• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Recipes
  • Features
    • Cookbook Reviews
    • Ingredient of the Week
    • Sunday Dinner
    • Fitness Goals
  • Travel
  • About
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
  • Work With Me

Katie at the Kitchen Door

Globally-inspired, seasonal recipes

1 September 10, 2013 Food

Green Bean Farfalle with Pesto, Capers, and Almonds

Green Beans with Pesto, Capers, and Almonds {Katie at the Kitchen Door}

The idea for this pasta came to me after reading a post on Not Without Salt that had absolutely nothing to do with green beans, or pasta, or pesto. The post was about apricot pie, and it’s a beautiful post and a beautiful pie, but the sentence that stuck with me was the one about what preceded the pie – “a picnic dinner with steak sandwiches, horseradish butter, pesto laden green beans with capers and an onion-spiked salad of tomatoes and peaches.” A) I was reading this on a plane, and even though I got to fly business class for the first time and the food was quite good, (and I totally took advantage of every single offer of champagne), that picnic meal made me want to run off that plane and drive immediately to an idyllic country house and picnic in a meadow. B) Pesto-laden green beans with capers? What an amazing idea. We’ve had pounds and pounds of beans come out of the garden, and have tried several yummy recipes (we especially liked this one with romesco sauce), but this one sounded like it could top them all.

Green Bean Farfalle with Pesto, Capers, and Almonds {Katie at the Kitchen Door}

Perfect Pesto {Katie at the Kitchen Door}

This is my first batch of pesto this summer – sadly, our basil plants never really took off this year. I usually make pesto by throwing the five ingredients – pine nuts, parmesan, garlic, olive oil, and basil – into the food processor all at once, blending, then tasting, usually adding more cheese, and blending again. The thing is, I’m never quite happy with the results – it’s inconsistent, and it’s never as good as my mom’s pesto. So this time, I did a little research into “best pesto” recipes, and take a more methodical approach. Two recipe caught my eye – this one, by The Best Remedy for A Cup of Jo, and this classic Marcella Hazan recipe. The two recipes aren’t so different from one another, so I followed the Marcella Hazan recipe and borrowed The Best Remedy’s idea of toasting the pine nuts first. The extra steps – grating the cheese by hand and stirring it in at the end, pre-chopping the garlic, and the little bit of butter added to the final product – made a huge difference. It really was perfect pesto. Tossed with the quickly blanched green beans, a few spoonfuls of capers, lightly toasted almonds, and hot pasta, it was a perfect and light summer lunch. And a really good way to use up some green beans.

Green Bean Farfalle with Pesto, Capers, and Almonds {Katie at the Kitchen Door}

Green Bean Farfalle with Pesto, Capers, and Almonds

Pesto recipe adapted from Marcella Hazan. Green Beans inspired by Not Without Salt. Serves 4.

  • 2 cups fresh basil leaves, tightly packed
  • 1/2 c. olive oil
  • 3 TBS pine nuts
  • 2 garlic cloves, peeled
  • salt
  • 1/2 c. finely grated parmesan cheese
  • 3 TBS butter at room temperature
  • 2 lbs. green beans, ends trimmed, sliced in half on the diagonal
  • 1 lb. farfalle
  • 1/3 c. almonds, roughly chopped
  • 1/3 c. capers
  1. Wash the basil gently, then pat completely dry with a paper towel.
  2. Toast the pine nuts until they are fragrant in a dry skillet over medium heat. Stir frequently to prevent them from burning.
  3. Finely chop the garlic by hand.
  4. Add the basil, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, and a pinch of salt to a food processor. Blend until smooth and creamy. Stir in the parmesan cheese by hand, then stir in the butter.
  5. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Blanch the green beans until bright green, then remove with a slotted spoon and set in a large bowl. Add the farfalle to the boiling water and cook according to package directions, then drain.
  6. Lightly toast the chopped almonds in a dry skillet over medium heat until they are golden brown and fragrant. Stir frequently to prevent them from burning.
  7. Toss together the green beans, pesto, farfalle, capers, and almonds, until everything is equally coated. Serve hot.
1

Share this:

  • Tweet

Categories: Food Tags: almond, basil, caper, green bean, pasta, pesto

Previous Post: « Book Club: Live Fire // Blue-Cheese Stuffed Burgers and Grilled Corn with Red-Pepper Butter
Next Post: Spicy Fresh Tomato-Basil Soup with Caraway-Cheese Toasts »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. eileen says

    September 10, 2013 at 3:05 pm

    Simple & delicious pastas like these are such a great summer mainstay. I definitely need more pesto in my diet too! :)

    Reply
  2. krumbled says

    September 10, 2013 at 7:04 pm

    Yum! Looks great

    Reply
  3. Carol Jones says

    September 11, 2013 at 5:37 am

    Looks terrific!

    Reply
  4. Marie says

    February 10, 2015 at 6:38 pm

    I don’t think those are green beans… Snap peas, maybe, though they look a little long. But green beans are definitely not flat, wide, or thin like that.

    Reply
    • katieatthekitchendoor says

      February 10, 2015 at 6:58 pm

      I actually grew these beans myself – they’re roma beans (or romano beans) a type of flat green bean, not peas. They’re really tasty!

      Reply
      • Marie says

        February 12, 2015 at 1:07 pm

        Ah, gotcha. Would regular green beans be a comparable substitute for the romano beans in terms of flavour?

      • katieatthekitchendoor says

        February 14, 2015 at 6:12 pm

        Yep, regular green beans would work just as well

Trackbacks

  1. Goat Cheese, Green Bean, and Pesto Farfalle | Scholastic Food says:
    October 12, 2013 at 3:11 pm

    […] Goat Cheese, Green Bean, and Pesto Farfalle (adapted from Katie at the Kitchen Door) […]

    Reply
  2. GREEN BEAN FARFALLE WITH PESTO, CAPERS, AND ALMONDS | Best Friends For Frosting says:
    December 15, 2013 at 4:00 pm

    […] we’re highlighting this green bean farfalle with pesto, capers, and almondsĀ from Katie at the Kitchen Door. The recipe has lots of greens: green beans, pesto, fresh basil, and capers, and it’s a 30 […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe!

Get creative recipes and menu ideas delivered straight to your inbox.

Most Popular

A House // Sweet Potato and Coconut Milk Soup with Brown Rice and Lentils

Monthly Fitness Goals: July // Homemade Spinach Wraps with Chopped Greek Salad

A New Job // Classic Seven-Layer Bars

Butternut Squash Carbonara with Fried Sage and Caramelized Onions

Happy Birthday, Trevor! // Peanut Butter Fudge

Cookbook Review and Giveaway: Home Made Winter

Drizly

Please note!

Full disclosure: if you purchase anything at Amazon using the above links or any other links to Amazon on this site, I will receive a small commission. Just so you know!

Copyright© 2023 · Cookd Pro Theme by Shay Bocks

This site uses cookies: Find out more.