Pine nut sauce or sarsa de pigneu (in Genoese dialect) is an extraordinary sauce, less well-known than the famous walnut sauce but just as good.
The pine nuts give the dish a more delicate flavour. Just think that once upon a time the Genoese used the phrase “a sa de pigneu!” which means “it tastes of pine nuts” to indicate something really delicious.
We Ligurians use them a lot, even though lately they have become very expensive. Unfortunately, in recent years, Italian production has fallen steeply as a result of climate change (freezing weather out of season, hailstones and drought) but also due to the presence of an alien species, a highly resistant parasite, Leptoglossus occidentalis, an American bug which reached Italy at the start of the 2000s.
This sauce, however, is a real comfort food and we deserve such things now and then. Try using it as a sauce for ravioli made with ricotta cheese and spinach, mandilli, Genoese pansoti or trofie. In Varese Ligure they use it on the famous croxetti, which sooner or later I will prepare for you! It also goes well very with dry pasta… use the form you prefer.
Ingredients
Tools
Steps
Put the bread in a cup to soak with the milk for a few minutes. To drain it, squeeze with your hands, keeping the milk for later.
Put it in the blender together with all the other ingredients (pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, salt and marjoram leaves) and start to blend finely.
Trickle the oil in and then the milk until the mixture reaches the creamy consistency typical of this sauce.
Use it as a sauce for ravioli magri, pansoti, trofie or other forms of pasta. Dilute, if necessary, with a tablespoon of cooking water from the pasta.
Keep in the fridge in a hermetically sealed glass container for two or three days.
Varied doses for servings