Walnut Pesto (Italian Riviera in Liguria)

This walnut pesto is a unique recipe from the Italian Riviera in Liguria, Northwest Italy. It is one of the few pesto recipes made with milk, which gives it a creamy texture. You tend to find this walnut sauce served with homemade pansotti pasta on Sundays and religious days of abstinence from meat such as Christmas Eve and particularly during Lent.

Pansotti pasta with walnut sauce is a traditional dish from the Italian Riviera in Liguria, Northwest Italy. Similar to cappelletti or tortellini, pansotti (or pansoti) is stuffed ravioli-like pasta filled with ricotta and a variety of herbs and greens. This is a delicious easy to make vegetarian recipe that is popular on Sundays and religious days of abstinence from meat such as Christmas Eve and particularly during Lent.

What herbs or greens can you use in pansotti? According to the official recipe for pansotti pasta in Rapallo (yes there’s an official recipe), there should be a minimum of 4 types of wild herbs/greens in particular quantities of which at least 50% is borage and not more than 20% is wild Swiss chard.

In Genoa, walnut sauce is typically used to season pansotti (a traditional kind of ravioli filled with spontaneous herbs), but actually it is a sauce very good with any kind of pasta. There are different recipes but all the traditional one, all, do not require milk cream. So, be careful not to be fooled by stingy restaurants and canned sauces.

1 cup milk
1 big slice white bread, crusts removed
2 cups walnuts kernels (200 g)
½ clove garlic
1 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
5 Tbsp. light extra-virgin olive oil
10 leaves marjoram
sea salt
water, lukewarm

Put the bread in a bowl and cover with the milk. When it is completely wet, drain and squeeze it in your hands.

Put the drained bread in the blender along with the walnuts, the garlic, the leaves of marjoram, the parmesan cheese and 2 pinches of salt. Blend for a couple of minutes until the walnuts are well crumbled and it turns smooth.

Add 5 Tbsp. of olive oil and lukewarm water as needed to obtain a thick creamy sauce.

When it’s time to season the pasta (any kind of pasta: dry pasta, handmade pasta, ravioli or pansotti - of course) remember before seasoning to water down the sauce with 4-5 Tbsp. of the hot water where the pasta is boiling and remember always, always, to save a cup of boiling water to add to the past just in case it remains too dry after seasoning.

Some traditional recipe suggests to remove the outer rind of the walnuts after having immersed them into boiling water for few seconds. I do not remove the rind because I like a more rustic consistency in the sauce and I believe that also the rind contributes to give a characteristic flavour to the sauce (and yes, I confess, it also makes the recipe easier and quicker).