''Pasta primavera'' () is a North American dish that consists of pasta in a cream sauce and fresh vegetables, invented in the 1970s.

Origins

Shrimp primavera pasta cooking food dinner

In 1975, New York restaurateur

Sirio Maccioni Sirio Maccioni (5 April 1932 – 20 April 2020) was an Italian restaurateur and author known for opening Le Cirque. Biography Maccioni got his start at Oscar's Delmonico, Delmonico's. Owner Oscar Tucci once stated, "Sirio and with Tony May w ...

flew to the Canadian summer home of Italian Baron Carlo Amato, Shangri-La Ranch on Roberts Island, Nova Scotia. Maccioni and his two top chefs began experimenting with game and fish, but eventually the baron and his guests wanted something different. Maccioni then mixed butter, cream and cheese, with vegetables and pasta and brought the recipe back to New York City, U.S. The fame of ''pasta primavera'' traces back to Maccioni's New York City restaurant Le Cirque, where it first appeared as an unlisted special, before it was made famous through a 1977 article in '' The New York Times'' by Craig Claiborne and

Pierre Franey Pierre Franey (January 13, 1921 – October 15, 1996) was a French chef, best known for his televised cooking shows and his "60 Minute Gourmet" column in ''The New York Times''. Early years Franey grew up in northern Burgundy, France. As ...

, which included a recipe for the dish. The invention of the dish is contested; Le Cirque co-owner Sirio Maccioni claimed that his wife Egidiana threw it together from ingredients on hand during a trip to Nova Scotia;

Edward Giobbi Edward Gioachino Giobbi (born July 18, 1926, in Waterbury, Connecticut) is an American artist and cookbook author. Giobbi's paintings and other renderings mostly appear in collections in Italy but also the U.S. His works have been shown in solo a ...

, an amateur cook himself, claims to have shown Maccioni and Jean Vergnes (then executive chef at Le Cirque) a similar dish, which Vergnes then slightly modified, and chef Franco Brigandi claims to have invented it, while the maitre at ''Il Gatto Pardo Ristorante'' in New York City and prepared it for Bob Lape on WABC-TV before his dish was requested to be cooked by other culinary practitioners. Maccioni states that Vergnes and his subsequent French chefs refused to allow pasta to be served at Le Cirque, so the many requests for the dish had to be satisfied with a pot set up in a hallway to cook pasta, and plates were finished in the dining room by wait staff away from the chefs' watchful eyes. The combination of lightly cooked vegetables and pasta, which Claiborne and Franey hailed as "by far, the most talked-about dish in Manhattan", is widely recognized as one of the signature developments of American cuisine in the 1970s.

References

External links

A recipe hosted on Food Network

{{Pasta dishes Italian-American cuisine American pasta dishes Vegetable dishes Vegetarian cuisine Cuisine of New York City Italian-American culture in New York City

Origins

See also

References

External links