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Sauce · Liguria

Al sugo di noci

Salsa di noci — walnut sauce — is a Ligurian preparation more often paired with the stuffed pansoti and the imprinted corzetti of the region's tradition than with tagliatelle. It adapts well, though, and provides one of the most distinctive non-meat dressings in the Italian repertoire.

The dish in Liguria

The classical pairing of salsa di noci is with pansoti — the triangular ricotta-and-greens stuffed pasta of Liguria — and with corzetti, the disc-shaped pasta pressed with a wooden mould carrying coats of arms or family symbols. Both are fresh egg pastas of the Ligurian tradition; both pair traditionally with this walnut sauce, which compensates for their relatively bland fillings or surfaces with a rich, nutty, slightly bitter dressing. Tagliatelle is not the canonical pasta for this sauce in Liguria but is a perfectly acceptable substitute outside the region.

The ingredients

The traditional recipe is a paste made of:

• Shelled walnuts. For four servings, 150 g of shelled walnut halves. Italian walnuts (especially from Sorrento or Campania, where they are a PGI product as Noce di Sorrento) are sweeter and less bitter than English walnuts; if using English walnuts, blanch them briefly in boiling water for 30 seconds to remove some of the tannin from the skin, then rub off any loose skins before using.
• Bread. 30 to 40 g of crustless stale bread, soaked in 100 ml of milk for 10 minutes, then squeezed gently. The bread thickens the sauce and gives it body; without it the sauce is more an oil emulsion than a paste.
• Garlic. One small clove, peeled. The Ligurian quantity is restrained — the garlic is meant to support, not to dominate.
• Olive oil. Ligurian extra-virgin olive oil if you have it; otherwise a mild fruity olive oil. About 80 ml.
• Parmigiano-Reggiano. 40 g, freshly grated. Some Ligurian versions use Pecorino Sardo (the Sardinian sheep's-milk cheese sometimes called fiore sardo); both work.
• Optional. A small handful of pine nuts (10 g) added to the paste, or a teaspoon of marjoram leaves stirred in at the end. Both are traditional in some Ligurian villages.

The method

The traditional method uses a marble mortar and a wooden pestle, in the same way the same region's pesto alla genovese is made. A food processor is a modern shortcut that produces an acceptable result, though the texture is slightly different — finer and more emulsified, where the pestle leaves the walnuts a fraction coarser.

1. Prepare the bread. Tear the crustless bread into pieces; soak in the milk for 10 minutes; squeeze gently, retaining a small amount of moisture.
2. Pound the garlic. Crush the garlic clove with a pinch of salt to a paste in the mortar.
3. Add the walnuts. Add the walnuts (and pine nuts if using). Pound to a coarse paste.
4. Incorporate the bread. Add the soaked bread and continue pounding into a smoother paste.
5. Stream in the oil. Trickle in the olive oil slowly, working it into the paste with the pestle until a smooth emulsion forms. The paste should be thick, fragrant, and a soft beige-grey colour.
6. Finish. Stir in the grated Parmigiano. Taste; adjust salt. The paste is ready.
7. Loosen for the pasta. Just before tossing with the pasta, thin the paste with 4 to 6 tablespoons of hot pasta water until it has the consistency of a thick cream — loose enough to coat the ribbons evenly.
8. Toss. Drain the cooked tagliatelle (reserving pasta water). Toss with the loosened walnut paste in a wide pan, off the heat, for 30 to 45 seconds. Plate immediately.

Variants

• With cream. A small amount of double cream (50 ml) folded in at the end, in place of some of the pasta water, makes a richer restaurant version.
• Without garlic. Some Ligurian families omit the garlic entirely.
• With more pine nuts. Pushing the pine-nut share higher takes the sauce towards a pesto-walnut hybrid; the Ligurians who do this consider it a separate dish.
• With ricotta. A spoonful of fresh ricotta stirred into the paste makes it paler, milder, and slightly softer. A modern Ligurian flourish.

The season

Walnut sauce is year-round in principle, but at its best in late autumn and winter, when the year's new walnut crop is being harvested (October–November in Italy) and the nuts have not yet started to develop the slight rancidity that walnut oil acquires through the summer. A pre-Christmas dinner in Liguria is a classic context. The wine pairing is a light Ligurian white — Pigato or Vermentino — or, in winter, a young rosato from the same region.

The pasta question

On pansoti and corzetti in Liguria, the dish is a regional speciality — the walnut sauce was developed to dress these specific Ligurian forms. On tagliatelle, the same sauce becomes a transplanted dish: it works, it tastes good, but it sits outside the regional tradition. A diner ordering walnut tagliatelle in Genoa might be politely steered toward the pansoti; outside Liguria, the tagliatelle version is acceptable and increasingly common on northern Italian menus that want a non-meat, non-tomato, non-cream sauce option.