Pasta Alla Genovese With Flageolet

We teamed up with Pastificio Boulder to bring you an easy, delicious dish that drives home the idea that simplicity reigns when using ingredients sourced for flavor and impact. We love the tradizionalissima pasta alla Genovese, a vibrant green pasta dish made with long noodles, pesto, potato, and green beans that's perfect for spring. Our version showcases all the goodness of the classic dish, but with a twist, featuring Primary Beans' mint-hued Flageolet and Pastificio Boulder's Heirloom Wheat Fusilli. The Flageolet adds a satisfying heartiness and the Fusilli is the ideal pasta shape for holding onto the delicious sauce.

What Is Pasta alla Genovese?

Pasta alla Genovese is a traditional dish from Liguria (specifically Genoa, the birthplace of pesto) that combines pasta with fresh basil pesto, boiled potatoes, and green beans. It's a springtime classic that might seem unusual to those unfamiliar with it, potatoes in pasta?, but the combination is brilliant.

The potatoes add creaminess and substance, the green beans contribute texture and freshness, and the pesto ties everything together with bright, garlicky, basil flavor. Traditionally made with trenette or linguine (long, flat noodles), it's a dish that celebrates simple, quality ingredients treated with respect.

This version substitutes Flageolet beans for traditional green beans, creating something that honors the original while offering different texture and flavor.

The Star: Flageolet Beans

Let's talk about Flageolet beans, those pale green gems of French cuisine. These are slender, kidney-shaped beans with a delicate, creamy texture and subtle, nutty flavor. What makes them especially beautiful is their mint-green color, though it's important to note that this varies and fades during cooking, often turning more tan.

What makes Flageolet beans perfect for pasta alla Genovese is their elegance and subtlety. They're not as assertive as green beans, which means they complement rather than compete with the vibrant pesto. Their creamy texture and thin skins create a velvety mouthfeel that works beautifully with pasta and potatoes.

Our Flageolet beans come from Fifth Crow Farms, a small family operation dedicated to regenerative agriculture, cover crops, and crop rotation. Their careful farming practices produce beans with exceptional flavor and texture. The beans are grown with care for both the land and the quality of the final product.

The Pastificio Boulder Partnership

This recipe was created in partnership with Pastificio Boulder, artisan pasta makers who use heirloom wheat and traditional bronze dies to create pasta with exceptional texture and flavor. Their Heirloom Wheat Fusilli is recommended for this dish because the spiral shape holds pesto beautifully in its crevices, ensuring every bite is coated with sauce.

The collaboration makes sense, both brands are focused on quality ingredients, traditional methods, and letting the natural flavors of good food shine through without needing complicated preparations.

The Fresh Pesto

Making pesto from scratch is simple but requires good ingredients and proper technique. This version uses the classic Genovese method: garlic and olive oil processed first until smooth, then basil added in stages (half a cup at a time) to ensure it's properly broken down.

The key is not over-processing the pine nuts. They should be broken into small pieces but still have texture, if you process too long, they'll turn into paste and make the pesto heavy. You want distinct bits of nut throughout.

After processing, the mixture gets transferred to a large bowl and the Parmigiano Reggiano and black pepper are stirred in by hand. The pesto gets spread all over the interior of the bowl, bottom, sides, everywhere. This ensures the hot pasta will come into contact with pesto no matter where it lands, making mixing easier.

The Potatoes

Yukon gold potatoes are ideal here, they're creamy, buttery, and hold their shape when boiled. Cut into quarter-inch cubes, they cook quickly in the pasta water (which you'll use again for the pasta, so don't dump it).

The potatoes get cooked until tender, removed with a spider skimmer (leaving the water for pasta), and set aside. When added to the finished dish, they're soft and creamy, almost melting into the pesto, adding richness and substance.

The Assembly

The assembly is where pasta alla Genovese comes together beautifully. The pasta cooks in the same water used for the potatoes, then gets transferred with a spider skimmer directly to the bowl with pesto. This brings some pasta water along, which helps thin the pesto to the right consistency.

Using a rubber spatula, you gently combine the fusilli and pesto. If it's too thick, add pasta water a spoonful at a time, the starchy water helps the pesto coat the pasta properly. More Parmigiano Reggiano gets sprinkled to taste.

Then the cooked beans and potatoes get added and gently combined. Everything should be evenly distributed, spirals of pasta coated in bright green pesto, creamy potato cubes, pale green beans throughout.

The Simplicity Principle

What makes this dish work is the quality of ingredients. With so few components, each one matters. Fresh basil (not dried), good olive oil, real Parmigiano Reggiano, quality pasta, properly cooked beans, these things make the difference between something ordinary and something special.

As the recipe notes, "simplicity reigns when using ingredients sourced for flavor and impact." You're not covering up mediocre ingredients with complicated techniques. You're letting good ingredients shine by treating them simply and properly.

Serving

Pasta alla Genovese is traditionally served as a first course (primo) in the Italian meal structure, but it's substantial enough to be a main course, especially with the addition of beans. Serve it in shallow bowls, perhaps with extra Parmigiano Reggiano and a pepper grinder on the table.

A simple green salad and crusty bread on the side complete the meal. And a crisp white wine, something from Liguria like Vermentino would be traditional and perfect.

Spring Celebration

This is emphatically a spring dish. Fresh basil, new potatoes, delicate Flageolet beans, these are springtime ingredients that celebrate the season's freshness and lightness after heavy winter food.

Make this when basil is abundant and potatoes are fresh and sweet. It's the kind of dish that makes you happy spring has arrived.

The Color

While the dish is vibrant green from the fresh pesto, it's worth noting that Flageolet beans' color varies and often turns tan after cooking. Don't expect the beans to stay mint-green like raw Flageolet, they'll likely be more beige or tan, which is completely normal. The visual appeal comes from the bright green pesto coating everything.

A Perfect Collaboration

This recipe represents a perfect collaboration between Primary Beans and Pastificio Boulder, two brands focused on quality, tradition, and letting good ingredients speak for themselves. The Flageolet beans add heartiness and elegance, the heirloom wheat fusilli provides perfect texture for holding sauce, and together they create something that's both traditional and distinctive.

It's proof that the best dishes don't need to be complicated. They just need good ingredients, proper technique, and respect for tradition.

*A Note On Our Recipes:

Every recipe here was developed and tested using farm-fresh beans from Foodocracy and Primary Beans. Older beans, anything past a year in your pantry or beans from other sources may need more coaxing. Give them a soak and add extra cooking time, and they'll get there eventually.

Pasta Alla Genovese with Flageolet

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Category

Main Course

Cuisine

Italian

We teamed up with Pastificio Boulder to bring you an easy, delicious dish that drives home the idea that simplicity reigns when using ingredients sourced for flavor and impact. Our version showcases all the goodness of the classic dish, but with a twist—featuring Primary Beans' mint-hued Flageolet and Pastificio Boulder's Heirloom Wheat Fusilli.

Recipe and photo courtesy of Claudia Bouvier, co-founder of Pastificio Boulder.

Featured bean: Flageolet

Ingredients

• 1 cup cooked Flageolet beans (take 'em from dried to cooked with our guide)

• 1 lb high quality Fusilli, such as Pastificio Boulder's Heirloom Wheat Fusilli

• ¾ lb medium Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut in ¼-inch cubes

• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more as needed

• 1 clove of garlic

• 2 cups fresh basil leaves

• ¼ cup pine nuts

• ½ cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, plus more for seasoning

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

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Directions

1. Bring 4 quarts of water and plenty of salt to a boil. Cook potatoes until tender and remove with a spider skimmer. Return water to boil.

2. Make the pesto: In a food processor, add olive oil and garlic and process until smooth. Add basil leaves ½ cup at a time. If the mixture doesn't blend well, add extra olive oil. Process until basil is shredded finely and combined. Add pine nuts and process very briefly, until pine nuts are broken into small pieces (do not over process). Place mixture in a large bowl, add cheese and freshly ground black pepper, and stir to combine. Spread the pesto in the interior of the bowl so it's spread everywhere—bottom, interior, sides.

3. Cook pasta as per pasta box instructions.

4. Once pasta is al dente, transfer it with spider skimmer to the bowl. Gently combine fusilli and pesto with a rubber spatula. If pesto is too thick, add a small amount of pasta water, a spoonful at a time. Sprinkle more Parmigiano Reggiano to taste. Add cooked beans and potatoes and gently combine. Season with salt and pepper as needed.

Recipe Note

Every recipe here was developed and tested using farm-fresh beans from Foodocracy and Primary Beans. Older beans, anything past a year in your pantry, or beans from other sources may need more coaxing. Give them a soak and add extra cooking time, and they'll get there eventually.