Pasta Primavera Recipe (2024)

I realize that this comment is two years old, but I see this sort of thing all the time: a reader changes the recipe entirely and presents it as a comment on the recipe in the NYT. What is the point? If you have a comment on how the recipe worked for you, or a problem with it that you solved, fine. But why offer an entirely different dish as if you are commenting?

There is a shortcut I have cooked many times.The idea is to cook the veggies in the sauce starting with the one that takes the longest.You avoid the steaming steps and keep all the flavors. For example, start with sauteing onions, add broccoli, next add other firm vegetables according to cooking time, asparagus toward the end. Saute mushrooms, add them at the end because they can make the sauce muddy.It requires attention to get the veggies in at the right time but shortens the process.

I think it could be because the veggies have different cooking times. So you could start with the broccoli, add the squash in a min or 2, then the peas for the last min or so.

The time given of one hour may be possible if you've done all the prep ahead of time. If you haven't, best to allow close to 2 hours for this one, start to finish. Nothing is difficult but there are a slug of ingredients and many have to be cooked individually. This is a great dish but quite time consuming and best of course with the freshest farmers market ingredients.

Just cooked all the vegies and added them to the pasta with a little bit of pasta waterand a splach of white wine to make a broth. Seasoned with red pepper flakes, and salt and papper. No butter or cream or cheese. Very tasty with just the broth. Not rating this since it so different from original recipe.

Not sure if this helps anyone, but listed blanching times for the vegetables other than peas are all 3 minutes--not sure why blanching each one seperately would make any sense at all...peas 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 minutes.

Cream is not a carb. Cream is a fat.

When Le Cirque put this together people went nuts over it. It had cream, butter and a lot of salt. Take that out and you just have a pasta primavera. If you want this but want to ax the butter, cheese and cream try a puree of cauliflower ( lightly steamed ) in unflavored almond milk and add a bit of nutritional yeast (adds a cheesy flavor). Reduce it until cream thickens and add it as the recipe asks. It's vegetarian fare and if pasta without egg is used it's near vegan.

I beg to differ Sirio Maccioni is from Tuscany where crema or panna is used in many dishes. Northern Italy tends to use more butter and cream and the farther south you go olive is is more frequently used.

Omitting the cream will greatly reduce the calories, but it will certainly not reduce the carbs. Most of the carbs are in the spaghetti. Omit the spaghetti and it's a rich paleo vegetable dish. But, even if you have cut back on carbs, why not just enjoy the pasta as a rare treat? This recipe is such a pain to make that I can't imagine making it more than once a year. But it's delicious, and it definitely takes me back.

I get your point, but you see this is what cooking is—tinkering, editing, and passing on the results. And all of these cooks loved this recipe! Mostly I think it is an idea, not a rule book. A lot of these comments included the “I did _____ and my family loved it!” So whether they parboiled the peas or dyed them purple, the cooks here served them with huge helpings of creativity and love. And stop fussing about a Tbs or two of cream! Really!

Eat less!!

Delicious!

I made this to the recipe, only adding some blackened red bell pepper that I needed to use. Having made it, I understand why you cook the green vegetables separately. There’s enough difference in their cooking times to crisp-tender to warrant the added time. I also dirtied almost every pot, sauté pan and prep bowl in my kitchen. The hour of time for the recipe is very conservative. It actually took me 2 hours from start to dinner. Having said all that, the dish was fantastic.

This recipe was a delicious spring veg pasta. I subbed coconut milk for dairy free option and it worked quite well. Delicious.

Seems like a PITA to the home cook, but would've made perfect sense in a restaurant setting, where you prep everything in bulk and just pull the dish together a la minute.

Great template for a primavera. I didn't use mushrooms or cream and it was still quite delicious. I did cook vegetables separately (one pot of boiling water, one vegetable, vegetable out of water into colander, ice, on to next vegetable). Added a bit more butter and some pasta water before serving. Beautiful, tasty, filling, and springtime.

I benefit both from comments on the actual recipe and wide ranging riffs based on same. We are here to help each other cook. Thanks all!

Using farmer's market fresh produce, this recipe is at its best. I didn't cook everything separately, but just started with the longest cooking (broc) and added as I went. The vegetables were perfectly crisp and bright green. I only had a can of diced tomatoes, so I put the can and juices together with the garlic, olive oil, salt pepper and basil. I had to add a bit of extra cream and I garnished with a little shaved parm. It was the best primavera I've ever tasted. Thank you Amanda!

I'm a novice cook, but while there were a lot of steps they were all easy. I prepped most of the veggies over two days before I was serving the meal (3 minutes to blanch) which made the night of simple. It got rave reviews! The only change I made was to add way more garlic. Any time I see less than 5 cloves of garlic in a recipe I assume it's a joke. ;)

Wow! That’s good. I did a summer medley of Okra, carrots, sugar snaps, summer squash, zucchini, beets, mushrooms. I used a jalapeño for the pepper and put in 1/4 lb prosciutto. With the tomato topping I heated a 2/3 C. Frozen veggies mix for color This is a flexible dish!

I parboiled the broccoli and zucchini together for a few minutes. And for the peas I just added them to the pasta water the last minute of cooking. Otherwise I tried to follow the recipe as written. The tomatoes are the star of the dish. Also the mushrooms I used were dried but they added a great umami flavor to the broth. I see the recipe says to make it using all 14 steps but I think some of it you could compress/edit and it would still turn out deliciously.

This is one recipe where I appreciate reading about the adaptations people have made to this very labor intensive recipe. Am going to try roasting the vegetables. Sounds like a sanity saving plan. Thanks

Worth the effort!

Made as directed except I used brussels sprouts instead of peas. Also will use less milk instead of cream b/c my husband's stomach couldn't handle the 1/2 cup.

I made this exactly as the recipe called for except I did not use pea pods because I could not find them in my local store. This recipe took much longer than 1 hour. I did Steps 1-2-3 a few hours in advance. This was delicious !!! Next time I will try tossing the pasta into the vegetables in batches to have a more even mixture throughout the pasta. I cooked the broccoli for 3 minutes and used less time for the other vegetables. Will definitely make this again. Well worth the time and effort.

I thought it was a lot of work and tasted only OK not great. I wanted great. I will not make it again.