What Is Pesto Pantesco?

Pesto Pantesco is a style of pesto made on the Italian island of Pantelleria. The recipe typically includes capers, tomatoes, and almonds. It has a tangy, slightly spicy flavour and is often used as a sauce for fish dishes.

Hailing from the tiny, windswept island of Pantelleria around 60 miles south-west of Sicily, Pesto Pantesco is best known for utilising the abundance of capers whose bushes thrive on its volcanic terrain. These pretty plants produce little edible flower buds that are packed in salt for up to two months to cure and remove their excessive bitterness.

While Pesto Pantesco's recipe resembles traditional pesto, its inclusion of capers shows how people have always adapted the basic recipe to use the freshest and most abundant ingredients in the countryside around them.

Caper pesto recipe

* Alternatively, you could use a combination of basil, parsley, mint, or oregano.

How to make caper pesto

Most recipes call for you to reach for your food processor. While that's undeniably a convenient and speedy way to make pesto, we guarantee your sauce will taste a whole lot better if you use a pestle and mortar.

With a paring knife, make a small cross on the side of each tomato and blanch them in boiling water for 30-40 seconds. Transfer to a bowl of cold water, peel, and discard the skins. Quarter the tomatoes and discard the seeds. Blot the tomatoes dry with a sheet of kitchen roll and roughly chop.

Peel the garlic clove and add it to the mortar with a generous pinch of sea salt flakes. With your pestle, break down the garlic (using the salt as an abrasive) by bashing, stirring, or using whatever technique works for you.

Add the almonds, continue to pound, and stir into a smooth paste.

Add the tomatoes, capers, basil, and optional chilli flakes and work the sauce for another minute before slowly streaming in the oil.

Refrigerate and use within 3 days, or freeze for up to a month.

For maximum authenticity, serve your Pantesco pesto with al dente linguine pasta.