trenette al pesto genovese
trenette with genovese pesto
To make this dish you'll need to first make pesto Genovese, which you'll find under its own separate recipe in the Pesto chapter. You may have noticed that I like LONG pasta a lot, especially the thicker varieties. This bugs my daughter, who for years has been whingeing about how she prefers smaller, shorter pasta shapes. I’ve explained that when she makes everything from scratch and we are in the position to discuss the relative merits of the shape she has in mind for the sauce she has cooked, then we can talk.
In Genova the two traditional pasta shapes for pesto are trofie or trenette. Trofie are great but involve a lot of stabbing at small bits of food and are intensely annoying if you are HUNGRY. Trenette are like thin linguine but, like post millennium rock music or jazz of any era, ultimately inadequate and decidedly unsatisfying. Which is why my favourite pasta for pesto is something like spaghettoni, linguine or fresh egg tagliatelle. The pictures on this page are actually....shhhhhh.... of linguine, but you honestly wouldn't know the difference without measuring the width of the pasta!
WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)
make Genovese pesto
boil the beans
boil the pasta
warm the pasta pan
discard the warming water
add pesto to tossing pan
add cooking water
add pasto to pesto, toss
add beans, toss
trenette with genovese pesto
INGREDIENTS
FOR FOUR PEOPLE PESTO
approx 60g of a 50:50 mix of pecorino & parmesan
100g fresh basil leaves
120ml olive oil (50:50 mix EVO and Olive Oil)
1 large clove garlic
50g pinoli
black pepper
300g fine beans
PASTA
400g dry trenette / linguine (DeCecco Linguine No. 7 or No. 8)
MANTECATURA (?)
none, simply combine using pasta water
METHOD
Make sure that the pesto is at room temperature - so if you've made it in advance and stored under oil in the fridge, it needs to warm up. To start cooking, boil the green beans. Don't be tempt to microwave unless you have 75+ years' experience of microwave use and can guarantee a perfect result. When they're cooked, drain and chop in approx 25mm lengths. Boil the pasta.
While the pasta is quite still firmly ‘al dente,’ warm a pasta wok/mixing bowl by taking 2-3 ladles of water from the pasta and letting it sit in the bottom of the bowl, while the pasta finishes cooking. The next steps of combining pesto and pasta need to be done quickly so that the pasta doesn't get to the table cold. If you are cooking for others, make sure they are sitting down at the table waiting for their food - if your guests are anything like my family, call them to the table at least 15 minutes in advance, make sure they've all washed their hands or used the bathroom or done whatever else they need to do before eating, and then tie them to their chairs.
When the pasta is just past ‘al dente', discard the water that you've used to warm up the pasta wok, then put about half the pesto, together with a quarter of a fresh ladle of pasta cooking water in a bowl. Fish the pasta out of the cooking water and add it to the pesto and water mix in the mixing bowl. Toss to combine. Add more pesto and tiny amounts of water if need be, but don't overdo the water and make the sauce too runny. Keep tossing. Add the beans, toss, and then add more pesto to taste. Serve with lots of black pepper and grated pecorino or parmesan.
NUTRITION per serving
KCAL: 761
Fat (g): 42.4
Sat Fat (g): 8.0
Carb (g): 71.0
Sug (g): 4.1
Fibre(g): 3.8
Prot (g): 21.3
Salt (g): 0.51
