Peter Aitken > wrote:

> "sarah bennett" > wrote
> >
> > well, doesn't pesto literally mean anything (food) ground into a paste
> > with a pestle?
>
> Perhaps, but that's irrelevant. In the culinary world it means a paste made
> from basil, cheese, etc.

There is more than one kind of pesto; the genovese variant is just the
best known and most widely used. Another very popular kind is pesto
rosso, which is based on sun-dried tomatoes and is likely to be of
southern Italian origin where they are semi-popular. It appears to be
unrelated to pesto genovese, but some recipes do include basil at least.
Some contain peppers. I've seen commercial pesto rosso in "alimentari"
and supermarkets in Italy and even here in Germany it can be found in
nearly every supermarket, it seems.

Here is a recipe from Patricia Wells's _Trattoria_.


Victor

Red Pesto Sauce
Pesto rosso

10 sun-dried tomatoes
1 plump fresh garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon crushed red peppers (hot red pepper flakes), or to taste
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
About 20 salt-cured black olives, such as Italian Gaeta or French Nyons
olives, stoned
2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary leaves

In the bowl of a food processor, combine all the ingredients and process
until the sauce is lightly emulsified but still quite coarse and almost
chunky. (You do not want a smooth sauce.) The sauce can be stored in
the refrigerator for up to 1 month. If you do so, first cover the pesto
with a film of olive oil.

Yield: 4 fl oz (125 ml) sauce