Weeknight pasta may not sound romantic, but a Sicilian no-cook pesto provides enough homemade personal touch to save Valentine’s Day. And dinner will be ready in the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta.
This recipe from our book “Tuesday Nights Mediterranean,” which features weeknight-friendly meals from the region, calls for just five ingredients to create a sauce that requires only a blender and minimal knife work.
Though the most common pesto is the classic Genovese combination of basil and Parmesan, we loved a version we found in Sicily that also includes two of the island’s premier products, pistachios and ricotta. We blend them all with chives, for additional freshness, while the pasta cooks until al dente. Incorporating a bit of the starchy pasta water helps thin the sauce and make it cling to the noodles.
There’s no need to grate the Parmesan, the nuttiness of which complements the pistachios. Simply cut it into chunks and toss the pieces into the blender. The pesto is good on a wide variety of pasta shapes, but the hollow centers and surface ridges of rigatoni do a particularly good job of gripping the rich, creamy sauce.