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pici all'etrusca

etruscan pici

All’Etrusca is pure pesto. Some of this, some of that, taste, adjust and blend. It's also heavy on fresh herbs, so needs a little planning and probably a special trip to the supermarket to get fresh basil, parsley and mint. If you’ve read the introduction to ‘Pesto’, you’ll also recognise that this dish has quite a bit of heritage in it, in the form of the ‘green’ sauces from the renaissance. I think it’s wonderful that a sauce like this still survives today, even though it’s not that well known. 


Nowadays you’re most likely to find it in central and southern Tuscany, and almost always accompanied by pici, though I’ve found that some other ‘chewy’ pasta shapes like orecchiette can work equally well.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)

  • chill blender bowl and blade

  • boil 1 egg per person

  • allow eggs to cool

  • separate yolks, crush whites

  • crush garlic

  • grate the pecorino

  • pick herbs

  • blend and adjust flavour

  • boil pasta

  • combine with pesto

etruscan pici

INGREDIENTS

FOR FOUR PEOPLE

  • large handful basil

  • large handful parsley

  • 3-4 leaves fresh mint

  • garlic

  • 1 egg per person

  • 6-8 tblspns EVO

  • 100g pecorino 


 PASTA

400g dry/fresh pici

/ bucatini / spaghettoni


MANTECATURA (?)

none, simply combine

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METHOD

Chill the blender bowl and blade, grate the cheese, crush the garlic and pick the herbs. Hard-boil 1 egg per person. Remove the shells and allow them to cool completely. When they’re cold, hold remove the yolks and set them aside. Break up the whites, using a fork. Crush the garlic and set aside. In a similar way to making a pesto, use a blender to pulse blend about half all the ingredients. Keep tasting as you blend and don’t spare the oil - you need to arrive at a pretty liquid, oily mix as the egg will tend to dry things up. Add one of the yolks just before you stop blending. Taste again and adjust salt / pepper, then set the pesto aside.

Boil the pasta and combine it with the pesto, without using any pasta water. If your combined pasta is too dry, add a drizzle of EVO. This is quite an oily, not a starchy sauce. Crumble egg yolk on each portion, together with more black or pink pepper and pecorino.

NUTRITION per serving

  • KCAL: we're working on it!

  • Fat (g): TBC

  • Sat Fat (g): TBC

  • Carb (g): TBC

  • Sug (g): TBC

  • Fibre(g): TBC

  • Prot (g): TBC

  • Salt (g): TBC

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