Food, Home & Lifestyle

An Evolution of Pesto

Lesson time 13:31 min

Start learning how to experiment with traditional recipes as Massimo shares his unique take on pesto, using bread crumbs in place of pine nuts. Joining Massimo is Taka Kondo, his sous-chef.

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Topics include: Your MasterClass Cookbook

Massimo Bottura

Teaches Modern Italian Cooking

Massimo Bottura teaches you his take on traditional Italian cooking—from risotto to tortellini—and shares techniques for reimagining your own recipes.

Preview

[MUSIC PLAYING] - We are going to start cooking. My sous chef Taka is going to help me in the kitchen so I can focus on talking to you. We're going to make an amazing evolution of a pesto sauce using all kinds of fresh herbs. Taka, my brother-- little brother-- from Japan. So let's cook some pasta. Let's start with fusilli because I love fusilli. Fusilli because they have a very, very cool shape in which, you know, a velvety sauce as we are going to create goes inside the shape. And when you eat it one by one and enjoy one by one, you have pasta and sauce at the same time. Taka is putting salt into the water because you know that we need a touch of salt. We're going to put the pasta in those 10 minutes. In 10 minutes, we're going to create an amazing fresh pesto sauce. Actually, an evolution of a pesto sauce because we have always to be critic and not nostalgic. So here, you have garlic. Garlic is very aggressive in taste. So what we do-- and we do the same thing for when we make guacamole-- we cut the garlic in the middle and we are like we pressing on the side of the container that we are going to use to make pesto. We're going to leave a little trace of garlic in what we prepare. Then Taka is adding some extra virgin olive oil. That is very, very important. And remember, obsession about quality of the ingredients. I want to tell you a story. I was thinking about create pesto. And pesto is just basil, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, Parmigiano, a pinch of salt, but I didn't have enough basil. And here, we go. The door opened for the unexpected. So we add rosemary. Here. We cannot add rosemary to basil because it's too aggressive. So no rosemary. We add sage, the same thing. But thyme, it's fine. Mint is amazing. We mix mint with basil and a little bit of thyme. So Taka is putting the basil. And he's adding some of the fresh herbs, like this amazing-- smell how fresh everything is. Oh, my god. So good. Smells so good. And make sure you don't put everything in there. This, you can use it to flavor the water, like this. Just make sure you have just the leaves, not to get a bitterness in the back. And this, you're going to put in there. So the pasta is already getting the flavor. A little bit more extra virgin olive oil. We're going to put some Parmigiano in there because I really like Parmigiano in there. And then pine nuts. Pine nuts, pine nuts, pine nuts-- where are pine nuts? Where are pine nuts? We are out of pine nuts. We were out of pine nuts. What are we going to do? Mental palate-- that all the range of flavor, the range of experience, tradition, mixing things. Bread crumbs, bread crumbs-- we use bread crumbs. We put bread crumbs instead of pine nuts. This was an amazing idea. This is like exactly out with old tradition. Tradition in evolution can be any kind of dry bread. You can put in a blender and make it very fine. What do we have here? We have very cold water. And what is water? Water is tr...

About the Instructor

Massimo Bottura, chef of the three-Michelin-star Osteria Francescana, treats his world-renowned restaurant as a laboratory of ideas. In his MasterClass, he shares how he transforms classic, regional Italian recipes into exciting modern dishes. You’ll learn how to make rich, flavorful tagliatelle al ragù, pumpkin risotto, and a MasterClass-exclusive Emilia Burger recipe. Develop your palate and embark on a culinary adventure.

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Massimo Bottura

Massimo Bottura teaches you his take on traditional Italian cooking—from risotto to tortellini—and shares techniques for reimagining your own recipes.

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