Casarecce with Genoa-style Pesto

Today, I wanted to try something that we always eat in our home, a pesto pasta dish. For me, it's my favorite since it's not too filling or sour which makes it perfect. Also, I wanted to try something different since this dish required me to actually make a sauce.


Ingredients:

• 17 oz. Casarecce
• 1 oz. basil leaves
• 0.5 cup plus 2 tbsp. grated parmesan cheese
• 1/3 cup plus 1.5 tbsp. asiago cheese
• 0.75 cup plus 2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 3.5 oz. green beans, chopped
• 7 oz. potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 clove garlic
• salt

(I Love Pasta 184)


To start off, I first boiled the pasta for eleven minutes. Then, I drained it and let is sit in the colander while I started to make the sauce. For the sauce, I first had to dry and wash the basil leaves. After this, I grated the two different cheeses until I had the right amount. To actually make the sauce "[I had to] use a blender of roof processor to pulse the basil with 2/3 cup of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and the garlic until well combined" (I Love Pasta 184). Pulsing was a great idea since it made it easier to mix all the ingredients thoroughly and it made sure that all the ingredients were chopped up.



For this last part, I cut the beans so they were about an inch long and diced the potatoes. Then I boiled the beans and potatoes for eleven minutes in salted water.



The very last step was to add the pasta and pesto sauce into the pan with the beans and potatoes. A tip in the book was to leave some of the water, from the potatoes and beans, in the pan to dilute the pesto sauce (I Love Pasta 184). This was good advice because it made the  sauce less thick. I, then, tossed all the ingredients together so all the sauce was evenly divided.



Out of all the dishes I have made so far, I liked this one the best. This time, there was enough sauce so the pasta wasn't dry and I finally had the right portions of ingredients. I also love pesto sauce, so it was interesting to see how it's all made and I will definitely start making my own sauce instead of buying it. Also, everyone agreed that this was closest in taste to what my mom usually makes so  I would give this dish a four out of five star rating.




Have you ever tried to replicate a dish that you loved? Did you succeed?






I Love Pasta: An Italian Love Story in 100 Recipes. Newtown: Taunton, 2013. Print.