Pantry-Simple Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto
Sicily’s pesto rosso is bright, bold and easily made from pantry basics.
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Basil-rich pesto Genovese may be the pesto Americans know best, but there’s an entire family of similarly simple Italian sauces, all easy ways to add bold, fresh flavor to a meal. And not all of them require bushels of fresh herbs.
After all, pesto is defined not by its ingredients, but by how it is made—the word itself is derived from “pestare,” which simply means to pound, traditionally with a mortar and pestle.
Many rich, full-flavored pestos can be made with nothing more than a handful of pantry staples plucked from the cupboard. For example, Sicily’s vibrant pesto rosso, a bright yet deeply savory sauce made from sun-dried tomatoes.
In this version of pesto rosso, just a few high-impact ingredients yield a complex, layered sauce that is both bright and rich. Tangy sun-dried tomatoes are blended with the vegetal sweetness of jarred roasted red peppers, salty-savory pecorino Romano cheese and pungent garlic, while pine nuts (or almonds) and olive oil lend richness and body.
For extra speed, we toss everything straight into the food processor (the modern stand-in for the traditional mortar and pestle), blitzing them into a sauce while the noodles cook. Presto, pesto.
Shaula Clark
Shaula Clark is a Boston-based writer and editor. Her six-year stint as managing editor of Milk Street’s magazine absolutely leveled up her cooking game—though her trusty canine sous chef, Roxie the Schipperke, remains unimpressed unless cheese is involved. In the kitchen, she likes to get weird, with experiments yielding both great success (absinthe sorbet) and dismal failure (liquid smoke-infused rice paper “bacon”). Thanks to a terrifyingly productive tomato garden, Milk Street’s salmorejo—a luscious Andalusian tomato soup—has become a particular favorite recipe. She is, for the record, also staunchly pro-ketchup. Disagreements over her stance on condiments may be sent to .
