Pasta al Pesto alla Genovese

Last week, someone recommended that I check out a traditional Italian pasta with a pesto sauce. I decided to try it out, and I was not at all disappointed with the results.

This week I actually used two different recipes (one in English and one in Italian) so that I could get an authentic understanding of this dish. It required a lot of back and forth with Google Translate but it was honestly worth it!

Something I learned this week is that this dish is typically served with boiled potatoes and green beans which makes it the traditional Genovese dish. Personally, I didn’t know that an authentic Italian pasta with pesto dish had these components so that was really interesting to read about. The Italian recipe included a lot of small pieces of information that just made it feel more authentic. For example, the pesto sauce you make should be cold before you add it to your pasta.

Overall, this recipe was honestly pretty simple. You just have to blend a handful of ingredients to make the pesto, cook some pasta, and boil potatoes and green beans. Some recipes are very specific about what type of pasta to use for your dish, while others seem to say it doesn’t really matter. I ended up just using whatever I had in my kitchen, which was fettuccini. To save space and time, I even cooked the potatoes with the pasta. Even though it’s not hard at all, this recipe definitely feels very authentic. Maybe it’s because I had to read parts of it in Italian, but this recipe made me feel like I was really engaging in Italian culture. I always thought that making my own pesto would be too much work, so I always opted for the jarred pesto option. After this week though, I now know that not only is making it not difficult at all but the whole recipe takes not much more work than making plain pasta. I’ll definitely have to make it a regular dinner meal.

I’m also going to start adding pictures to my posts, which I couldn’t really figure out how to do before now. Hopefully, these pictures (that are not mine) helps to give you a better understanding of what each recipe entails. I’ll be including my sources for these pictures at the bottom of my posts just like I do with the recipes in case you want to check them out too.

If anyone decides to try this recipe out (or ever has before), I’d love to hear how you liked it and if you did anything differently. Thanks for suggesting this dish! Let me know if you have any suggestions for next week’s recipe.

Pasta alla Genovese Recipe (English)

Pasta al Pesto alla Genovese Recipe (Italian)

Photo Source: https://www.ilcuoreinpentola.it/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/pasta-al-pesto-alla-genovese.jpg