GILROY
– A Garlic Festival perennial, pasta con pesto, is getting a
make-over after a 25-year run.
GILROY – A Garlic Festival perennial, pasta con pesto, is getting a make-over after a 25-year run.
The new dish features penne pasta instead of the spaghetti used in the old dish. A light basil pesto cream sauce with sautéed garlic will replace the previous pesto and chopped raw garlic mixture. It’s garnished with locally grown Roma tomatoes and served with a slice of bread to soak up the cream sauce.
“It looks beautiful,” said George Minerva, co-chair of Gourmet Alley. “It’s a nice light green, and we serve it in a black bowl. We went for eye appeal as well as taste.”
Festival organizers were looking for a way to revive the pasta con pesto because last year they noticed sales slipping. Of the pasta con pesto that sold, much of it ended up in garbage cans uneaten, he said.
After trying several variations, they selected a recipe called penne pasta con pesto by Majid Bahriny, owner of Mama Mia’s Italian Restaurant.
“He made his idea, and we were just blown away,” Minerva said. “The looks of the new dish were just outstanding.”
Bahriny said festivalgoers should enjoy the changed dish.
“Once you eat your long pasta, you have all of your pesto and garlic in the bowl,” Bahriny said. “While making it with light pesto sauce and changing the pasta to penne, penne absorbs the flavor and all of the sauce is in the pasta.”
For some, the raw garlic in the old dish was overpowering, he said. But sautéing the garlic tones down the garlic flavor.
“You taste all of the flavors,” Bahriny said, “garlic, pesto – not only the garlic.”
The new version should be easier and less messy to eat.
Another plus is that it should cut the calories in the dish almost in half, Bahriny said. The new recipe uses one-eighth less oil than the original. However, it’s not low-fat faire. The cream sauce is made with a heavy cream and butter.
The penne pasta con pesto will be served in a 6-ounce bowl instead of the 8-ounce container used in previous years, and the price will be a dollar less at $3. It will be sold on the ranch (or west) side of Gourmet Alley, where people can view its preparation. Similar to the calamari, the dish will be made in pans and flamed with white wine.
“It’s possible to do a flame-up with the pesto, and we might try that to see what happens,” Minerva said. “You certainly won’t get the flame-up that you get with the calamari.”
Since Paul Pelliccione cooked up his recipe for the first Garlic Festival, the pasta con pesto has remained basically unchanged with a few small revisions by Gourmet Alley master Val Filice, who sampled the dish a week ago and enjoyed it.
“It smells wonderful, it looks wonderful and it tastes better,” Filice said.
Another change this year in Gourmet Alley is two options for combination plates. For $10, festivalgoers have traditionally been able to eat four of Gourmet Alley’s signature foods: calamari, pasta con pesto, a peppersteak sandwich and scampi. This year, each plate will feature four different foods from different booths in Gourmet Alley.
“Ten dollars is one of the best deals in the world,” Minerva said. “For $20, you’ve got it all.”
People can try penne pasta con pesto before this year’s festival at the Garlic City Fun Run on July 10, from 3:30 to 10 p.m. in downtown Gilroy or at Mama Mia’s Italian Restaurant in Gilroy and Morgan Hill when Bahriny adds it to the menu within two weeks.
Bahriny has perfected the production of the dish to a science. Once the Garlic Festival arrives on July 23, his recipe should be simpler to prepare because penne pasta can be cooked ahead of time, whereas spaghetti had to be served immediately, he said.
Last week, the new dish won approval from the more than 80 people at a Garlic Festival Association meeting.
“It’s got a good stamp of approval,” Minerva said. “I think Gilroy will fall in love with this one – as good as the other one was.”
