Pasta with Sicilian almond and mint pesto

Sicily has a longer food heritage than Italy. In the classical period, the island was very rich, and spoke Greek rather than Latin. The patricians in Rome would have wanted a Sicilian cook in much the same way as Edwardian aristocracy here wanted a Frenchman. The Normans ran Sicily in the Middle Ages and the access to its spicing and kitchen skill made Norman, then English, cookery the most sophisticated in Europe. For a while anyway. It’s still distinctive and delicious.