Simplifying Pasta Primavera

Is it possible to streamline this two-hour, six-pot restaurant recipe for home cooks?

The challenge: Created in the 1970s at New York’s famous Le Cirque restaurant to give diners a lighter, more healthful eating experience, pasta primavera is loaded with vegetables and can be delicious. It can also be a lot of work to make. Each green vegetable is to be blanched in its own pot so as to retain its individual character; if the same pot is used for each vegetable, this can take as much as an hour. What’s more, once the vegetables are blanched, you’re still not even halfway done. You need five more pots: one to cook the vegetables in garlicky olive oil, one to sauté mushrooms, one to make a fresh tomato sauce flavored with basil, one to make a cream sauce with butter and Parmesan, and one to cook the pasta. None of these tasks is difficult, but the timing is complicated and more suited to a professional kitchen, where different cooks can handle different jobs. Still and all, it’s so good that we wanted to take stab at simplifying it some so that people could comfortably cook it at home.

The solution: We took are cue from the name of the dish, primavera, which means "spring" in Italian, and decided to focus on just four spring/summer vegetables: asparagus, green beans, peas, and zucchini. To save some time straight off, we tested the rule about blanching the vegetables separately. It was actually fine to blanch them together, they just had to be put into the pot at different times to make sure each cooked properly. We later found that since we were cooking all the vegetables in the same pot, we could reuse it (without washing) to cook those staples of primavera, tomatoes and mushrooms.
Another staple of primavera, its cream sauce, is usually cooked separately from the mushroom and tomato sauce; again we found we could simplify things, eliminating yet another cooking pan, by adding the cream to the mushrooms and tomatoes. (Butter, another component of the cream sauce, could be eliminated since we were using it to do our sautéing. Cheese is often mixed into the sauce as well, but we decided this could be added at the table.)
Now down to three pans and less than half the preparation and cooking time of most traditional recipes, we had our pasta primavera for the home cook. It may not be Tuesday night supper, but when you want a fancier pasta dish, there’s no reason to run screaming in the other direction when some suggests primavera sauce.

PASTA PRIMAVERA

Serves 6 as a main dish or 8 to 10 as a first course

Salt
6 ounces green beans, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
(about 1 1/4 cups)
12 medium asparagus spears, tough ends snapped off, halved lengthwise, and cut diagonally into 3/4-inch pieces
1 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
8 ounces white mushrooms, sliced thin (about 4 cups)
4 large plum tomatoes (about 1 pound), peeled,
cored, and chopped medium (about 2 cups)
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 pound dried egg fettuccine
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup shredded fresh basil leaves
1 1/2 tablespoons juice from 1 lemon
Parmesan cheese, grated

1. Bring 6 quarts water to boil in large stockpot for pasta. Bring 3 quarts water to boil over high heat in large saucepan for green vegetables; add 1 tablespoon salt. Fill a large bowl with ice water; set aside. Add green beans to boiling water in saucepan; cook 1 1/2 minutes. Add asparagus; cook 30 seconds. Add zucchini; cook 30 seconds. Add peas; cook 30 seconds. Drain vegetables and immediately plunge them into ice water bath to stop cooking; let sit until chilled, about 3 minutes. Drain well and set aside.

2. Heat 3 tablespoons butter over medium-high heat until foamy in now-empty saucepan. Add mushrooms and sauté until browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Add tomatoes and red pepper flakes (if using), reduce heat to medium, and simmer until tomatoes begin to lose their shape, about 7 minutes. Add cream and simmer until slightly thickened, about 4 minutes; cover to keep warm and set aside.

3. Add 1 tablespoon salt and the pasta to boiling water in stockpot and cook until pasta is al dente (refer to package directions; cooking times vary with different brands). While pasta is cooking, heat remaining 3 tablespoons butter in large skillet until foamy. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant and very lightly colored, about 1 minute. Add blanched vegetables and cook until heated through and infused with garlic flavor, about 2 minutes. Season to taste with salt; set aside. Meanwhile, bring mushroom-tomato sauce back to simmer over medium heat.

4. Drain pasta and add back to now-empty stockpot. Add mushroom-tomato sauce to pot with pasta and toss well to coat over low heat. Add vegetables, basil, and lemon juice; season to taste with salt and toss well. Divide portions among individual pasta bowls. Serve immediately, passing cheese separately.

LIGHTER PASTA PRIMAVERA

While not as delectably rich as the version above, this primavera, with considerably less saturated fat, is still delicious.

Follow recipe for Pasta Primavera, replacing 4 tablespoons of the butter with olive oil, using 2 tablespoons to sauté the mushrooms in step 2, and 2 tablespoons to sauté the garlic in step 3. Substitute canned low-sodium chicken broth for heavy cream, swirling 2 tablespoons softened butter into the mushroom-tomato sauce before pouring over pasta.

May, 1999
Original article and recipes by Jack Bishop