Pasta and Pesto with Potatoes and Green Beans
I’m cooking ahead here – because I am in Rome baby! Forgive me while I get a tad excited . . .
Anyway. Back on track (for now).
A few weeks ago Paul made a recipe by Jamie Oliver that combined pesto, broccoli, and potatoes. in the introduction he wrote ‘before you decide that I’m barmy for putting potato shavings into a pasta dish, I should explain that it’s actually very authentic’. I am afraid I owe poor Jamie an apology for I was convinced he was telling a lie! What would a guy from England know about the way real Italians cook pasta?
Along comes Marcella.
In the introduction to her recipe she writes:
When serving pesto on spaghetti or noodles, the full Genoese treatment calls for the addition of boiled potatoes and green beans. When all of its components are right, there is no single dish more delicious in the entire Italian pasta repertory!
So yes, Jamie was right. Having said that, Marcella gets full points for the lovely poetic way she describes the dish.
Her pasta was a whole lot better as well.
shhhh. Don’t tell Jamie, he is so overwrought at trying to change the way American’s eat that he may spring a leak.
This was easy to prepare – I had pesto left over in the fridge from when I made the lasagne with ricotta pesto, all I needed to do was boil some potatoes, slice them, cook the beans, cook the fresh spaghetti and mix it all together. I had dinner ont he table in less than 30 minutes.
WOW – this was amazingly fresh tasting . . . yet another example of how simply ingredients, when used properly, result in a dish that is beguiling. You’d think that you had slaved in the kitchen for hours. Take my advice – don’t tell anyone that you didn’t – just be sure to quietly thank Marcella as you accept all of the compliments.
Beautiful photo. I must say I have looked at that dish in the book and thought who the hell would want to eat potato with pasta (especially these days). But that looks alluring……
I don’t know who Jamie Oliver is, but putting broccoli in a pasta with pesto is an olfactory lapse. Broccoli is related to cabbage – when you pour it out, have you ever noticed the smell of the water in which you have boiled broccoli – whereas sweetly scented basil comes from the mint family. It is one of the missteps that trip one up when doing something different for the sake of being different. There is nothing wrong in touching up old recipes, I have done it often myself, but you have to proceed with a very keen sense of the congruous.
A beautiful dish Palma and Jerry! I like to cut my green beans somewhat shorter and, since writing that recipes some decades ago, I began to toss the beans and potatoes with a little of the pesto before adding them to the pasta. I found it led to better integration of the flavors.
This is the same recipe that was taught to me by a Genovese woman – I didn’t think I would ever like pesto before I tried this now it’s one of my favorite things to make and eat.