Hello my dear friends! Some times ago, I told you how to make your own perfect homemade pesto alla genovese, without the need of buying a ready one (sometimes you can also find some nice ones,I must say).
Now I will give you some suggestions to obtain a delicious pasta col pesto, as some of you asked me!
You can cook a pasta al dente and flavour it with the sauce, but if you want to give a more special taste and consistency to the dish, you need to take a potato (small if you cook for 2 or large if you cook for 4 people, for instance) and cut in small small pieces. Take the pieces of potato and put them in the pan with the cold water you are preparing to cook pasta. Put the pan on the stove and make it boil with some salt (normal procedure for cooking pasta). When it boils, you add pasta and when it’s ready and “al dente” you drain it, leaving the potatoes together.
Now you can mix the pesto and the pasta. Potatoes will give a special texture to the dish.
One important thing. Pesto is a raw sauce, so you don’t have to cook it! Just mix it to warm pasta keeping it off the stove and it will be perfect.
The best pasta to be used is trofie, which is typical from Genova. If I don’t have trofie, I personally like spaghetti! The important thing is using durum wheat pasta and not egg pasta. It means: don’t use tagliatelle, tagliolini etc.etc.
These are trofie:
Another quick and smart idea! You can put pesto also on gnocchi! Another quick and lovely dish! In this case, don’t put potatoes in the water. Gnocchi are made with potatoes, so some extra potatoes wouldn’t match. Just drain gnocchi and mix them with pesto!
There are other nice recipes with pesto alla genovese, like lasagne and pasta salads, but I’ll tell you in the future…
Ciao ciao!
