Divella Pesto alla Genovese – Basil Sauce

A basil pasta dish, even when the fridge is empty

You get home late and there is only a packet of pasta in the cupboard. A spoonful of this pesto alla genovese, a ladle of cooking water, and your plate smells of basil by the time the pasta has cooked.

What you will taste

• Texture: dense, with small pieces that cling to the pasta.
• Aromas: herbaceous, a clear basil.
• Taste: round, a vegetal attack and a base of slightly bittersweet oil.

How to use it

• On trofie or linguine, loosened with a little cooking water so that it does not dry out.
• A spoonful in a minestrone, at the end of cooking, or spread on a white pizza.
• With a burrata and cherry tomatoes, or spread on crostini with a drizzle of olive oil.

Where it comes from

Pesto alla genovese is the basil sauce of Genoa and Liguria. This one is signed Divella, a house founded in 1890 in Rutigliano, in Apulia, first a miller then a pasta maker, and still run by the Divella family.