4 Levels of Pesto Pasta: Amateur to Food Scientist

[pestle scraping]

[food processor buzzing]

[food squelching]

[upbeat music]

I'm Billy, and I'm a level one chef.

I'm Joe, and I'm a level two chef.

I'm Fatima, and I've been

a professional chef for over 10 years.

[upbeat music]

Today I'm making penne pasta with spinach and basil pesto.

I am making my sun dried tomato pesto,

with gnocchi and chicken.

I'm making pesto with fresh pasta.

All the classic ingredients, you have to keep it simple.

[dramatic music]

Pesto.

`It's earthy, it's fresh,

it's not hot, and you get to eat it as soon as it's done.

Pesto isn't pesto without garlic.

I like to roast the garlic first to get rid of

some of the bitterness and make the pesto creamier.

The first thing I'm gonna do is

take the baby spinach and chop it up,

so that the food processor has an easier time

getting through them and making them all little,

and ready to get smooth and saucy.

When you have such a beautiful item like basil,

why crowd the party with spinach?

Spinach is a good base flavor.

It's got like that green taste to it.

There's a more scientific explanation than green,

but it's what I'm gonna call it.

I'm doing a one-to-one ratio of spinach and basil.

I'm cutting the top off so the olive oil

can permeate into the garlic just enough

to get the juices flowing in there.

I'm gonna pop this in the oven for 30 minutes,

at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

I like making my pesto in a pestle and mortar.

This is pretty heavy and probably weighs,

like, my two year old daughter.

I'm gonna put all these chopped up greens

into a little personal blender, which I call a zhuzher.

Zhuzh, zhuzh,

zhuzh.

[Joe] My garlic is out of the oven.

This is exactly what I was going for,

just roasty, olive oily,

garlicy goodness.

Now that the greens are in a place

where I could work with them,

I'm going to put them into the zhuzher,

and start pulsing it so that they get chopped even finer.

Would you look at that greenage fly?

[food processor buzzing]

Scoop this liquid gold into the food processor.

I use lemon to add brightness to the pesto.

Harder than I thought, I need to get back in the gym.

You can't have pesto without basil,

so I'm gonna add my basil.

I'm gonna start with my pine nuts.

These are toasted.

Pine nuts,

if you're not making pignoli cookies or pesto sauce,

those bad boys are sitting in the cupboard

for months and months at a time.

Almonds, cheap,

versatile, nutty,

a certain je ne sais quoi.

[Joe] Beautiful sun dried tomato.

[Fatima] Just a clove of garlic.

[Joe] Pinch of salt

A generous amount.

I'm gonna start pounding out these three ingredients.

The salt acts as an abrasive.

The oils in the garlic and in the pine nuts

are starting to come out, so I'm getting this nice paste.

These elements are gonna be as small as they're gonna get,

and it might be time to introduce

the oil and turn it into a sauce.

Okay, let's see if I can get this on correctly.

I did it!

[Fatima] I'm gonna start adding the basil

[Joe] Pulse this.

[Fatima] Don't be afraid of really going in on this pesto.

Mortar and pestle is definitely worth it,

you know, if you know how to use one,

which sometimes I don't.

[Fatima] It's gonna be worth it at the end.

There really is no substitute for good parmigiano cheese.

Can you see this?

That's pesto, oh!

The smell is starting to fill up the room.

That's perfect.

If you're doing it on the orange juice scale,

this would be like some pulp, but I'm happy with it.

You can see that the pesto is pretty wet,

and I haven't added any water to it or anything like that,

which is why I'm not gonna add that much oil.

The oil is just for a little bit of flavor,

and it's gonna prevent it from oxidizing and turning brown.

You know, you don't want it too brown or too green.

That's how you know the ratio of

sun dried tomato to basil is correct.

[Billy] Salt to taste.

I like a lot of salt.

It's time for pepper.

I'm gonna use some pre-minced garlic.

All the hard work done for you already.

I'm gonna start adding the cheese, Parmesan.

A lot of earthy,

nutty, salty.

A touch of Pecorino, a bit of a sharper note.

I like adding the olive oil right at the end,

because it gives me more control.

It prevents me from making a very oily pesto.

I'm tired, but at the end when you make the dish,

it's so worth it and you're like,

oh, this is why I put all that effort in.

A traditional pesto, it has to be green.

I'm not gonna add lemon juice,

because it's gonna oxidize and turn my pesto.

Lemon zest adds a little bit more aroma.

I wanna add more cheese.

Don't judge me.

Oh, I really like that with the lemon.

Delicious.

It's like I surprised myself.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a pesto.

Now I need something to put this on.

I've used a lot less water than I traditionally would.

Put pasta in now while the water comes to a boil.

I saw somebody do this on the internet once,

and it seems like a really smart idea, so I'm gonna copy it.

Penne is a great pasta for pesto.

It's got a lot of surface area to pick up sauce.

I always associate penne with like baked ziti.

Ooh, look at that!

You could fill that with pesto.

In you go.

So I love a pesto with either a noodle,

just because the pesto coats it really nicely.

The first thing I do is dump all the double O

flour out onto my work surface.

I'm making a volcano,

and so I'm making space right now for the lava,

which is gonna be the eggs that I'm gonna add.

I'm gonna add the salt to the eggs.

I break the yolks, and I'm gonna

scramble the eggs a little bit.

Basically just bringing the dough together,

working quickly, get rid of my fork,

and start using my hands to bring the dough together.

I feel like my dough is ready and it's looking good.

I'm gonna wrap this and let it rest.

Pasta is in the water.

A nice generous pinch of salt.

Always, always salt your pasta water.

[Joe] You want to add a ton of salt so that

it tastes like the Atlantic ocean.

My dough has been resting for 45 minutes.

I am gonna start rolling out my pasta

with this handy dandy electric roller,

because I'm not about to roll it by hand,

and run it a couple of times.

I want it to be a nice delicate pasta

because the sauce is delicate.

I like the magic of this.

Roll it up and make a little bundle

that's gonna go right into the boiling water

once we've rolled everything out.

My water's finally boiling.

I'm gonna let it go for like another minute or two,

and then test the pasta and see how my method works.

Cut open my bag of imported potato gnocchi.

The pillowy texture of the gnocchi really adds

to the bright flavors of the pesto,

and gnocchi cooks quickly.

[Fatima] Just a couple of minutes.

[Joe] It's almost like a hot bath.

Fresh pasta should just rise to the top,

and look tender and juicy.

I think that's good.

Perfect.

So my gnocchi is finished,

and I'm going to save some pasta water.

Pasta is done.

The texture is tender, but still has

a little bit of bite to it.

Al dente.

I'm gonna add some cherry tomatoes as a little brightener,

a little bit of acid,

and also it just breaks up the monotony of colors.

You're gonna have a little green,

a little red, a little white,

[cheering]

All right.

I am going to salt and pepper my chicken breast.

I don't need to put any other seasoning,

because the pesto is gonna season it in my finished dish.

I recently discovered Calabrian chili oils,

and I'm obsessed.

I like to add it to pastas to add

a floral component and a heat component.

I'm just looking to bloom the Calabrian

chilis in oil to flavor the oil.

I'm going to lay them away from me so that

I don't splash hot oil into my face and ruin my good looks.

Slice right down the middle, whoop.

Now do it until you're tired of doing it.

[Fatima] This is done.

The oil is looking nice, and bright and red.

And that is what I was going for.

I'm going to rest it so that the juices

absorb back into the chicken,

so that when I slice it open over my pasta,

all the juices don't just run out.

I'm gonna transfer all of this pasta to this pan.

My gnocchi is hot and it's strained,

and I'm putting it on a low heat.

Time to incorporate tomatoes,

boiled penne, pesto.

What do you think of that?

[Fatima] I'm gonna add two heaping tablespoons of pesto.

Give it a nice toss

[Joe] Mix in the pesto with the pasta,

and I'm just gonna add a little bit

of the pasta water as well.

Beautiful, getting a nice glossy pasta.

I gotta move fast on this,

because you don't want it to stick to the bottom of the pan.

Pasta should be served from pan

to plate and eaten immediately.

Someone once told me that the key

to doing this properly is doing it slowly.

Garnish tomatoes.

Thanks for coming, ladies.

[Joe] My sliced chicken.

[Fatima] My chili oil.

This is the remnants of my pesto

pulverization from earlier.

Drizzle a decadent bit across the top.

[Joe] A little bit of grated Parmesan on top.

Can you add too much Parmesan?

You can never have too much cheese.

And then pick a couple of my favorite basil leaves here,

and I think three is a magic number.

And that is my penne pasta with pesto sauce.

And that is my homemade sun dried

tomato pesto with chicken.

And I'm ready to dig in.

[hopeful music]

I am in no way disappointed with the way this turned out.

Not for nothing.

Bet it looks better than anybody else's too.

It looks gorgeous.

It's kind of undeniable.

Mhm.

Yeah, I'm good at this.

I can make pesto.

It's like, this is why I'm a pro.

It's a little bit healthy.

It's a little bit sinful.

It's the perfect dish.

Silky, luscious,

got that little heat.

It is not getting any better than this.

You can taste the spinach, you can taste the basil.

They're not fighting each other, they're playing nice.

And finishes off with that nice

green flavor I was talking about earlier.

I'm gonna eat this whole thing

if you guys don't tell me to stop.

[dramatic music]

Pesto is an aromatic saucer dip,

and it's always delicious.

Let's see how each of our three chefs made theirs.

[tense music]

Billy blended traditional basil with spinach,

a deep green tender leaf that adds

a lot of water to his pesto.

It's a good source of vitamin A,

so also makes it nutrient-dense

and enhances the already green basil.

Billy included almonds, a harder nut,

lower in fat compared to pine nuts,

with a slightly less creamy effect.

Joseph added layers of flavor by roasting whole garlic,

imparting a sweet caramel note.

He planted everything together

with olive oil and sun dried tomatoes.

Tomato flavor compounds are concentrated

because water is reduced during the drying process.

They're also intensely red because of

the concentration of two carotenoid pigments,

lutein and lycopene.

Fatima made traditional pesto

with the addition of raw garlic,

basil, and authentic Parmesano Reggiano,

a hard cheese ripened, or affinaged,

between one and three years.

Physical and chemical changes happen during affinage.

[dramatic music]

Billy used a handheld blender,

which required a lot of oil because he shredded

his greens first so it collected on the bottom of the bowl.

Joseph used a food processor for blending

all of his ingredients together.

Fatima used a mortar and pestle,

an ancient tool that crushes and grinds

food into pastes or powders.

It's a slower, manual process,

with minimal heat of friction added,

as you might find with a high

velocity electric food processor.

Fatima was able to see the progression

of how her sauce came together,

and used less oil than our level one and two chefs,

in order to get a smooth, rich and creamy consistency.

[dramatic music]

Billy cooked commercial dried penne,

which is made with water and semolina,

a hard flour derived from durum wheat.

Joseph used commercially made potato gnocchi,

which are like small dumplings made with potatoes,

flour, and sometimes eggs.

Fatima made her own fresh pasta with double O flour.

In Italy, flour is classified according to

particle size of the flour or how finely ground it is.

The double 0 flour has high elasticity for kneading,

rolling and shaping her pasta.

She reserves some of the starchy cooking water,

a very smart technique,

because she can add it to loosen

her pasta and pesto as needed.

Many chefs say pasta water should be as salty as the ocean.

You certainly need salt in your pasta water,

but can you add too much?

Yes, and you can ruin your pasta and pesto this way.

Pesto is a gorgeous green, intensely flavorful sauce.

Next time you're making pasta for two or 22,

we hope you'll try some pesto and take

tips from our three outstanding chefs.