Recipes Remastered: Pesto Pasta

so this is okay for what it is but it's kind of a disgrace to call it pesto welcome to episode four of recipes remastered today we're looking at the number one pesto pasta recipe from allrecipes.com and i have to say i was a little disappointed that a recipe like this exists as the number one search result on google so let's change that today we'll use cooking science and traditional pesto technique to make a version that releases more fresh basil flavor with a better sticking sauce and i like to think you'll have the world's italian grandma the late marcelo hazan smiling down on you as you enjoy it hey everyone i'm ethan a home cooking nerd who likes to find better ways to cook and share them with all of you it's summertime in the u.s so that means basil is pretty much in full swing and for me that means pesto so today we're going to be covering marcella hazaan's pesto recipe from her book the essentials of italian cuisine now this recipe isn't inherently better just because it's traditional or authentic instead the traditional techniques that are used lead to noticeable differences in the final product to illustrate this we're going to first cover allrecipes.com their top recipe on the google search results then we'll talk about the technique changes from the version that i like from marcella and then finally we'll do a side-by-side taste test to compare the differences let's hop it so i have to point out a couple of assumptions i made before going over this recipe one this recipe doesn't actually make the pesto sauce itself so i made a fairly typical recipe using a food processor and the next it isn't even specified that the pasta water should be salted so i gave them the benefit of the doubt let's make this to a running food processor add a clove of garlic until it's well blitzed and minced up then you can add pine nuts and parmesan and blitz those as well until it browns into kind of a rough paste then a bunch of basil is added and while the food processor is running stream in the olive oil until it is smooth and sauce-like then just pour the sauce into a bowl add salt and taste it adjust as you see fit and now let's go over to the all recipes techniques for bringing this together first pasta is cooked in a pot of boiling water until it is done and then drained and then meanwhile you pour some olive oil into a pan over medium-low heat to that chopped onion is added as well as the pesto and a little bit of salt and pepper to taste and then you let that cook down for about five minutes until the onions are soft to serve it you add the pesto to the pasta and stir in grated cheese if you would like and then you can serve now i'm not saying this is inedible or anything it's alright for what it is but my lord when i had them side by side it's shocking how much better the other version is and let's learn why it's so much different technique adjustment number one is use a mortar and pestle instead of a food processor from essentials of italian cuisine it is noted that the genoese cooks in italy insists that if it isn't made in a mortar and pestle it's technically not pesto so if you want to be linguistically correct use a mortar and pestle but the cooking reason of why you should use a mortar and pestle for pesto is that it increases the flavor from on food and cooking by harold mcgee he shows a cross-section of a leaf that looks something like this then later in the book he notes that aroma chemicals in herbs like basil can be stockpiled in oil storage cells in glands or in channels between the cells so why is a mortar and pestle better at releasing these aroma compounds well from a serious eats article kenji lopez alt notes that a food processor shears and shreds the ingredients tearing apart and breaking down vegetables but not necessarily rupturing all of the cells to release the aromatic compounds a mortar and pestle on the other hand does a great job of actually crushing individual cells producing vegetables with much better flavor i think a great way to visualize this is with a blackberry imagine each of these little balls or drooplets as they are called are a cell in the basil leaf when i slice the berry up with a sharp knife a bunch of times the driplets are sheared and will give up a little bit of juice but a lot of juice is still left in there compare that with a blackberry that has been mashed the drooplets are completely ruptured giving up a lot more juice or in the basil's case flavor compounds now don't get me wrong you can still make great pesto in a food processor there's no denying it's way faster but if you do have the time a mortar and pestle will bring that extra flavor you may not have known that has been missing next technique use butter in your pesto you heard me right we are using butter along with olive oil in this pesto now i may be naive in saying this but i think a lot of people think that olive oil is the only fat source used in italian cooking when that's just not the case in fact i would highly urge you try marcello hazaan's three ingredient tomato sauce it uses only butter as the fat source there's no olive oil in sight and on a scale of simplicity to tasty chart it's all the way to the top right that being said what does butter actually do for our pesto well from the food lab kenji notes that butter unlike olive oil contains natural emulsifiers that help keep sauce nice and creamy also butter has a slight sweetness that will help round out the bite from the fresh garlic and i do have to admit that after years of making pesto with only olive oil i was still a little surprised the first time i saw marcella's recipe with it but after making it i'm never going back if you want a creamier sauce that sticks better to the pasta and isn't as olive oil forward use butter too the next technique may be the most important and that is do not cook pesto to help me with this i turn to a quote from marcella's book pesto is never cooked or heated and while it may on occasion do good things for vegetable soup it has just one great role to be the most seductive of all sauces for pasta earlier in the book she explains that the less basil cooks the better it is the reason why is because the flavor compounds of basil are highly volatile and when they're cooked they are released meaning they lose their flavor very rapidly this is why if you're adding basil to a tomato sauce it should be done right at the end and it's why pesto should be used raw at room temperature and this is why i think many italians may have shrieked in horror when they saw the all recipes version that sauteed the pesto with onions for about five minutes because it completely changes the flavor profile alright one last improvement and this one doesn't have anything to do with the pesto but instead with the pasta and that is use a bronze dye cut pasta we covered this in my pasta 101 video but i thought it made sense to mention it again here so most pasta that you see at the grocery store falls into two categories one is bronze die cut and the other is teflon die cut so teflon die cut pasta is extruded faster and leaves a smooth surface a bronze dye cut on the other hand is extruded slower and leaves a rough almost chalky finish so our pesto sauce will stick much better to the rougher texture of the bronze die cut pasta so when you're looking at the grocery store bronze cut or slow dried on the box are typically good indications now it is fair to mention that bronze cut pasta is going to be about a dollar or so more expensive per pound but it's an upgrade well worth making because the texture and flavor are vastly superior in my opinion alright let's make some pesto step by step and then we will do our taste test to start set a pot of water onto boil once boiled add a large four finger pinch of salt ideally 10 grams of salt per liter of water or a one percent solution add in the bronze dye cut pasta of choice and cook until al dente and remember for this pasta it's not finished in a sauce overheat so cook it exactly how you want to eat it for the pesto remove the skin from 2 medium garlic cloves and add them to the mortar with a tiny pinch of salt then just begin bashing the garlic into a rough paste next pour in 20 grams of pine nuts and grind those together into a paste as well once those are incorporated add about a cup and a half of tightly packed basil leaves now i would have liked about an extra half cup of these but i was a little short so mine turned out a little bit lighter green but anyway add the basil with another little pinch of salt then using the pestle with a rotary movement grind all the ingredients against the side of the mortar when the basil has been ground into a paste add 30 grams of grated parmesan reggiano and 10 grams of pecorino romano cheese and grind those evenly into the mixture once those are done you're gonna set the pestle aside and grab a spoon or spatula add the 75 grams of olive oil in a very thin stream beating it into the mixture with the spoon when all the oil has been incorporated add 28 grams of butter with the spoon distributing it evenly and i would like to note that you can feel free to adjust the ratios of olive oil to butter if you want it a little bit thicker just use less olive oil if you want it more olive oil forward just use less butter just mess around with your ratios and see what you end up liking to actually serve the pesto with pasta reserve about a half cup of the pasta water and then transfer the cooked pasta to a large bowl spoon the pesto over top the pasta then add a couple spoonfuls of the starchy pasta water which is going to help dilute the pesto and help the sauce emulsify begin mixing this together until a cohesive sauces form that kind of sticks and is glossy to the outside of the pasta add it to a bowl and you can serve with more parm fresh basil or diced fresh tomatoes if you would want but now it is time for our taste test all right everybody it's time for the taste test so i have the all recipes one here on the right side and then i have the marcello hazaan one over here on my left and before i actually taste just looking at them you can see there's a complete difference the marcello has on one actually has like that little sauce like that you would expect in alio aeolio or caccio pepe it's a little bit glossy on the outside this one has absolutely none of that but let's dive in and actually taste test them so all right let me think how i want to say this so this is okay for what it is but it's kind of a disgrace to call it pesto and what i mean by that is basically it has a completely different flavor profile and it's not because it was in a food processor right you can still make great pesto in a food processor it's all because the pesto was cooked it it literally gets rid of all those volatile aromatic compounds that basil has in its fresh or very lightly cooked form i mean cooking something like basil and that in the pesto for five minutes it's shocking just how much it actually changes it um i've never actually done a side-by-side taste test like this because i've never actually cooked pesto before so when i saw it in that recipe i was a little bit shocked to see that because i was like i've literally never done that ever i've always just mixed the pesto right into the cooked pasta you never actually cook it first before mixing it in and i totally understand why because like i said it's okay like it's not inedible but if someone served this to me and i was expecting pesto i would be very very disappointed that being said though let's talk about all the great things happening in this one first off the flavor is absolutely off the charts the the basil just it literally tastes like you're eating it off the plant because as we know like this is when basil is its most fragrant and that totally comes through in this pasta and then the garlic it lets you know it's there but it's not overpowering which is kind of what you want with pesto i mean if you like garlicky pesto you know add a bunch of garlic go ahead but you kind of just want it to like let us know it's there not necessarily overpower everything we want the basil to really shine through in this this pasta dish and then outside of that from a texture perspective we got that nice sauce and again that's from the creaminess of the butter that's from using the bronze cut pasta and it really just creates that really nice emulsion for the sauce and it sticks better on the pasta it's i mean it's absolutely delicious this is a killer killer recipe definitely make it i would have actually liked to have more basil than i did by the time i actually like snipped off all that i could take off of that plant without essentially killing it um i would have probably like 1.5 times the amount of basils that's why this is like a little bit on the light side because the uh the cheese and the butter on those lighter components kind of overpowered it because i didn't have quite enough basil but it's absolutely delicious as is um you guys need to make this recipe it's summertime go get a bunch of basil make some pests though enjoy it the one thing i have to say is just never cook your pesto whether you make it in a food processor or a mortar and pestle that's fine just never never cook your pasta that's gonna wrap it up for this one i will catch you all in the next one thank you for all my patreon supporters for supporting the channel helping me grow um and all of you for just joining along in this journey it's been absolutely wild the growth of the channel and i truly truly do appreciate it that's gonna wrap it up for me in this one i will catch you in the next one peace

Channel: Ethan Chlebowski

Views: 403,781

Keywords: 4k Cooking videos, pesto, pesto alla genovese, pesto pasta, best pesto, how to make pesto, mortar and pestle, mortar and pestle recipes, pesto mortar and pestle, pesto recipe, pesto pine nuts, marcella hazan pesto, genoese pesto, pasta recipes, italian pesto recipe

Id: 21zsjzFKOrI

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 12 2020