Name: Trenette col Pesto (Trenette with Pesto, Potatoes, and Green Beans)
Yield: Serves 4 to 6 as a first course, 3 or 4 as a main course
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; 5 quarts water; 6 tablespoons grated Sardinian pecorino cheese and 6 tablespoons grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese or ¾ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese; Freshly grated pecorino or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese for sprinkling; ½ cup extra-virgin Ligurian olive oil; 4 ounces tender young green beans, trimmed; 1 pound trenette, linguine, or tagliatelle; 1 to 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature; ¼ teaspoon sea salt; ¼ cup pine nuts or walnuts, toasted briefly in a 350°F. oven; 1 cup tightly packed leaves of fresh basil, cleaned; Salt; 2 medium (about ½-pound) new potatoes, peeled; 1½ teaspoons minced garlic

Preparation info

Serves
4 to 6
as a first course

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

In Nonna's Kitchen

By Carol Field

Published 1997

About

Many years ago when we lived in a small village in Liguria, Iva Spagnoli cooked for us from time to time. Iva, a perpetually good-natured woman, lived by herself; her son worked in a bank nearby. She grew her own vegetables, fruits, and herbs, had a passel of rabbits, and made olive oil from the olives on her tree. She was living evidence that thrifty Ligurians rely on the ingredients they can coax from the rocky hillsides and mountainous landscape of their region, which wraps around the Me