Longing for Italy? Mamma Mia, you have never cooked pasta.

Foreign flavors, new worlds of pleasure. Travel and food – this is inseparable. In our series « Hungry to the World » we want to bridge the time with inspiring recipes until your next trip.

The longing moment for Sicily

Of course you have to be lucky to catch a quiet moment at the temples of agrigent. Great luck! Because according to the agrigent and in the valley of the temple Almost every traveler wants to go to Sicily. The eight temples from Greek times are also simply impressive. It is best to take a day to visit the remains of the ancient city of Akraga in peace for a day, maybe into the evening when the light gets warmer and the visitors become less. In Sicily, the late hours are the most beautiful anyway. But be careful! The archaeological complex closes at 7 p.m. It is gradually getting time for a typical Sicilian pasta.

The recipe for pasta with shrimp and pistachio pesto

The ingredients for pasta gamberi e pistacchio (four people): 1 clove of garlic, 35 g grana padano or other hard cheese (on one piece), 12 shrimp (without head, peeled, reduced), 200 g pistachio nuclei, 50 g basil, abrasion from 1 small organic lemon, salt, pepper from the mill, native olive oil extra, 400 g Sicilian busiate or fusilli

This is how it works: Prepare: peel and halve the garlic. Grate the cheese, wash the shrimp and pat dry. For the pesto Put the pistachios and grated cheese in a blender or a high mixer cup. Add basil, lemon zest, some salt and pepper. Pour 100 ml of water and 3 -4 tablespoons of olive oil and puree everything until a creamy consistency is created.

Then cook the noodles a little firmer in plenty of boiling salted water.

Carefully fry the shrimp in a pan in 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil. Deglaze pasta cooking water with a trowel and reduce the heat to the smallest level.

Put the pasta directly into the pan with a foam spoon out of the pasta cooking water, drizzle the pesto over it and mix everything well.

Let the sauce boil down a little, then mix in some olive oil and taste everything again with salt and pepper. If the sauce is too thick, regulate with a little pasta cooking water.

Sprinkle everything with finely chopped pistachios for the eye.

By the way: This combination may sound unusual outside of southern Italy. But especially on Sicily, Where the pistachios to be grown, you connect with such a dish « Mare e Monti » – the sea and the mountains.

The recipe comes from the book: Domenico Gentile: Il Mondo della Pasta: The whole world of Italian pasta forms, its sauces and recipes. ZS, 260 pages, 34 euros