Sicilian Pesto, or Pesto alla Trapanese, celebrates the luscious tomatoes of summer with a fresh tomato pesto sauce made with basil, garlic and almonds.
The Quintessential Summer Pasta Sauce
The perfect pasta sauce for summer is easy, uncooked, and can handle the hot weather. While Sicilian pesto shares the same roots as Liguria’s green pesto alla Genovese, tomatoes tend to make it less vulnerable to time and heat, allowing it to keep its fresh appearance and great taste longer — making it an ideal summer pasta sauce.
You may also be interested in the recipe Trenette al Pesto.
Origins of Sicilian Pesto Trapanese
Ingredients
As with so many simple dishes, quality ingredients are essential for this tomato pesto recipe. In this case, freshly harvested summer ingredients: garlic, fresh basil, almonds and ripe red tomatoes.
Garlic
Pasta cu l’Agghia, literally Pasta with Garlic, is the local Trapanese name for this Sicilian pesto pasta dish, so to leave garlic out would make it another dish altogether. Traditionally, a lot more garlic is added, so be my guest if you want to lay on the garlic in honor of the dish’s namesake.
It goes without saying, a fresh mild, yet flavorful garlic will make a more agreeable pesto than an old or harsh flavored one. If you open your bulb of garlic to find less than stellar cloves, consider using half the amount or less.
Tomatoes
As one of the Sicilian Pesto Rossos (there is also a variation that uses sun-dried tomatoes), this pesto calls for fully ripe, sweet summer tomatoes, ideally with lively acidity.
- Tip – If the tomatoes aren’t ripe enough, put them out in the sun a few days, or near a window, to fully ripen. Then leave them at room temperature. Putting tomatoes in the refrigerator degrades their flavor and texture.
Smaller pear-shaped tomatoes (perini) are ideal here, or comparable-quality ripe, flavorful cherry tomatoes. If you are using medium sized plum tomatoes (San-Marzano style), around 1 ½ tomatoes per person will be about right.
Almonds
Ground almonds, along with the mortar & pestle, have been found throughout Mediterranean cuisine since ancient times — giving texture, adding flavor and thickening dishes like this one. Blanched almonds are ground in this recipe.
If you only have whole almonds, blanching your own almonds is simple, and only takes about 5 minutes. However, almond flour or almond meal will work in a pinch.
Basil
Freshly picked sweet basil is traditional and most common. Try to pick the smaller leaves, as they are sweeter. The smaller leaves are also much easier to pestle into a sauce when using a mortar and pestle.
Italians sometimes throw other fresh herbs into the mix too, such as mint, Italian flat-leaf parsley, sage and rosemary. And so can you.
Olive Oil
This dish calls for fresh fragrant extra virgin olive oil. The better the quality, the better the flavors. To find the best olive oil you can get your hands on, seek out small-producer extra-virgin olive oils. (For more tips and recommendations on olive oil, check out the recipe for Trenette al Pesto.)
Cheese
- Pesto alla Trapanese is made traditionally without cheese, and makes for a nice and light pasta dish.
- Grated pecorino cheese is commonly served with it today, and makes an excellent complement.
- For a lighter alternative, try ricotta salata (hard salted ricotta) grated on top. It’s lightly sharp taste is a simple and elegant addition.
Pasta Recommendations
- Busiate – Busiate-shaped pastas by other names, as well as similar variations, can be found around. Use what you can find from quality artisanal brands with pasta shapes labeled as: casarecce, gemelli, gnocculi, strozzapreti, fusilli or trofie.
- Short tubes like penne or rigatoni are ideal.
- Long pastas like linguine, spaghetti, or bucatini (hollow spaghetti like in the photos).
Busiate – The traditional pasta served with Sicily’s Pesto alla Trapanese is special. Homemade busiate, made with durum wheat, are considered the oldest of the homemade Sicilian pastas. Having been around for no less than a thousand years (before 800 AD), this is long before the Marco Polo story. The pasta is said to get its name from an old common Arabic word in Egypt for reed, büs, which was used to wind or wrap the pasta around. In Sardinia, where Macarrones de Busa (pronounced būza) come from the same ancient influence as the Sicilian Busiate, sock-knitting needles (knitting needles without heads), and bicycle or umbrella spokes have been used since.
How to Make Sicilian Pesto
Using a Mortar & Pestle
The traditional method to make Sicilian Pesto alla Trapanese is with mortar and pestle. Pestos made this ancient way allow you to enjoy the aromas and textures to the fullest. If you have a little extra time and a mortar and pestle, try it. You might find the process enjoyable, and the flavors and texture you get worth pulling out the mortar and pestle often.
Using a Food Processor
Using a food processor is simpler and faster, and still makes a great pasta sauce. Although, it’s technically no longer a pesto. (It hasn’t been pestled!)
Tip: If you want to achieve a similar texture to pesto made with a mortar and pestle, a couple of things you can do are: use short pulses, or stir in hand-chopped tomatoes at the end.
Our food processor method is a rustic version that tries to emulate as much as possible what you would get with a mortar and pestle. This is a matter of preference. If you want a smoother texture, blend it on high instead of pulsing it.
Recipe
Ingredients
- 8 oz pasta (½lb) (see notes)
- ½ lb fresh tomatoes (ripe and flavorful)
- 1 to 2 cloves garlic
- ¼ tsp sea salt
- a pinch of ground black pepper, or 2 whole peppercorns, crushed
- ½ cup blanched almonds, chopped
- 2 cups fresh sweet basil (loose packed leaves), washed and dried
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil (of good tasting quality)
- 3 Tbsp pecorino cheese (optional), freshly grated
Instructions
- Bring a large covered pot of salted water to boil.
- When the pasta water comes to a boil, cook the pasta in the salted water, stirring occasionally, until al dente, tender yet still firm to the bite.
- Meanwhile, make the pesto sauce.
Making Pesto with a Mortar & Pestle
- Peel the tomatoes: Score an x into the skin of the bottom of each tomato and plunge them into the boiling pasta water for a few seconds. Fish them out and let cool for a minute until cool enough to handle (in ice water if you like). Peel the skins off, push the seed sections out with your thumb (optional), and roughly chop. Set aside.
- Pound and grind the garlic, salt and peppercorns into a paste.
- Add the almonds a little at a time, and pestle until smooth.
- Add the basil leaves, torn up by hand if too big, and pound to a paste.
- Add the chopped tomatoes and pestle until smooth.
- Blend in the olive oil with a wooden spoon. Taste and adjust for salt.
Making Pesto with a Food Processor or Blender
- Cut the tomatoes in half with the skins on, push the seed sections out with your thumb (optional), then cut into quarters. If your tomatoes are large, roughly chop. Set aside.
- Blend the garlic, salt, and almonds in food processor, until finely ground to a sandy texture.
- Add the basil leaves, tomatoes and olive oil, and blend roughly with short pulses to emulate the rustic texture achieved with mortar and pestle. If you like a smoother paste, blend on high until it looks just right for you. Taste and adjust for salt.
Finish & Serve
- Transfer the sauce to a large serving bowl and set aside.
- Drain the pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of the pasta water to use if needed, and toss with the pesto. (Optional grated cheese can be added either here, or at the table.) If the sauce seems a little dry, stir in a spoon of pasta water at a time, until creamy.
- To serve, sprinkle the pasta, or edge of the plates, with small or torn basil leaves. Serve with coarsely ground pepper and grated cheese at the table. Enjoy! Buon appetito!
- Pasta recommendations: Handmade fresh busiate are traditional; Casarecce, gemelli, gnocculi, strozzapreti, fusilli or trofie go very well; any short tubed pasta such as penne or rigatoni; or long pasta such as spaghettoni (thick spaghetti), bucatini (hollow spaghetti); spaghetti, or linguine.
- Cheese Variation: Ricotta salata (hard salted ricotta)
- Salting the pasta water: No need to measure. A generous tablespoon of coarse sea salt or kosher salt (half as much if fine salt) is a good benchmark.
Nutrition Info: Click to Expand
More Easy Pastas with Tomatoes
- Rigatoni Pomodoro – made quick and fresh with grated tomatoes
- Penne Pomodoro – an all season stand-by made with convenient canned tomatoes
Evolution of Sicilian Pesto alla Trapanese
The introduction of a type of pesto to the Sicilian coastal city of Trapani has generally been attributed to Genovese sailors. Trapani, an ancient fishing port founded before 200 BC, provided a resting point for many city-states en route to the east, and back home. What the Genovese actually seem to have been traveling with was agliata (called aggiadda in Ligurian, agghiata in Sicilian), a medieval sauce, heavy on garlic, that sailors pounded or pestled with bread and vinegar to use as a preservative and condiment for dried meats on their long travels.
So, the story of the red Sicilian pesto is a chapter in the story of agliata. In fact, what we know as Pesto alla Trapanese goes locally by Pasta cu l’Agghia Pistata — Pasta with Garlic. The pestled aghiatta in Trapani evolved into a pasta dish with the locally available ingredients of almonds, fresh herbs such as basil, and tomatoes from the new world.
However, that’s not the full picture. Agliata in one form (or name) or another, has deep roots, with a long history throughout Mediterranean Europe, and the Near and Middle East. And Sicily is a mosaic of cuisines influenced by its long history of civilizations and conquests. Punic Carthage, a colony of western Phoenicians in Tunisia (just across the sea, where almonds still play a major culinary role), seized control of Trapani in 260 BC. And northern African conquests became ongoing from at least the 9th century BC onward. These Phoenician, Carthaginian, Arab-Berber conquests and rule undoubtedly left enduring culinary influences. Was agliata one of them?
Then there’s Rome The Ligurians are also said to have gotten the pestled garlic sauce from Ancient Rome. And ancient Rome (from 753BC to 476 AD) was heavily influenced by Greek culture. What we do know is that this pestled sauce was ubiquitous throughout the ancient Mediterranean — and that it’s still delicious.
2 comments
Sicilian Pesto alla Trapanese
I made this recipe because a friend gave me loads of home-grown tomatoes. Delicious! And really enjoyed using the fresh basil from my herb garden.
Glad you enjoyed it. Sounds like you have a great friend!