Primavera brings to mind fresh veggies, and this pasta primavera recipe is the best way to take advantage of them.
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00:00 Hey everybody, it's Justin in the Delish Kitchen studios.
00:03 I love when spring rolls around, I start thinking about a couple specific recipes.
00:07 I'm thinking of like ratatouille or like a beautiful big green salad.
00:12 Pasta Brimavera is one of my favorites because it's truly one of those things where you can
00:15 go to the market and just pick out all the veg that looks great.
00:18 If there's snap peas, grab them.
00:20 If there's zucchini, whatever.
00:21 It's going to be a little bit creamy, a little bit cheesy.
00:23 You're going to love it.
00:24 Let's get into it.
00:25 Pasta Brimavera is not one of those things that has like a set recipe, right?
00:28 It's not like Alfredo sauce where it's going to be like the same things across every recipe.
00:33 It's sort of differs from restaurant to restaurant, kitchen to kitchen.
00:36 And as I said, it's going to be about seasonal ingredients.
00:38 Things we're going to be looking for are things like zucchini, asparagus.
00:42 I love leeks.
00:43 If you have never used a leek instead of an onion, you are missing out.
00:47 They are truly one of my favorite ingredients.
00:49 For the leeks, we're going to use the bottom half, like that white and light green part.
00:53 We're going to slice them in half, rinse them, and then we're going to get those into little
00:56 half moons as well, about a quarter inch thick.
00:58 For the bell pepper, we can remove the seeds, give that a nice chop as well.
01:02 Just roughly is fine.
01:03 And for the asparagus, I'm generally a guy who, if I'm not like roasting them or grilling
01:07 them, I like these little pencil thin ones, especially for pasta.
01:11 Kind of mimics the shape of pasta.
01:14 Quick little tip, if you're not sure where the woody end ends and like the fleshy bit
01:19 you want to eat begins, you can kind of just like flex it.
01:22 And when you start feeling the tension, that's where you know you can snap it off.
01:26 You could do that for each individual piece, but I truly just like kind of go in like an
01:31 inch or two and chop off all the butts.
01:33 Once we get those woody ends off, we're going to chop the asparagus in like rough thirds,
01:37 like maybe like two, three inch pieces.
01:39 As I said, you can choose any veg you want from the store, but I will say for this recipe,
01:44 we like to have like at least a couple of things guaranteed.
01:47 I'd love to see a summer squash in there, some form of allium.
01:50 In this case, we're using two, red onion and leek, but you can use scallion, you can use
01:54 shallot.
01:55 You can't eat really a pasta without some tomatoes, so definitely need some tomato in
01:58 there, not just for like the natural sweetness, but also acid.
02:01 The last thing you're going to want to incorporate is some form of citrus.
02:03 I think lemon is the best in this case, but you could also use lime.
02:07 Also Meyer lemon start sneaking in around this time, so that's great too.
02:11 And finally, we're just going to mince our garlic.
02:13 You could use any pasta shape for this recipe.
02:16 I love longer things like bucatini, fettuccine.
02:18 In this case, we're going to be using the classic spaghetti.
02:21 It's great because number one, we're kind of taking inspiration from what many people
02:25 attribute like the creator of Pasta Provera, which is a restaurant here in New York called
02:29 Le Cirque and they use a longer pasta.
02:31 I think they use spaghetti, but I also love it because it kind of weaves really nicely
02:36 in between each pasta shape and it's easier to get that perfect bite where you have pasta
02:40 with each and every veg you want.
02:42 I'm going to heavily salt my pasta water that is already boiling.
02:45 Should sort of remind you of the sea if you were to taste it.
02:48 Please don't, it's boiling.
02:49 And then I'm going to go in with my pasta and we want this to be pretty al dente.
02:53 We're going to be incorporating it into a hot sauce in our skillet.
02:57 It should maybe even be a little tough to the bite.
03:00 It's going to continue to cook once you remove it and also once it's in the sauce.
03:04 Like any good pasta recipe, we're going to go in right before it's done and take out
03:09 some pasta water.
03:11 This is going to be loaded with starch, which is going to help to slightly thicken our sauce,
03:15 add a little bit of sheen, just add body.
03:17 It's really, really nice.
03:18 I'm going to turn this off the heat.
03:20 I have a colander in the sink.
03:22 I'm going to strain this pasta.
03:23 Another reason why I love this recipe is it's kind of just like a dump and go situation.
03:28 You might be tempted to just put all the veg in all at once, but all these components kind
03:32 of cook at different times and temperatures.
03:35 So we're going to go one at a time in stages and we're going to be seasoning along the
03:39 way.
03:40 Just stay sharp.
03:41 We're going to start with our zucchini and we're going to put in a pretty nice glug of
03:46 olive oil so we don't have to be re-adding every time we add other veg or remove any.
03:51 So we're going to go in with that and I'm going to get it over medium high heat and
03:55 we're going to start with zucchini.
03:56 We're going to go for like three to four minutes until it's beginning to soften.
03:58 Going to be like kind of lightly golden on the outside.
04:00 Then I'm going to season with a bit of salt and add in our asparagus.
04:04 Toss that together, let that cook for an additional four minutes and then salt again.
04:09 Salting in these stages may seem superfluous or like we're adding too much salt, but I
04:13 promise it's necessary.
04:14 We want everything to be well seasoned.
04:16 We want everything to be balanced.
04:17 So make sure you're following this recipe carefully of when the salt's supposed to
04:21 go in.
04:22 Our zucchini is looking nice and browned and our asparagus is just tender so I'm going
04:25 to pull it out.
04:26 This is your time to be using a slotted spoon.
04:28 Oftentimes when I read a recipe and it calls for one, I just ignore it because I don't
04:31 want another dish.
04:32 But it's actually very helpful here.
04:33 It's going to help leave some of that oil in the pan so we don't have to be adding more
04:37 as we add more vegetables.
04:38 Because I mean this isn't an unhealthy dish or a healthy dish, but it's nice that you
04:43 don't have to use more fat.
04:44 Saves you some money, saves you some calories.
04:47 We're going to go in with our next batch of vegetables and think about it, zucchini can
04:51 become kind of waterlogged and not good.
04:54 So we do want to pull that so we can cook other ingredients that are going to take even
04:57 longer.
04:58 Now we're going to go in with alliums and that's going to take like six or seven minutes
05:00 to brown.
05:01 So we're going to start with our red onion and our leeks.
05:04 They're going to brown for like six or seven minutes until they just begin to caramelize.
05:06 You see that golden edge on the outside.
05:08 What's great about going in with onions at this stage is that they're going to give off
05:13 a little bit of moisture which is going to loosen all that fond on the bottom and reincorporate
05:18 it back into your sauce.
05:20 Also at the beginning of this step you can go ahead and reduce your heat to medium or
05:24 if you see them like get a little more brown than you want earlier, we can just go ahead
05:28 reduce the heat just a bit.
05:29 Now I'm going to add in my red bell pepper.
05:31 That's going to go for like three to four minutes.
05:32 Again we want to retain the bite on these things.
05:35 We don't want them to like totally cook down.
05:37 Once they're translucent and starting to brown I'm also going to season them pretty nicely
05:39 with salt.
05:40 And finally I'm going to go in with my garlic.
05:42 We're just cooking this until it's fragrant, about two minutes.
05:45 It smells unbelievable in here.
05:46 This is looking really good.
05:48 Our bell pepper is like just tooth tender.
05:52 So we're going to finish the rest of our sauce.
05:53 We're going to go in with our tomatoes.
05:55 Then we're going to go in with some peas.
05:57 These were frozen and I thawed them out but if you have them fresh that would be absolutely
06:01 ideal.
06:02 We're also going to add in about a half a cup of our reserved pasta water and some cream.
06:07 This last bit is sort of where we're going to like divide some of our audience.
06:10 Some people go the route of white wine butter and some people go the route of cream.
06:16 I really like the cream.
06:17 It's not a lot.
06:18 It's not going to like feel like Alfredo but it is just going to like bring everything
06:22 together a little bit.
06:23 It helps coat the noodles and the veg really nicely and adds a little bit of richness because
06:26 a lot of this is like veg forward and it's going to be like bright and citrusy.
06:31 So adding a little bit of this richness I think is really nice.
06:33 We're going to get it to a simmer and go for like two to three minutes just until those
06:36 tomatoes start to break down.
06:37 We're in the home stretch.
06:38 Let's finish this off.
06:39 We're going to go back in with our reserved zucchini and asparagus as well as our pasta.
06:43 We're going to toss everything together.
06:46 If you're finding that the sauce is like not loose enough you can add a little bit more
06:49 pasta water here.
06:51 I even think adding like a couple tablespoons regardless will help make a beautiful, sheeny
06:54 shiny sauce.
06:56 And then we're going to go in with a bit of cheese.
06:58 This is the best part of any pasta.
07:00 This has a little bit of umami and it will bring a little bit of meltage and it will
07:03 hold everything together really nicely.
07:05 This looks incredible.
07:06 It looks like springtime in a pot and this is the time to taste your sauce.
07:13 Firstly for salt, which this is totally great because parm is relatively salty, but it's
07:18 also the time to taste for acid.
07:20 The tomato brought enough so I think it's okay.
07:22 If you wanted more acid you could add lemon juice, but now we kind of just want like the
07:27 vibe of lemon which is just zest.
07:29 Now, I'm going to trademark that because lemon zest is now lemon vibes only.
07:34 So I'm going to grate some of this in here.
07:36 I also think it looks ding dang pretty, just a little shred of lemon over top.
07:41 And then we haven't added it this entire time.
07:43 We've only been salting.
07:44 This is the time for fresh cracked black pepper.
07:47 And that's it.
07:49 It looks unbelievable.
07:50 I'm going to plate this up.
07:52 With something like this I want to build the perfect bite.
07:54 I want like a little bit of everything if I can manage it and I honestly think I did.
07:59 Weirdly enough, the first thing that I'm thinking about, even though we put so much effort into
08:02 other stuff, that little bit of lemon zest just helps to like brighten everything.
08:06 It almost makes it like a floral citrusness that's going to sit on top of it.
08:10 It's really good.
08:12 Definitely do not skimp on it.
08:13 You can go like over the top.
08:15 Because we took our time to cook each individual element to the exact right doneness, everything's
08:19 perfect.
08:20 The tomatoes aren't burst too much.
08:23 The zucchini isn't soggy.
08:24 The asparagus and the bell pepper have like a perfect bite.
08:27 It's really delicious.
08:28 Your technique could be perfect, but at the end of the day for this and a lot of food,
08:32 the freshness of your veg and your produce is going to make a difference.
08:34 That's perfect for a spring pasta.
08:36 For more seasonal recipes just like this one, stick around here on Delish.com.
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