Italian Penne with Sicilian Pesto | Penne con Pesto alla Siciliana
Pesto alla Siciliana is the pink sauce of the Sicilian kitchen, and what makes it Sicilian is not the tomato or the basil but the ricotta. Sheep ricotta is beaten into a pounded paste of almonds, garlic and basil until the whole thing turns the colour of coral, and raw tomato is folded through at the end. Nothing is cooked. The heat of the drained penne is the only heat the sauce ever meets.
It is worth saying what this is not. It is not pesto alla trapanese, which belongs to the west of the island and carries no cheese beyond grated pecorino. Pesto alla Siciliana is softer and more domestic, built around a fresh cheese that leaves the dairy in the morning and is gone by evening. Trapanese is a sailors sauce. This one is a family sauce.
Penne rigate are the right shape for it. The ridges carry a cream that is thick but loose, and the open tube fills with the tomato pulp a mortar leaves behind, so each piece arrives with sauce outside and sauce inside. Smooth pasta sheds a ricotta sauce almost at once. The method below depends entirely on three things: the tomatoes, the ricotta and the olive oil.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 30 minutes. Cook: 12 minutes. Total: about 45 minutes. Difficulty: easy. Course: primo piatto. Region: Sicily.
The Story
Every element of this sauce arrived in Sicily at a different moment, and the dish is a record of those arrivals. The almond came with the Arabs in the ninth century and rooted itself around Agrigento and Noto, in varieties the rest of Italy has never heard of. Basil and garlic were already there. The tomato came last, from the Americas by way of Spain, and took until the eighteenth century to be trusted as food. Ricotta is the oldest of all, the by product of a sheep dairy economy that predates them.
What pulled them together was the ricotta. Sicilian sheep ricotta is made in the morning from the whey left over from pecorino, and it has a sweetness and a fine grain that mainland cow ricotta does not. It also has a very short life. A dairy in the Madonie or the Iblei made far more than could be sold as cannoli filling, and the household answer was to beat the surplus into whatever the garden was producing: tomatoes, basil and the last of the almonds.
It stayed a home dish for a long time, which is why it carries a vague name rather than a town. Pesto alla trapanese is tied to Trapani and argued about street by street. Pesto alla Siciliana belongs to no single place, turns up in Palermo cookbooks and Catania kitchens with different nut ratios and different cheeses, and has only reached restaurant menus in the last thirty years. That vagueness is what a domestic recipe looks like before anyone writes it down.
Ingredients
For the pesto
Ripe datterino or piccadilly tomatoes, 1 lb (450 g)
Blanched almonds, 3/4 cup (100 g)
Fresh sheep ricotta, drained, 3/4 cup (180 g)
Basil leaves, 1 packed cup (25 g)
Garlic clove, small, 1
Pecorino Siciliano, finely grated, 1/2 cup (50 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
Crushed red pepper flakes, 1 small pinch
For the pasta
Bronze cut penne rigate, 14 oz (400 g)
Water, 5 qt (4.7 L)
Coarse sea salt, 2 tbsp (35 g)
For finishing
Toasted almonds, roughly crushed, 2 tbsp, reserved from the 3/4 cup above
Ricotta salata, shaved, 1 oz (30 g)
Small basil leaves, 12
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Step 1
Peel and seed the tomatoes. Score a shallow cross in the base of each tomato, drop them into boiling water for 20 seconds and move them into iced water. The skins slip off. Halve them, scrape out the seeds and the gel around them, and drain the flesh in a sieve for 10 minutes. This step decides whether the pesto clings to the penne or slides off. Skins curl into hard fragments in a cold sauce and the seed gel is pure water.
Step 2
Toast the almonds. Spread the almonds on a tray and give them 8 to 10 minutes in a 325°F (165°C) oven, shaking once, until they smell sweet and have taken the faintest colour. Cool them completely before they go near the mortar: a warm nut releases its oil too readily and turns to paste instead of gravel. Set aside 2 tablespoons for the garnish.
Step 3
Pound the base. Put the garlic with a pinch of coarse salt in a mortar and work it to a smooth cream on its own. Add the basil in two or three handfuls, pressing and turning rather than hammering, until it collapses into a dark green paste. Add the cooled almonds and pound them to a coarse rubble, not a flour: you want fragments you can still feel on the tongue.
Step 4
Fold in the tomato and ricotta. Add the drained tomato flesh to the mortar and crush it in briefly, leaving visible pieces. Move everything to a bowl, add the ricotta and the pecorino, and work it with a spatula, folding the oil in slowly. It should turn pale coral and hold soft peaks. Season with salt and chilli and leave it at room temperature. Never refrigerate it before serving: cold ricotta seizes and the sauce goes chalky.
Step 5
Set and salt the water. Bring 5 quarts (4.7 L) to a rolling boil in the widest pot you have and add 2 tablespoons (35 g) of coarse salt, roughly the salinity of a light broth. This sauce contains no cooked salt, so every gram the pasta carries comes from this pot. Underseason here and no amount of pecorino will fix it. Taste the water before the pasta goes in.
Step 6
Cook the penne al dente. Drop them in, stir for the first 30 seconds so they do not settle, and boil 1 minute short of the packet time. Bite one: the wall should give cleanly with a thin pale core in the cut edge. Bronze cut penne cloud the water heavily, which is what you want. Ladle out 1 1/2 cups (360 ml) and keep it hot before you drain anything.
Step 7
Bring sauce and pasta together off the heat. Loosen the pesto in a wide warmed bowl with about 1/3 cup (80 ml) of pasta water, stirring until it flows like thick cream. Drain the penne, tip them straight in and toss hard for a full minute, adding more water a spoonful at a time. No pan goes on the stove. The pasta carries all the heat the sauce is allowed to meet, and the tossing emulsifies oil, ricotta and starch into one glossy coating.
Plating
Serve in warm shallow bowls rather than flat plates, and warm them gently: crockery from a hot cupboard keeps cooking the ricotta and turns the sauce grainy in front of the diner. Around 120°F (50°C) is right, warm to the hand and no more. Cold plates are worse, because a ricotta emulsion tightens below body temperature.
Lift the penne with tongs rather than pouring them, so the pieces stack loosely instead of settling into a flat disc. Spoon any sauce left in the bowl over the top. Shave the ricotta salata over each portion, scatter the reserved crushed almonds, and add the basil leaves whole, since a torn leaf blackens within a minute against the warm sauce.
Finish with a thread of raw olive oil and a turn of black pepper. Do not put more grated pecorino on the table: there is cheese in the sauce and cheese on top, and a third layer flattens the tomato into one salty note. Serve at once, never held.
Professional Technique
The governing technique is the complete absence of applied heat. Ricotta is a whey cheese whose proteins were already denatured once during production. Take them past roughly 150°F (65°C) a second time and they contract and expel water, which is the grainy, weeping sauce most failed versions produce. The heat retained by drained pasta sits under that threshold and falls as you toss, which is why the bowl replaces the pan.
The mortar is the second technique, and it is not nostalgia. A blade blender cuts almonds into uniform powder and drives air and heat into the basil, oxidising it to khaki within minutes. A mortar crushes rather than cuts: it ruptures the almond unevenly, releasing oil from some fragments while leaving others intact, and bruises the basil without whipping it. The result is smooth and granular at once, which a blender cannot produce.
The third is the order in which fat and water meet. Olive oil, ricotta fat and starchy pasta water will not emulsify if you simply combine them. The oil goes into the ricotta and cheese first, slowly, while the mixture is thick enough to shear it into droplets. Only then does the pasta water come in, thinning an emulsion that already exists rather than trying to create one. Reverse that order and oil pools on a watery pink liquid.
Texture and Moisture Control
Three sources of water compete here and only one is useful. Tomato gel is pure dilution, which is why it is scraped out at the start. Whey weeping from the ricotta is the second, and draining the cheese in a sieve removes most of it. The third is the pasta water, and that one is the tool: it carries dissolved starch, it is already salted, and it thins the sauce without weakening it.
Starch concentration matters more than volume. Five quarts for 14 ounces of pasta is a deliberately tight ratio, cloudy enough to bind but not gluey. Bronze cut penne release far more starch than a smooth industrial extrusion. Keep the reserved water hot: a splash of cooling water chills the emulsion and undoes the gloss.
Penne rigate have an interior as well as an exterior and the two take sauce at different rates. The ridged wall grabs the cream on contact, while the tube fills only if the sauce is loose enough to run into it, and only during the vigorous part of the tossing. That is why you toss hard for a full minute rather than fold. The dish tightens as it stands, so leave it one spoonful wetter than looks right.
Professional Mise en Place
This is a fast dish with a slow preparation, and everything except the pasta is done in advance. The pesto sits at room temperature for a couple of hours without harm, so organise the service around the pot of water.
Equipment and tools
Marble or granite mortar with a wooden pestle
Wide stockpot, at least 6 quarts
Fine mesh sieve for tomato flesh and ricotta
Large warmed mixing bowl, wider than it is deep
Tongs, vegetable peeler, small ladle for pasta water
Prepared ahead
Ricotta drained in a sieve, refrigerated, up to 1 day
Almonds toasted, garnish portion set aside, on the day
Tomatoes peeled, seeded and drained, up to 4 hours ahead
Pecorino grated and ricotta salata shaved, held cold
Pesto finished up to 2 hours ahead, at room temperature, never chilled
Service setup
Pot at a rolling boil and salted, tasted before the pasta goes in
Reserved pasta water held hot beside the mixing bowl
Mixing bowl warmed and dried, pesto already loosened inside it
Serving bowls warmed to hand temperature only
Basil picked small and whole, under a damp cloth
Chef Tips
Buy the ricotta from somewhere that sells out of it. Sheep ricotta is best within a day of being made, and the vacuum packed tubs with a two week date are a different product, stabilised and slightly sour. If only cow ricotta is available, drain it harder and add a tablespoon more pecorino.
Many households in Palermo make this with walnuts instead of almonds and it is worth trying once. Walnut gives a darker, more resinous sauce that takes a heavier hand with the garlic. Toast them 6 minutes only, because walnut oil turns rancid tasting much faster than almond oil.
Taste the pesto twice, when you finish it and again after twenty minutes. Garlic and chilli keep developing in a raw sauce, and a mixture that was gentle when you put the spatula down can be sharp by the time the pasta is ready. Correct with ricotta or a little more oil, never with sugar.
If your tomatoes are pale or out of season, do not reach for tomato paste. Halve them, salt them lightly and leave them cut side up in a 250°F (120°C) oven for 40 minutes to drive off water, then cool and use as written.
Common Mistakes
Finishing the pasta in a hot pan. It is the reflex of every cook trained on tomato sauces and it ruins this one. The ricotta proteins tighten, the emulsion breaks and the sauce turns grainy. The toss happens in a bowl, off the stove, with no burner lit.
Leaving the tomato skins and seeds in. Skins curl into tough scraps that never soften in an uncooked sauce, and the seed gel is water that thins everything. Twenty seconds in boiling water and ten minutes in a sieve solves both.
Making it in a blender. Blades pulverise the almonds to flour and whip air through the basil, which oxidises to a dull khaki. You lose the coarse fragments that give the dish its texture. Pound in a mortar, or pulse the nuts alone and fold the rest by hand.
Chilling the finished pesto. Cold seizes the fat in the ricotta and the olive oil, and the sauce goes chalky and refuses to coat the pasta. Hold it at room temperature, and if it has been refrigerated give it thirty minutes out and a hard stir.
Underseasoning the pasta water. No salt is cooked into this sauce, so the pasta arrives with only what it took from the pot. Two tablespoons of coarse salt in five quarts is the floor, and the water should taste clearly seasoned.
Wine Pairing
Faro DOC: The red of the hills above Messina, rare and pale and built on nerello mascalese. Its tannin is fine enough not to clash with raw tomato acidity, the trap almost every other red falls into here, and its red cherry and dried herb aromatics sit beside the basil. Serve it at around 57°F (14°C), cooler than a red usually goes.
Fiano di Avellino DOCG: A Campanian white with real weight, waxy in texture and carrying a distinct toasted hazelnut note as it opens. That nuttiness runs alongside the pounded almonds instead of competing with them, and there is enough body to meet the fat of the sheep ricotta. Its acidity is moderate rather than sharp, which suits a sauce already acidic from the tomato.
Offida Pecorino DOCG: From the Marche, and the most cutting white here. High natural acidity and a firm, almost saline finish scrape the ricotta fat off the palate between forkfuls, which matters in a dish that coats the mouth this thoroughly. An anise and white flower edge picks up the basil and makes the plate smell greener than it looks.
Locorotondo DOC: The light verdeca based white of the Valle d Itria, low in alcohol and almost transparent. Its virtue here is restraint: it refreshes without adding a fifth flavour to a sauce that already carries nut, cheese, tomato and basil. Pour it cold on a hot day.
Salice Salentino DOC: Negroamaro from Puglia, for anyone who wants a fuller red. It brings dark plum fruit and a bitter finish that echoes toasted almond skins. Choose a young bottling without heavy oak, since barrel vanilla fights fresh tomato badly, and serve it below room temperature.
Storage & Reheating
The pesto keeps refrigerated in an airtight jar, under a film of olive oil, for 2 days. Not longer: raw garlic sharpens hour by hour in an acid medium, the basil darkens and the ricotta sours. Bring it back to room temperature for 30 minutes and stir it hard, because it sets firm and looks broken until you work it.
Do not freeze the finished sauce. Ricotta separates irreversibly on thawing and the tomato weeps, leaving a watery pink liquid with grain in it. To get ahead by weeks, freeze the pounded almond, garlic and basil base alone, then fold in fresh tomato and ricotta on the day.
Dressed pasta does not reheat well, but leftovers survive a day covered in the refrigerator. Never use a microwave or a hot pan, both of which finish the job of splitting the ricotta. Let the portion stand at room temperature for 20 minutes, add a tablespoon of hot water and toss it in a warm bowl off the heat. Better still, eat it cold the next day as a pasta salad, which in Sicily is entirely normal.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings:
Calories: 760 kcal
Total Fat: 40 g
Saturated Fat: 9 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 29 g
Cholesterol: 32 mg
Sodium: 690 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 79 g
Fiber: 6 g
Total Sugars: 7 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 25 g
Lactose: 2.6 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin E, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, vitamin C, lycopene
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the cooking water is poured away, and the final sodium depends mainly on how salty the pecorino and ricotta salata are.
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