Photos

Captured past sunday close to our home in the eastern Liguria, in Porto Venere, a small and wonderful village in the Poets' Gulf.
The image was took outside a new shop, "La bottega del pesto" (The pesto market).

Pesto is a sauce originating in Genoa in the Liguria region of northern Italy and traditionally consists of crushed garlic, basil, and pine nuts blended with olive oil, Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano and Pecorino (cheese made from sheep's milk).
The name is the contracted past participle of the Genoese word pestâ, which means to pound, to crush, in reference to the original method of preparation, with marble mortar and wooden pestle.
However, the ingredients in a traditionally made pesto are not "pounded" but "ground" with a circular motion of the pestle in the mortar.
The first mention of recipe for pesto as it is known today, is from the book La Cuciniera Genovese written in 1863 by Giovanni Battista Ratto.

Pesto is commonly used on pasta, traditionally with Mandilli de Sæa (Genovese dialect - literally "silk handkerchiefs"), trofie or trenette. Potatoes and little green beans are also traditionally added to the dish, boiled in the same pot in which the pasta has been cooked.
It is sometimes used in minestrone.