Pasta primavera is an Italian-American

Italian-American cuisine

Italian American cuisine is the cuisine of Italian American immigrants and their descendents, who have modified Italian cuisine under the influence of American culture and immigration patterns of Italians to the United States...

 dish that consists of pasta

Pasta

Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...

 and fresh vegetables. A meat such as chicken

Chicken

The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...

, sausage

Sausage

A sausage is a food usually made from ground meat , mixed with salt, herbs, and other spices, although vegetarian sausages are available. The word sausage is derived from Old French saussiche, from the Latin word salsus, meaning salted.Typically, a sausage is formed in a casing traditionally made...

 or shrimp

Shrimp

Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...

 is sometimes added, but the focus of primavera is the vegetables themselves. The dish may contain almost any kind of vegetable, but cooks tend to stick to firm, crisp vegetables, such as broccoli

Broccoli

Broccoli is a plant in the cabbage family, whose large flower head is used as a vegetable.-General:The word broccoli, from the Italian plural of , refers to "the flowering top of a cabbage"....

, carrots, peas

PEAS

P.E.A.S. is an acronym in artificial intelligence that stands for Performance, Environment, Actuators, Sensors.-Performance:Performance is a function that measures the quality of the actions the agent did....

, onions and green bell peppers, with tomatoes. Pasta primavera is usually highlighted by light flavors, aromatic herbs and bright colors ('primavera' meaning the season of spring). Classic primavera sauce is based on a soffritto of garlic

Garlic

Allium sativum, commonly known as garlic, is a species in the onion genus, Allium. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, and rakkyo. Dating back over 6,000 years, garlic is native to central Asia, and has long been a staple in the Mediterranean region, as well as a frequent...

 and olive oil

Olive oil

Olive oil is an oil obtained from the olive , a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin. It is commonly used in cooking, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and soaps and as a fuel for traditional oil lamps...

, and finished with Parmesan cheese. However versions further enriched by, or based on, a heavier cream or Alfredo sauce are also common. Though recipes for cold pasta primavera may be found, they are best classified as antipasti, or appetizers.

Pastas served with this dish are typically smaller shapes, such as penne

Penne

Penne is a type of pasta with cylinder-shaped pieces. Penne is the plural form of the Italian penna, deriving from Latin penna . In Italy, penne are produced in two main variants: "penne lisce" and "penne rigate" , the latter having ridges on each penna...

, farfalle

Farfalle

Farfalle are a type of pasta. Commonly known as "bow-tie pasta," the name is derived from the Italian word farfalla . The "e" at the end of the word is the Italian feminine plural ending, making the meaning of the word "butterflies."...

, rigatoni

Rigatoni

Rigatoni is a form of tube-shaped pasta of varying lengths and diameters. It is larger than penne and ziti and sometimes slightly curved. Rigatoni is usually ridged, and the tube's end is square-cut like ziti, not diagonal like penne....

 and fusilli

Fusilli

Fusilli are long, thick, corkscrew shaped pasta. The word fusilli presumably comes from fusile, archaic or dialectal word for "rifle" , referring to the spiral-grooved barrel of the latter...

. If using longer types of pasta, such as spaghetti

Spaghetti

Spaghetti is a long, thin, cylindrical pasta of Italian origin. Spaghetti is made of semolina or flour and water. Italian dried spaghetti is made from durum wheat semolina, but outside of Italy it may be made with other kinds of flour...

 or fettuccine

Fettuccine

Fettuccine is a type of pasta popular in Roman Cuisine. It is a flat thick noodle made of egg and flour wider than but similar to the tagliatelle typical of Bologna...

, the vegetables are normally sliced in thin strips to match the shape of the noodles.

Since primavera means spring, the vegetable choices should be the crisp new vegetables of spring.

Origins

Though this dish is related to and likely derived from genuinely Italian dishes, under this name it is certainly a North American dish, created in Nova Scotia and brought to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in the early 1970s. The canonical story of its creation ascribes it to Sirio Maccioni, then owner of Le Cirque

Le Cirque

Le Cirque is a French restaurant in Manhattan owned and operated by Sirio Maccioni. It first opened at the Mayfair Hotel in 1974. It closed and reopened as Le Cirque 2000 at the Palace Hotel in 1997. The latest installation of Le Cirque opened in 2006 in the Bloomberg Tower building at One Beacon...

, in 1974. Soon it gained popularity as an unlisted special at the restaurant, and from there spread rapidly across the country.

External links

• A recipe hosted on Food Network