We’re spending some time exploring Cervo, Italy, a small hilltop town located in Liguria.  Cervo sits along the Italian Riviera in the province of Imperio, about 70 km from the French border with Italy. Cervo combines sea, history and wonderful food!

Cervo has stunning sea views, and well preserved medieval architecture.  Along the water, there are a number of beaches were you can lounge in the sun all day.  Cross the street and you can wander up through the winding streets to discover some unique local shops and a number of restaurants.  Towards the top is the Church of Saint John the Baptist, a beautiful structure surrounded by a courtyard and amazing sea views.

Cervo has a long history.  It was initially inhabited by the Ligurians and later became part of the Roman empire and was once a peaceful fishing village.  Though it thrives on tourism today, it is usually far less busy than the nearby more touristic seafront villages, but just as beautiful.

While in Cervo, we decided to re-create troife al pesto, a traditional pasta from this region.  Troife is a short, twisted pasta common in the Liguarian region of Italy.  The highlight of the dish is the pesto. Liguria is also the birth place of pesto, meaning this is one the best places to find delicious pesto made from local ingredients. The addition of green beans and potatoes to this dish makes it a hearty and filling meal.

Making this pasta only requires a few basic ingredients.  First off, the troife pasta, which can be found in many of the supermarkets in this area.  You’ll also need potatoes and fresh green beans.  Most importantly, you need good quality pesto.  Of course, you can make the pesto yourself, but given that we are in the area with the world’s best pesto, we opted to buy some from a local shop in the old town that specializes in local goods, we’ll share the details of the shop in the description below.  Finally, you’ll want some parmesan reggiano to garnish the pasta with.

Begin by bringing a pot of water to a boil, then add your potatoes.  Some recipes call for cooking the potatoes, the pasta and the green beans all at once.  But given the difference in cooking times and the size of the pot we have available, we opted to do them separately.  Boil your potatoes until you can easily peirce them with a knife, then remove them and allow them to cool.  Since the potatoes we’re using have a very thin skin, we decided not to peel them.  However, if you use a potato with a thicker skin, you’ll probably want to peel them.  Once the potatoes have cooled, chop them into bite sized pieces.

At this point, our cooking water has depleted quite a bit, so I’m adding more before continuing.  When the water is back to a boil, add the green beans and cook for about 3 minutes, then remove them.  Finally, add your pasta.  Cook your pasta until al dente, about 7-9 minutes for most varieties of troife pasta.  Finally, drain your pasta.  Ideally, you would save some of the cookinig water to add in when you mix it all together, but unfortunately i forgot to do this.  It still turned out ok though.

Toss your cooked pasta, chopped potatoes and green beans together with the pesto.  You do not want to do this on the heat, because heating the pesto too much will change its flavor.  Add a bit of the cooking water if you remembered to reserve it.  Finally, serve up your troife al pesto with some freshly grated parmeseano reggiano, and ideally a nice liguarian wine and enjoy!