Paccheri with Pistachio Pesto, Cheese and Basil

Pistachio pesto

Paccheri has a somewhat unusual shape. It is less popular here than penne, tortiglioni and even cannelloni, which it closely resembles, only much wider. This pasta is served with fairly thin sauces, or stuffed and baked. Paccheri with pistachio pesto is a great pairing of pasta and sauce. For the sauce you need pistachios in the shell. Roasted ones are fine, but not salted. You also need fresh green basil.

The sauce is not cooked. All the ingredients are simply ground in a blender. Pistachio pesto differs from the classic one mainly in using pistachios instead of pine nuts, and otherwise the two versions are practically the same.

1. Shell the pistachios: remove the shells and put the nuts in a deep bowl. To get rid of the remains of the light brown skin that covers the green kernels inside the shell, I pour boiling water from a kettle over them for 4-5 mins. Then I cool them with cold water. After that the pistachios peel easily with your fingers, leaving only the bright green heart that the paccheri sauce is made from.

   

2. Grind the base of the sauce: put the green basil leaves, the peeled pistachios, 1-2 peeled garlic cloves and 50 g of grated pecorino or Parmesan in a blender. Add a little salt and black pepper and grind until you get crumbs.

   

3. Add 3 tbsp of olive oil, turn the blender on again and grind until the mixture is smooth. Season the pistachio pesto with more salt or black pepper to taste. If the sauce is too thick or sticky, add a little more olive oil. In the end the pesto should have a consistency like thick honey.

   

Paccheri

4. Cook the pasta: in a pot, bring 2 l of water with 14 g of salt to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook for the time given on the package. During cooking the pasta flattens a little and loses its tube shape, which is exactly as it should be. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander.

5. Mix the pasta with the sauce: transfer the paccheri to a bowl, add the pistachio pesto and mix thoroughly so the sauce coats the pasta completely and gets inside. The pasta tubes are very wide and the sauce penetrates them easily.

   

Serving

6. Put the pasta on plates. You can garnish it with a sprig of basil or sprinkle on a few shelled pistachios. Serve the pasta while it is hot.

   

   Very often, to make such dishes more filling, people add fried chicken slices or thinly sliced prosciutto, laying them on top of the pasta when serving. To my taste, though, the sauce alone is enough.