The recipe
Ingredients
- 180 g fusilli
- 60 g walnut kernels
- 15 g white bread without crusts
- 50 ml milk
- 15 g Parmesan, finely grated
- ¼ small garlic clove
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 small pinch dried marjoram, salt and pepper
Method
- Heat salted water for the fusilli. Dice the bread and soak it in all the milk for about 5 minutes until soft throughout.
- Check the walnuts for shell fragments. Roughly chop 10 g and reserve for sprinkling. Peel the garlic and finely grate the Parmesan.
- Cook the fusilli al dente according to the packet. Meanwhile, blend the remaining 50 g walnuts, bread with its milk, 10 g Parmesan, garlic, olive oil and marjoram in a small chopper to a fine, lightly grainy cream.
- Reserve a cup of cooking water. In a large bowl, stir the walnut cream smooth with an initial 3 tbsp of hot cooking water.
- Drain the fusilli and immediately fold them in. Add further cooking water by the tablespoon until the sauce clings smoothly to the pasta.
- Season with salt and pepper and divide between two plates. Sprinkle with the reserved 10 g walnuts and remaining 5 g Parmesan, then serve immediately.
Prepare the walnut kernels and bread
Weigh 60 grams of shelled walnut kernels, rather than nuts still in their shells. Check for small shell fragments. In this quick version, the fine brown skins remain on the kernels and contribute their flavour to the sauce. Use kernels that smell fresh and pleasant; garlic and cheese cannot improve rancid or musty nuts. Roughly chop ten grams of the kernels and reserve them to scatter over the plates later.
The bread provides body. Use 15 grams of white bread without crusts, preferably day-old if available, but without signs of spoilage. Cut it small and soften it in 50 millilitres of milk for five minutes. The entire mixture goes into the chopper; nothing is squeezed out. Very dry bread may need longer. Press a piece with a fork to check that it is soft throughout. This is our own small sauce quantity for dried pasta, rather than a complete method for making filled Ligurian pasta.
Adjust the final consistency with the pasta
Blend the remaining 50 grams of walnuts with the bread, milk, ten grams of Parmesan, oil, a little garlic and a small pinch of marjoram. A quarter of a clove is deliberately restrained because raw garlic stands out strongly. A small chopper catches this quantity more effectively than a very large container. Work in short pulses and scrape down sticking pieces only with the appliance switched off. Fine nut particles can remain, but large hard pieces should not dominate the sauce.
In a large bowl, stir the finished mixture with an initial three tablespoons of hot cooking water, then add the al dente fusilli. The sauce thickens as you combine it, so keep further water ready to add by the tablespoon. There is no need for vigorous boiling or frying: hot pasta and cooking water warm the prepared sauce. The finished pasta should have a creamy coating rather than stick together in a solid nut mixture. Only then adjust salt and pepper, scatter over the reserved kernels and remaining Parmesan, and eat immediately.