Bicoloured Spaghetti (Pesto & Pomodoro)

Half pesto, half tomato. A pasta for the undecided. This was my mum’s go-to lunch dish. Quick, satisfying and never boring. She’d mix one half of the spaghetti with pesto, the other with tomato sauce, and serve them side by side on the same plate: never mixed until the very last minute. It felt like two pastas in one. I used to think it was her invention. Only much later did I find out it has a name: pasta portofino.

The name likely comes from the Ligurian coast, where