Nonna's Pesto Trapanese
and a sun dried tomato appreciation post
One big *aha* moment I had during my time in Sicily was that sun dried tomatoes are….. literally….tomatoes that are dried in the sun…
Maybe you’re like “le' duh….” (and it does sound incredibly obvious to me now that I’m writing it here), but my only previous exposure to sun dried tomatoes were the things that came in the jar at the supermarket. Wow was I missing out.
But sun dried tomatoes are a production in Nonna’s house in Sicily.
If you’ve been following along, it’s 🍅TOMATO SZN🍅 month here at The Sobremesa, highlighting, you guessed it, all things tomato. And while I was in Sicily in July, it was PEAK tomato season. Like, harvesting-hundred-of-pounds-of-tomatoes-from-the-garden-a-day-kinda-of-peaking. Tomatoes are a crucial part of the Sicilian diet (and we love them for that!) so there are countless recipes that include these wonderful nectars of the gods.
And thank god, because with all of these tomatoes, there has to be a way to actually eat them all! We couldn’t possibly eat them all every day (lord knows I certainly tried), so there have been many clever methods that Sicilians have developed in order to preserve them.
So what do you do when it’s 105 degrees and you have a shit ton of tomatoes?
You make sun dried tomatoes!
And apparently, all you need to do this are are tomatoes, sun, and salt.
Most mornings, Paola would pick a huge bucket of genovese tomatoes. She’d then:
Wash them and slice almost in half.
Walk them outside to a simple wire rack that was in direct reach from the sun.
Place them on the wire wrack, skin down (seeds up).
Sprinkle them generously with salt.
Let the sun work their magic!
The idea is that the salt and the sun work together to remove all of the hydration from the tomatoes. Therefore perfectly drying and therefore preserving them.
From there, it was *letting the tomatoes talk to you*. Checking in on them every day to see how dry they were getting. Flipping them at some point. Until, usually about a week later, they were completely dried and it was time to take them inside.
Paola would then store them to use in the cold tomato-less winter months.
And let me tell you - these tomatoes were AMAZING! So sweet, rich, and flavorful.
I have been getting lot of questions regarding: how we prevented bugs and vermin from getting to these tomatoes. And honestly….I never saw them around. So either the area didn’t have them or these critters knew not to fuck with our precious tomatoes 🤷🏽♀️
Now, I can’t say I’d recommend you try to sun dry your own tomatoes in the States. I live in NYC, so I’m sure I would be opening NYC’s hottest Buffet for Rats if I attempted to do this.
One of my favorite dishes she made was a traditional pasta dish from the region, Pesto Trapanese. Many of you are familiar with the green pesto - you know, the one with basil, pine nuts, and cheese. But did you know that “pesto” actually means “crushed?” So, in Italian cuisine, there are many versions of pesto, because it simply means that the ingredients were “crushed” together to make a paste.
This one is special to this region in Sicily because it utilizes a few ingredients they are most known for, like almonds and tomatoes, to create a delicious creamy pasta sauce unlike any I’ve ever had before: It’s giving romesco energy with BDE, IMO.
Now, you normally make this with fresh tomatoes (which is actually how Paola and her family prepared it). But Paola, being the Nonna she is, packaged a bunch of sun dried tomatoes for me to take back to NYC (in a used pasta bag, ofc because cardinal rule of Nonna’s kitchen is to never throw a bag away). So, since I have these heavenly tomatoes gifted from Nonna, I decided to use them instead for today’s recipes instead of fresh tomatoes.
As I write this, I’m upstate in the Catskills with one of my besties. We’re staying a in a cute little cabin on a sprawling unique property planning an amazing Womxn’s Retreat she is hosting the last weekend in September (and I have the honor of cooking for).
It’s just her, me, and a few chickens and alpaca running around. (Yes, you read that correctly.) It’s the first time I’ve seen her since coming from from Sicily, and I couldn’t think of a better recipe to represent my time there than this one.
So I busted out my prized sun dried tomatoes and my smuggled Busiate noodles (the classic pasta they make there) and made us an ode to Nonna.
A disclaimer I will use on ALL of Nonna’s recipes I post here…..She doesn’t really have recipes 🤷🏽♀️ Paola cooks with (a) what’s fresh, (b) what she feels like, and (c) her intuition. There’s no measurements or even exact ingredients. It was such a lesson for me in ditching the recipes and just having FUN with food + TRUSTING myself with improvising.
Even while preparing this dish for my friend last night - several things went “wrong.” The blender at this cute little cabin is probably from 1997 and could barely chop - so, I determined this would just be a “chunkier” pesto. I ran out of olive oil and the paste was coming out quite dry - so, I resolved by adding little olive juice left in an olive container and even adding some splashes of leftover red wine. It was definitely not Nonna’s recipe anymore - but that’s okay! It was something new. Nonna showed me that recipes can and should taste different every time.
As such, I’m inspired to give you “recipes”””” instead of “recipes” moving forward - meaning I will provide context and loose measurements, but I encourage you to trust yourself to use your own senses to determine if you need more, or less of something (or hey, want to add something completely random that I didn’t write at all! that would actually be best case scenario!)
Boun Appetito!
Pesto Trapanese
Ingredients
2-4 cloves of Garlic, minced
1/2 cup roasted almonds
1lb fresh tomatoes, or 10-12 sundried tomatoes (if you’re using jarred sundried, I would say about 2 jars worth)
12-20 Basil leaves
1/4 cup Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper to taste
1/4 -1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese
Traditionally, you’re using a mortar and pestal to “crush” the sauce. But honestly, who has the time or energy. Paola didn’t so I decided to use a good old blender to mix instead 😜
Let’s do it!
Add garlic and almonds to your blender / food processor until roughly chopped.
Add basil, Parmesan cheese, tomatoes, and olive oil and blend until it becomes a paste.
Season with salt and pepper.
Cook pasta until al dente.
Drain, but save about a cup of pasta water (the starch in the pasta water will help emulsify the paste so it comes out nice and creamy).
Add the pasta back to the pot and add the pesto. Put on “simmer” heat.
Slowly add the reserved pasta water, taking breaks to mix until it forms a creamy sauce (you probably won’t use the full cup of pasta water, but it’s always good to have a little extra just in case.)
Serve with extra cheese, basil, and a drizzle of olive oil.
And don’t forget the bread to “la scarpetta” all that good good sauce afterwards! “Scarpetta” means “to do the little shoe,” which is when you take a slice of bread to mop up all of that sauce you ccannot possibly leave behind. By far my favorite term I learned there.
Love you mucho,
Tessa
Yum 😋