Pesto, beans & noodles
Bear Hands (author): If it’s green it’s healthy, right? Right.
Hubby Bear (eater): Bear Hands has made this with store bought pesto, and homemade pesto. They’re both great—something about the beans and pesto combination is just perfect. But the homemade is definitely preferred as it has a more herbaceous flavor.
There is something curious about the relative absence of beans in North American pasta dishes. Outside of a handful of regional specialties, we tend to think of pasta and beans as belonging to entirely separate culinary conversations. Yet across much of the world—and in Italy especially—the pairing is so common as to be almost unremarkable. It is a shame, really, because the marriage makes perfect sense. The creamy tenderness of a well-cooked bean plays beautifully against the bouncy chew of a good noodle, creating a contrast of textures that feels both hearty and elegant without requiring any special effort at all.
Perhaps that is why dishes like pesto, beans, and noodles feel so satisfying. They remind us that good cooking is often less about complexity than compatibility. A batch of pesto in the freezer, a can of beans in the pantry, and a box of pasta on the shelf may not sound terribly exciting on paper, but together they become something far greater than the sum of their parts. In a way, this is the sort of meal that marks one's transition from merely following recipes to genuinely cooking. You begin to trust your instincts. You stop asking whether ingredients are supposed to go together and start asking whether they would be delicious together. More often than not, the answer is yes—and dinner arrives all the quicker for it – and that’s homemade fast food in action!
Check out my homemade pesto recipe that using macadamia nuts and spinach: https://www.iambearhands.com/recipes/mac-nut-pesto
Detailed recipe:
Pesto, beans & noodles
Some meals impress by being complicated. Others impress by reminding us how little effort is required when good ingredients are given the opportunity to work together. This is firmly the latter sort of meal: simple, practical, endlessly adaptable, and exactly the sort of thing one hopes to find waiting at the end of a long day. There’s many ways to eat pesto and this is one of the ways we enjoy it at our house - add some pesto and beans to your noodles today!