If you’ve been following the blog, you know I recently wrapped up my culinary ridealong of the Tour de France last month. Once that was wrapped, and I made the accompanying champion’s meal, I asked my girls what they wanted for dinner. After 3 weeks of daily meals and research, I was ready for a break. I was hoping they’d say burgers or spaghetti. To be fair, they did request pasta. But, they requested “Luca Pasta” because they had just watched the movie over the weekend.
I watched Luca once and it was entertaining, and I remembered a gluttonous pasta scene, but couldn’t quite remember what it was. I wanted to make gnocchi with pesto, but the girls demanded it be just like the pasta dish from Luca. So, they showed me the scene and I got to doing some digging on the Google. The dish is Trenette al Pesto, a traditional offering from the Ligurian region of NW Italy. I then went to Pasta Grannies, found this great video, and got cooking.
The dish was a big hit. My only error was not making enough pesto. I went off of memory from the video. Upon playback, I forgot that she noted she needed more as well and pulled some premade pesto from the fridge! The pasta was great, albeit a bit time consuming. But the texture of the rolled pasta was like “fine Corinthian leather”. What was most surprising was how easy to hand-make the pesto was. I thought for sure all of the pounding would damage the basil, but it was perfect. Everyone loved the meal and the girls’ only complaint was that it wasn’t as green as the movie. I upped the pesto portion herein, so yours will be sufficiently green.
Trenette al Pesto
Tagliolini
1 cup 00 flour + more, as necessary
2 eggs
Very long rolling dowel (not a standard rolling pin)
4 butter potatoes, peeled and diced
~3 handfuls of green beans, trimmed and cut into thirds
Pesto
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
Coarse sea salt
Pine nuts
~60 leaves of fresh basil
Parmigiano Reggiano, freshly grated
Pecorino, freshly grated
Freshly cracked black pepper
Mortar & Pestle
Prepare the tagliolini, by making a well with the flour. Crack and scramble the eggs in the well, then start pulling in some flour and incorporating into the eggs. Once the eggs are just blobby with flour, no longer runny, push the remaining flour ring into the eggs and begin combining with your hands until the dough is no longer wet, adding additional flour, if necessary, until you can form it into a rough ball shape.
Once you can put your finger into the middle of the dough and it doesn’t come out wet, you’re ready to move on. Use a bench scraper to remove any flour chunks and clean your hands. Wrap the dough in cling wrap and let it set for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes of the dough resting, start working and kneading the dough, pulling and folding and rotating in the same direction, for about 8 minutes until smooth. Let rest for another 10 minutes in the cling wrap.
After the second rest, unwrap the dough and place it on a work surface. Firmly slam the dough ball to shape into a disc. Then start to roll the pasta out, with firm pressure when rolling away from your body, but gently/loosely rolling the pin back towards you with a flick of your fingers. Never roll beyond the edges as this will damage the dough. You want to do this firm/loose roll about 3 times, then turn the dough clockwise. Repeat this process until the dough is rolled out to a rough 8 inch circle.
Now begins the process of carefully rolling the dough thin and into a rough 12-inch circle, including the nonna slap technique. Once that is complete, lay the dough out onto a clean kitchen towel and allow to dry. Note: I didn’t use any flour to dust the pasta as the nonna in the video did, not even after cutting the pasta into ribbons.
Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil, and prepare your vegetables. When the water comes to a boil, drop in the prepared veggies and cook for about 18-20 minutes.
While the vegetables boil away, prepare the pesto by placing the garlic in the mortar bowl. In a straight up-and-down motion, smash the garlic several times, then add a pinch of the coarse salt and continue pounding until it is paste-like. Add in a few heavy pinches of pine nuts and pound away until ground into fine crumbs. Then, add half of the basil and mash until just broken down. Add a little olive oil and the remaining basil and mash again until everything is ground into a paste.
Add in ⅓ cup of the parmesan, along with 1 tbsp of pecorino and some pepper. Stir together with a spoon, adding enough olive oil to become soupy. Then aggressively stir until emulsified. Return the dough to a work surface and fold it over itself like a ribbon (or accordion), then thinly slice just under a ½-inch wide. Unfurl the pasta tagliolini.
When the veggies have cooked, add in more salt to the water. Then drop in the tagliolini and cook until just tender, about 3-5 minutes depending on how thin/thick your pasta dough was rolled.
While the pasta and veggies finish cooking place some pesto into a large serving bowl. Top with drained pasta and vegetables, adding in the remainder of the pesto and a little pasta water. Mix well. Drizzle with more extra-virgin olive oil and bring to the table to serve.
______________________________ Copyright 2022, Brendan McCann, All Rights Reserved.
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