Basil, and everything built around it

Ligurian cooking was born where there was nothing: little land, small fields, and sailors who were away for months. The result is a cuisine of herbs, vegetables and preserves, with fish present but not dominant. It is the only Italian regional cuisine whose most famous dish is a raw sauce.

Pesto

Basil, pine nuts, garlic, parmesan, pecorino, oil, salt. It is not cooked but pounded in a mortar, and the best basil is that of Pra, grown above Genoa in greenhouses facing the sea. It goes with trofie or trenette, with potatoes and green beans in the pot. Made in a blender it heats the leaves and turns bitter: those who care still use marble and wood.

Focaccia and farinata

Genoese focaccia is a centimetre thick, oily and salted, with dimples where the oil collects: you buy it by weight and eat it walking, even at breakfast, even dipped in a cappuccino. The focaccia of Recco is another thing entirely: two paper-thin sheets with fresh cheese between them. Farinata is made of chickpeas, baked in copper pans in a wood oven, and costs almost nothing.

The sea and the land

The anchovies of Monterosso are salted, squid are stuffed, oily fish is fried. From the land come the artichokes of Albenga, the lemons of the Gulf of Poets, and taggiasca olives, small and sweet, which make the most delicate oil in Italy. Then there is cima, a stuffed pocket of veal, and rabbit Ligurian style with taggiasca olives.

To drink

The whites of the Cinque Terre are made on the terraces, by hand, and are priced accordingly: Sciacchetra, sweet and made from dried grapes, is the rarest. Vermentino and Pigato from the west are easier to find and go with fish. Rossese di Dolceacqua is the only serious red in the region.