Italian · Liguria · main

Pansoti con Salsa di Noci

Pansoti con Salsa di Noci reads salinity 5.0, umami 4.7 and nutty 4.6 on Palate's 0–10 flavor X-ray — a Italian · Liguria main, about 1 hr 45 min. Measured from the recipe itself: ingredients and technique.

The flavor X-ray — six axes, 0–10

• Umami & Savory — 5.7 / 10
• Sweet & Fruity — 2.8 / 10
• Sour & Bright — 3.0 / 10
• Bitter & Earthy — 2.7 / 10
• Rich & Fat — 5.8 / 10
• Aromatic & Spice — 3.3 / 10

The measured notes (of 18)

Salinity 5.0 · Umami 4.7 · Nutty 4.6 · Richness 4.2 · Herbaceous 2.9 · Allium 2.8 · Funk & Ferment 2.5 · Earthy 2.5 · Citrus 2.3 · Fruity 2.3 · Sourness 2.3 · Floral 1.8 · Bitterness 1.7 · Sweetness 1.7 · Warm Spice 1.3

What's in it (16)

• all-purpose flour — 400 g
• dry white wine — 60 g
• water — 140 g
• salt — 8 g
• preboggion — 500 g
• fresh ricotta — 200 g
• parmesan cheese — 100 g
• egg — 50 g
• marjoram leaves — 5 g
• walnut — 200 g
• pine nuts — 30 g
• white sandwich bread — 40 g
• garlic — 3 g
• extra virgin olive oil — 83 g
• salt — 5 g
• freshly ground black pepper — 3 g

Time & effort: about 1 hr 45 min (1 hr active) · effort: involved

Nutrition (per 100 g, engine-estimated): 215 kcal, 7.3 g protein, 11.6 g fat, 21.3 g carbs

Dietary: Vegetarian · Contains dairy · Contains egg — engine-derived; double-check anything allergy-critical.

How it's cooked (8 steps)

1. The dough here contains white wine rather than egg, which is a Ligurian signature and gives a pasta that is faintly sour and stays supple. Work the flour, the 8 g salt, the wine and the warm water into a firm dough and knead 10 minutes until smooth. Wrap and rest 45 minutes.
2. Preboggion is the point of pansoti: a foraged mixture of wild greens, different in every Ligurian valley but always bitter, grassy and varied. Buy it from a Ligurian market if you are lucky, or make an honest approximation from borage, dandelion, chervil, chard tops and wild chicory. A bag of spinach is not preboggion and produces a flat, sweet filling.
3. Blanch the greens 3 minutes in boiling salted water, refresh, squeeze absolutely dry and chop finely. Mix them with the prescinseua, half the Parmigiano, the egg, the marjoram and half the salt and pepper.
4. Make the walnut sauce in a mortar, which gives a rougher, better texture than a blender. Pound the garlic with a pinch of salt, then add the walnuts and pine nuts a handful at a time and grind them to a coarse paste, about 8 minutes of work. Work in the soaked squeezed bread, then dribble in the olive oil, and loosen with 3 to 4 tbsp of warm water until it is the thickness of double cream. Blanching and rubbing the skins off the walnuts first removes most of the bitterness if that bothers you.
5. Roll the dough thin, about 1 mm, and cut it into 8 cm squares. Put a teaspoon of filling on each, fold into a triangle and press the air out firmly, then fold the two base corners over each other. The name comes from panciuti, pot-bellied, so they should look plump.
6. Cook the pansoti in plenty of gently boiling salted water for 4 to 5 minutes, until they float and the sealed corners are tender. Lift them out with a spider directly into a warm bowl.
7. Loosen the walnut sauce with 3 tbsp of the pasta water, pour it over and turn the pansoti through it gently; the sauce is never heated over direct flame or it splits. Finish with the remaining Parmigiano.
8. Substitutions: ricotta drained overnight can stand in for the prescinseua.

Dishes with a similar flavor shape

• Pesto Genovese with Trofie — Italian
• Kuchmachi (Warm Offal in Walnut and Pomegranate) — Georgian
• Diots au Vin Blanc — French · Savoy
• Pesto alla Genovese — Italian
• Beef Braciole Roll-Ups with Marinara — Italian-American

Keep reading: what salinity, umami, nutty mean in the flavor lexicon · the world's cuisines, by flavor.

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Every number above is Palate's engine-measured estimate, computed from this recipe's ingredients and techniques — not human-tasted ratings or reviews.