W Is For Will

Send Noods – Trenette al Pesto

No man is lonely eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention. ― Unknown

I am back in the saddle again. I have jumped ship from an outright toxic environment that I was in and that has opened up my free time to cook more and post more. There are lots to catch up on but I’ll do another Ramblings to give y’all that detail. Let’s just jump back into the rhythm of Noods.

In another life, I was probably a large Italian man with an exorbitant addiction to all things pasta. In the life before that, I was probably another Italian man with an exorbitant addiction to all things pasta. In the life before… y’all get it. I friggin’ LOVE pasta. It’s my love language.

[PICTURE OF PASTA I LOVE]

“Dammi da mangiare Sto morendo di fame!”

Alright, I was inspired after finally finishing the movie Luca when our niece stayed the night with my wife and I. It also helps that Babish has a video breakdown, and I love his content, so there were plenty of avenues for me to learn this recipe.

And y’all, this is pretty easy to cook and will impress most pasta-loving folks.

Trenette al Pesto

Ingredients

  1. High Quality pasta (Listent, there is slim pickins at the Richardson Tom Thumb, I went with Boccatini cause it looked cool)
  2. Basil Leaves (a good bunch of it)
  3. Garlic
  4. Yellow Skin Taters
  5. Green Beans
  6. Pine Nuts
  7. Pecorino Romano
  8. Parmesan Reggiano
  9. Salt
  10. Olive Oil

Recipe

Pesto

  • Combine the garlic, salt, and pine nuts in the bowl of a food processor. Blitz until everything is finely chopped. Add the basil leaves and the cheeses. While the machine is running, stream in the olive oil.
    • Yeah, its that freakin’ easy to make pesto y’all, stop abusing yourself by buying store bought pesto. I could literally spread this on bread and eat it as is, but don’t do that yet.

Pasta

  • Bring a pot of water to boil.
  • Skin and chop into cubes your yellow skin taters.
  • Once boiling add your taters and cook for 4-5 Minutes.
    • Meanwhile chop up your green beans into 1 inch segments, and dispose of the bean ends.
  • Add your pasta of choice to the water after the 4-5 minutes of tater boiling.
  • Once you are approaching al dente (“Doneness” in Italian), about 2 minutes before add your green beans to the boiling water.
  • Cook until pasta is al denta, and potatoes are pretty smushy.
  • Save a cup of pasta water
    • IMPORTANT, it will be used to make the total dish creamier, all that starchy goodness is important and adds to the dish. I made sure to highlight this step since I always forget and I know other folks do too.
  • Drain your pasta, taters, and beans.
  • In a separate large bowl and your pesto sauce, add your pasta, beans, and taters and mix together thouroughly.
    • Your taters will start to blend into the pasta since they are being smushed during combination.
  • Drizzle your saved pasta water until the pasta is coated to your noodle to your desire!
  • Garnish with some torn basil leaves and serve!
Impress your mom, impress your wifey/hubby, impress yourself cause dam this is good.

“Ummm…Will, this is a ton of starch. I feel fat eating this…”

“… And…?”

“This will literally yeet me out of ketosis!”

Alright, huddle up y’all, this is a comfort dish. So if you think this is too many carbs for you then the door is there, thanks for coming out to the meeting, we have jackets if you wanna join later. If you think this is a perfectly acceptable amount of carbs, let’s start the club now and give members jackets.

Cheers Y’all,
William

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