Garlic Pesto
Production Area: Val Pentemina
Curiosities: Add to garlic oil and grated cheese obtained in the past from local mature cheese that each family produced for the self-consumption.
Mix everything with cream: in the past, milk skin was used (the skin surfacing after one night).
A more recent recipe includes pine nuts and a lower quantity of garlic, more acceptable for our modern palate.
It is a sauce traditionally going with polenta. It is also very good with penne, quarantina potatoes, and ravioli filled with herbs. Its origin is still uncertain: since it is prepared with the same ingredients of pesto, it could be born as a pesto without basil, given the lack of the latter in the valley for most of the year. It could also be a sort of Provençal "aioli", similar to the sauces based on garlic of Mediterranean Spain (alioli) and Greece (skordhalià). In gastronomy, this sauce can be characterized by the presence of different ingredients, like the lack of pine nuts or the different quantity of garlic. Difficult to find today, it is almost exclusively prepared in Pentema, a small country hamlet of Val Trebbia, famous for its rural history museum and its Christmas Crib.
Features: Sauce based on garlic, creamy and with a white-ivory color. Rather sweet taste, where garlic is balanced with pine nuts.
Preparation: Ingredients: 2-3 garlic cloves, two pine nut handful, 50g Grana cheese, two cream spoonful, 30ml oil, salt.
Crush the garlic in the mortar together with pine nuts. Add the grated cheese and a pinch of salt. Pour the oil and mix everything with cream. Before serving, slightly dilute with water using the cooking water of pasta. Remember that if you want to use more garlic, you will obtain a sauce with a stronger taste: therefore, it is necessary to add more of the other ingredients in proportion. If you want, you can use the mixer instead of the mortar.
