Linguini with Mussel Ragù

Last summer at a small restaurant on the beach of Bogliasco (tables straight on the beach, noise of the waves as background music and feet in the sand) a friend of mine, regular at that place, ordered for me. What arrived on the table, to my great surprise, was a steamy plate of linguini with mussel ragù! This is not a common dish, and it reminded me that recipe I had read just few days before in an ancient and famous Ligurian cookbook “La cucina di strettissimo magro” (literally : cuisine for the sacrifice days). It was written by a priest, Father Gaspare delle Piane, in the middle of the 19th century, to help housewives preparing tasting dishes also during sacrifice days, when according to Catholic Church eating meat and any animal derivate was strictly forbidden. The unusual and surprising ingredient of this sauce, which is also very common along the cookbook are pine nuts. Crushed roughly in the mortar and diluted with cold water, in fact, they create a cream similar to milk – called precisely “pine nut milk” – which gives the sauce creaminess (pine nuts are rich in fats) and crunchiness (due to the remaining pieces of pine nuts) .