Genovese ship on its way home after winning a sea battle against Pisa. They hit a severe thunderstorm and several barrels of olive oil and sacks of chickpea flour tipped over and got mixed together with the salty water from the sea, making a gummy batter.

The Genovese, who have duly earned their reputation for frugalness, scooped up what they could and when the sun came out they put the bowls of batter out on the deck to dry. Then they gave the bowls of dried batter to the crew to eat. It didn’t taste bad but when the ship arrived back in its home port, someone got the idea of baking the batter in an oven.

From those humble beginnings to today, farinata has managed to keep it’s position at the top of the list of really good things to eat in Liguria, along with pesto and trofie and all the other delicacies of la cucina povera.