Ligurian Recipes
30th September, 2009 - Posted by admin - Comments Off
Here are some recipes for typical ligurian dishes
Recipe for pesto
Ingredients: 5 handfuls of basilicum (make sure when buying that the leaves are still small), 1 soup spoon pecorino sardo (Sardinian sheep’s milk cheese), 4 soup spoons of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, 1 handful of pine nut, ligurian olive oil, a little garlic, salt. The preparation of pesto alla genovese is simple: Wash the basilicum briefly and dry it – as much as possible without mashing it. Then mash it together with the pine nuts, some olive oil, garlic and salt in a mortar. Of course one can also make it into purée using a kitchen blender. Then add the grated cheese types and mingle well. Put everything into a bowl and stir up with a little more olive oil (depending on taste). One can practically use every noodle made of hard wheat grain for the pesto. Shortly before the pasta gets ready, one should take a soup spoon of the noodle water and add it into the pesto and stir. The dripped pasta is then mixed with the pesto in the bowl – finished. For a true ligurian “Linguine with pesto” one takes about 500 grams of trenette (a flat, ligurian spaghetti), 5 soup spoons of pesto, 100 grams of fresh green beans, 2 medium-sized potatoes. The potatos are peeled and put together with the beans into enough saltwater. As soon as the water boils, the trenette are added. Then boil together until the noodles are “al dente”, then pour off the water. A few soup spoons of the noodle vegetable water are mixed with the pesto and this is then poured over the noodles. Depending on taste a little Parmesan cheese is again added to it – finished. The ligurian cuisine has some delicacies which one can only get a chance to eat in this place.
Fast and simple:
Ingredients: Zucchini, garlic, olive oil
Cut the zucchini lengthwise into strips. On to the pan, and when the zucchini become transparent, put into a bowl and stir thoroughly together with some garlic and a branch of thyme and olive oil.
Leave it to stand for a couple of minutes and then enjoy.
A little more nutritious:
Deep-fried zucchini:
Ingredients: Zucchini, flour, salt, oil
Grate and salt the zucchini roughly. Then wait for 20 minutes until the salt has drawn out its water. Then mix flour into it. Drop the zucchini dough then spoonful after spoonful into piping hot olive oil which is about 2 fingers wide and then scoop out exquisite gold brown crispiness.
Very simple but delicious tomato salad:
Ingredients: Tomatoes, basilicum, salt, olive oil
Cut tomatoes into pieces, add basilicum, a pinch of salt and olive oil. Stir the whole thing thoroughly for a short while and the tomato juices drawn out by the salt will emulsify with the olive oil into a rich thick sauce. Tip: Sprinkle yesterday’s bread into it.
Main courses:
Foccacia with olives, tomatoes capers:
For 4 persons:
½ kg of flour
15 g of yeast
300 ml of water
15 ml of honey
15 g of salt
25 ml of olive oil
Capers; according to your wish
Anchovis; according to your wish
green and black pitted olives; according to your wish
7.500 cherry tomatoes
Basilicum
1. For the bread dough mix 300 ml of lukewarm water with the honey and dissolve the yeast in it. Put the flour with the salt into a bowl and mix. Press a hollow into the middle and put the yeast solution into it. Then add the remaining 300 ml of lukewarm water to it.
2. Knead everything thoroughly together until a smooth, elastic dough is created. Put it in a warm place for an hour while covered.
Knead the dough once more and spread it over the working area which has been dusted with flour to the size of the baking tray. Press the surface evenly with the fingertips. Leave it for another 15 minutes.
3. Meanwhile blanch the tomatoes and remove the skin. Mix the tomatoes with the oil in a bowl, add pepper and salt. Add a little basilicum.
4. Lastly, cover the dough with the tomatoes, anchovies, capers, olives and small heaps of basilicum leaves.
5. Now again spread the tomato oil over the whole thing and bake at about 175° degrees Celsius for 30-40 minutes. The Focaccia must be golden brown on the edge. P.S. Ultimately, one can cover the Focacchia with anything one likes!
Ligurian rabbit:
Ingredients for 4 persons:
1 kg of rabbit in portions
2 pieces of garlic cloves pressed
1 teaspoon of rosemary, freshly CHOPPED
1 teaspoon of fresh sage, freshly whipped
250 ml of red wine – dry
2 pieces of tomatoes – fresh, peeled, with seeds removed, cubed
100 grams of olives – black, with seeds removed
2 soup spoons of pine nuts
Salt, pepper, olive oil
1. Brown the rabbit parts in oil all round, add garlic, rosemary and sage. Add wine and season.
2. Braise for 1 hour while covered. Add tomato cubes, olives and pine nuts, and again braise for 35 minutes. Season to taste. Bind the sauce if need be.
Ligurian Pansotti:
Ingredients for 4 persons:
200 g of wheat flour
100 g of semolina
2 eggs
5 tbsp of dry white wine
1 tbsp of olive oil
1 egg-white, salt
1 clove of garlic
1 bunch of chives
250 g of ricotta
1 tbsp of breadcrumbs, salt, pepper
150 g of ground walnut seeds
80 g pine nuts
2 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp of basilicum leaves
100 ml of olive oil
125 g of cream
1. For the dough, knead the flour, semolina, eggs, wine, oil and 1 tea spoon of salt. Leave in a foil to rest for 30 minutes.
2. Chop garlic and chives finely to get the mixture for filling in. Stir thoroughly with ricotta and breadcrumbs and season with salt and pepper.
3. To make the sauce, roast pine nuts in a non-stick pan. Make walnut, garlic, 2 tbsp of pine nut, basilicum, oil and cream into puree. Roll the dough out thin, cut out in 6 cm square. Add 1 tbsp of the filling into the middle, smear the edges with egg-white and fold up diagonally. Press the edges properly.
4. Simmer Pansotti in much saltwater for eight to ten minutes and let it drip well.
5. Serve with nut sauce and cover with the remaining pine nuts. Tomato salad tastes nice with it. (See above)