500 gm new potatoes
500 gm green beans, trimmed
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
30 gm pine nuts
Shaved parmesan
(optional), to serve
PESTO
25 gm basil, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
60 ml (1⁄4 cup) extra-virgin
olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 Scrub potatoes, put them in a
saucepan and cover with water.
Bring to the boil, add 1 tbsp of
salt and cook until potatoes are
tender when pricked with the
point of a knife (14-18 minutes).
Drain and set aside. If you want,
remove the skins as soon as the
potatoes are cool enough to
handle. Personally I never peel
new potatoes.
2 Meanwhile, cut beans in half,
drop them in a saucepan ofboiling salted water and cook to
your liking (around 2-3 minutes).
I like my beans to be just firm,
not squeaky. Drain well and
transfer to a bowl.
3 Cut any large potatoes into
halves or quarters and add to
beans. Toss the whole thing
with oil and set aside.
4 Dry-roast pine nuts in
a non-stick frying pan
(2-3 minutes; see cook’s notes
p152). Be careful not to burnthem. As soon as pine nuts
are golden, add to beans
and potatoes.
5 To make the pesto, combine
basil and garlic in a bowl, then
gradually add oil while beating
with a fork. Pour in lemon juice,
spoon dressing over potatoes
and mix together very well.
Season with salt to taste. Pepper
is not usually added to pesto,
but you can add it if you want.
Serve with parmesan. ➤FAGIOLINI E PATATE AL PESTOGreen beans and potatoes with pesto
SERVES 6“This is not a dish you will ever see in Italy, or maybe very rarely, but I have
decided to include it in this book because of the popularity of pesto,” says Del
Conte. “While in Italy pesto is eaten only with pasta, here it is matched with many
other ingredients. In Liguria, the motherland of basil pesto, a few cubed potatoes
and cut up French beans are boiled in the water together with the pasta. The
drained mixture is then dressed with pesto. Here I have eliminated the pasta
and written the recipe just for beans and potatoes. And it is delicious. If you don’t
feel like making pesto from scratch, use a good brand of ready-made pesto.”