This is a logical variation on a nineteenth century recipe, recognized by Enrica at the delightful A Small Kitchen in Genoa blog.
In the photo, the whole mussels are just a garnish; the real point of this recipe is the sauce, made from seasoned finely chopped cooked mussels. It was delicious, and not at all difficult to make!
One of the tricky things about trying to cook Italian recipes in New England is that many of the ingredients are different, especially with regard to seafood. Most of Italy is far closer to where the crops are grown than New England is to California's Central Valley, so their produce tends to be fresher all year round. But for seafood, the fish and shellfish in our waters are in most cases very different from Mediterranean waters.
This recipe calls for Maine shrimp, the delicious little cold-water shrimp from the Bay of Fundy that are not the same as "salad shrimp" that you can get at some food service outlets. Italy has shrimp of all sizes, including little shrimp like these, but I doubt that they are the same species in those warmer waters. Nevertheless, they get us closer to the way this recipe would be made in Venice or Genoa.
Here is a classic sweet that we had in Sorrento, Pompeii, and surrounding areas. It's not desperately sweet, and it's heavy and moist so you can serve it in thin slices. It's great with fresh espresso!
A favorite pasta dressing from Genoa.
This was great with boxed penne pasta, but it was absolutely sublime when made with all the best ingredients to dress Mandilli a Saea (see Fresh Pasta ) for a birthday dinner!
When we explored the tip of Calabria and Eastern and Southern Sicily, pistachios were used everywhere, in all sorts of dishes, the way pine nuts are in the north.
This pesto is Sicilian, but it's not spicy and it goes with many dishes. I like it on broiled fish.
Use a good olive oil, but one with a mild flavor, as a more fruity or peppery oil can wrestle with the flavor of the pistachios.
This arugula pesto is a surprise winner in the pesto department! It has a fresh, tingly flavor and a beautiful color.
The trickiest part about making this pesto is that the arugula takes up a lot of volume, so if you use a small food processor (which is fine for other pestos) you quickly overfill it with arugula before adding th remaining ingredients!
I dealt with this by chopping up 3/4 of the arugula first, then milling the remaining ingredients with the last quarter of the arugula, and then milling it all together. It came out fine. How anyone would ever do this with a mortar and pestle is a mystery to me.
In much of Italy and in some parts of this country, rosemary grows year-round and people have hedges of it, but in Plymouth this is one of those taste-of-summer dishes.
It's an easy and flavorful vegetarian pasta dish. It's mostly just chopped tomatoes with a blast of fresh rosemary, a great combination.
The southern stretch of the Italian boot on the western side, Calabria, has its own cuisine and naturally its own pesto, this one with fresh tomatoes, red bell peppers, and ricotta. It's pink like Pesto Trapanese but with a completely different flavor thanks to the cooking, the red bell pepper and the ricotta.
It's traditionally served on long pasta or on bruschetta with a bit of fresh oregano.
Here's a bright red, robustly flavored pesto with a strong backbone of sun-dried tomatoes and sweetness from ground almonds and pine nuts and a little fresh basil.
Sometimes when people mention "red pesto", they mean the traditional Sicilian Pesto Trapanese, which uses fresh tomatoes. That has a milder flavor and a lighter color than this burly condiment.
This delight from Trapani in far western Sicily is the next-best known Italian pesto after Pesto Genovese. You can see it's very different: it's made with tomatoes and almonds, which gives it a pinkish-red color.
Some people refer to this as "red pesto', but that's to differentiate it from its better-known green sister from the north. I also have a Pesto Rosso recipe that's truly red and more robust than this charmer.
