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I was half-listening to a cooking show on TV the other day and heard that pesto sauce should be served with a type of pasta that's made just for pesto. The pasta itself has some potato in it (or was it the dish?) and it's pronounced pro-fee? I have no idea and I around at my local market, and they all just suggested regular spaghetti.

I might have heard wrong from the television, but does anyone know what this pasta might actually be?

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    Do you mean gnocchi?
    – Mien
    Aug 4, 2013 at 10:02

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Trofie.

Pesto originated from Liguria (the region). If you google liguria pesto potato you get recipe's like this Martha Stewart. Though I'm by no means endorsing her recipe.

The pasta itself is durum wheat flower, the dish you describe is from Genova (in Liguria) and has potato in it.

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    Trofie is not often found in supermarkets, if you're in a major city with an italian population you should be able to find it in a specialty store, otherwise online. If you can't find it or don't want to bother then just use fusilli or farfale. What is most important is to have lots of surface are for the pesto to coat.
    – GdD
    Aug 4, 2013 at 18:43
  • @GdD If that's the case, wouldn't I use angel hair? It's surface area to weight ratio would probably the highest amongst all pastas.
    – MarkE
    Aug 4, 2013 at 21:47
  • Pesto is quite dense in flavor and not as water logged as tomato sauces. It also sticks well so just pick a pasta shape that matches the flavor strength of your pesto to balance the dish.
    – MandoMando
    Aug 5, 2013 at 4:01
  • You could try using angel hair @MarkE, you could use any pasta and it isn't going to make that much difference as long as the pesto is good. This is opinion only, there's no right answer, for me using long pasta with pesto just doesn't work, except for linguine. For some reason pesto just seems better with chunkier pasta. There may be a scientific reason for that but I don't know what it is.
    – GdD
    Aug 5, 2013 at 7:44
  • @MarkE. That doesn't make sense. Angel hair pasta is very thin and doesn't have a lot of surface area. And who said anything about the ratio to weight ? Penne is the classic pasta to go with pesto.
    – user36399
    Jun 24, 2015 at 14:27

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