April 17, 2021

Clover x Seven Hills Pasta

Chris first discovered Seven Hills Pasta last year and we’ve been absolutely stunned and honored to have them right in our backyard. If you’ve tried some of the pasta dishes in our meal boxes, you may have gotten hooked too. We haven’t had pasta this good since the Clover trip to Italy!

The next 100 people to buy 2- or 4-person-sized meal boxes for delivery/pickup Thursday 4/22 will get a free gift of 1 box of Seven Hills organic semolina fusilli pasta! 

Founded in Melrose, MA by Giulio and Carol Caperchi, Seven Hills Pasta Co. crafts artisan pasta from two simple ingredients: semolina hard wheat and water. Their pasta is extruded through custom made bronze dies imported from Italy, giving each shape a rustic texture that absorbs even the silkiest of sauces. The pasta is then slowly air dried for over 24 hours, creating the firm al dente quality that industrial mass-produced pasta manufacturers only dream about. 

Giulio has shared his favorite recipe for fusilli with pesto in the style of Genoa—if you manage to snag one of the boxes of pasta in your meal box on Thursday, we recommend cooking up a batch!

Recipe: Fusilli al Pesto Genovese
Spring has sprung and lovely fresh tender greens are finally in season. What better way to celebrate than a freshly made pesto to gently coat your artisan Seven Hills Pasta Co. Fusilli? The following recipe is a straightforward traditional pesto hailing from Genoa in northern Italy. But do not let the dogmas of tradition hold you back. Feel free to substitute basil with any other herb or a mixture of herbs (I like to put some fresh mint in). Feel free to substitute pine nuts with almonds or walnuts. And to make this recipe 100% vegan, just substitute Parmigiano cheese with toasted breadcrumbs (a trick I learned from star chef Massimo Bottura). The key, in my humble opinion, is to roast your garlic cloves and add a dash of lemon juice at the very end. Fusilli is pesto’s best friend, as the sauce likes to find it’s way in this pasta shape’s lovely nooks and crannies. Buon appetito!

—Giulio Caperchi

Ingredients
2 Cups of fresh basil leaves
2 Tablespoons toasted pine nuts
1/2 Cup of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (Substitute with breadcrumbs for a vegan option)
3 Roasted Cloves of garlic
1/2 Cup of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Squeeze of lemon juice and/or lemon zest
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

  1. Peel your garlic cloves, drizzle with olive oil and wrap in tinfoil. Roast at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until lightly golden and soft.
  2. Toast your pine-nuts (or other nut you are using) on a hot pan for just under a minute.
  3. In a pestle and mortar or in a food processor add basil leaves, pine nuts, roasted garlic, parmigiano and almost all of the olive oil, and process thoroughly. If your pesto is too thick, add the remaining olive oil. You may also add a little bit of cold water to make your sauce smoother.
  4. Taste your pesto. Then add salt and pepper to your liking and a squeeze of lemon juice.
  5. Your pesto is now ready to be mixed with your Fusilli!

Chef pro-tip: if using a food processor, the metal blades will oxidize your basil and turn it a dark unappealing green. Throwing in one or two ice cubes in the food processor while mixing helps prevent this.

Wondering which box we recommend ordering for this collab? We’ve consulted our meal box experts we recommend you try our brand new…

PS: To clarify what we mean by 2- or 4-person meal box, the following boxes are eligible for the gift if ordered for delivery of pickup on 4/22: Earth Day Box, Starter Box, Spring Seasonal Box, Breakfast Box, Classics Box, Mediterranean Box, Post-Meat Box, and Gluten-Free Box. We have a very limited amount of free gifts (they go quickly!), and only first 100 eligible boxes ordered will receive.

Recent Posts

May 24, 2023
I recently learned that garlic has 4 stages that it goes through on its journey to become the cured stuff you’re probably used to seeing. This year I learned about Green Garlic. It’s the mild, sweet, un-cured bulb, plus the fresh green shoots. We got our hands on a super limited crop from Red Fire out in Granby, and so we decided to see if we could incorporate it into every single different type of box we make next week…
May 23, 2023
We’ve intentionally steered clear of bowls for a long time. If you see Ayr tomorrow, ask him why : ) Tomorrow (5/24) we’re starting a 2-week test of bowls at CloverNTV, our restaurant in Newtonville. If it goes well, this could represent the beginning of one of the bigger changes our menu has EVER seen. We’re hoping we’ve cracked the code to bowls that are seasonal, carefully-composed, easy to carry, and craveable – all the things we love about bowls, and none of the things we don’t.
May 18, 2023
I used to eat Cheesy Grits almost every morning, and if you were eating with us around 2017, I bet you did too. We took our Plimoth-ground-grits off the menu for a little while, but now they’re back at all locations (except for the HUB for the time being). Stop in for breakfast during the next 2 weeks – we’re aiming for these to be hot and ready at 8am and we’ll be selling them til they’re out. The staff has been waking up extra early and adding a lot of extra whisking to their mornings, so we’d love to hear what you think. If you’ve never had our Cheesy Grits before, here are some things you should know….
May 16, 2023
What is Chris eating? When we toured the field at Siena, the crew was planting dahlia tubers. They get planted in warm soil, will grow all summer and will be ready for harvest in the fall. They reminded us of sunchokes, so we got to talking about whether the tubers are edible and it turns out they are! Are they delicious?
May 15, 2023
Do you want a beautiful box of produce for a fraction of what you’d pay in the grocery store? Do you want to invest in a farm’s success and be with them throughout the harvest season? Do you think you hate eggplants but you’ve just never had a good one? It might be time to look into a CSA (or farmshare).
May 5, 2023
I remember exactly the moment we started celebrating May the 4th (“May the Force” be with you). We were on a planning call about meal boxes and we were talking about how we were going to launch our Taco Tuesday program on Cinco de Mayo (May the 5th). Chris accidentally said “May the 4th” and Ayr said, “May the 4th! We should do a Star Wars Box!”
April 24, 2023
If you’ve been reading for a while you probably know we hate waste. Most of the time, minimizing waste is pretty unglamorous, but every once in a while our mission to reduce waste takes us to some very cool places. I look after Clover’s grocery marketplaces (including our Assembly Row grocery store). A few months ago I noticed that the marketplaces were going through a lot of our paper bags. They’re compostable, which is great. But I think the best bag is one you can use over and over again.
April 22, 2023
Few people know that Clover is environmental activism. This is by design.  And it works. We do these customer surveys and see that 9 out of 10 Clover customers are NOT vegetarian. Yet I’m constantly troubled by conflicting feelings about the approach we’ve taken.
April 10, 2023
Over the next 3 weeks, on a rolling schedule, most Clovers are going to be giving out a free hot or cold George Howell Montecarlos coffee to anyone who stops in between opening and 11 am. No strings— we just want to see you all and talk about coffee!! George Howell’s Montecarlos is a single-origin coffee we love for our pour-overs…
March 30, 2023
Each year, early spring is a busy time at the Clover kitchen because we have 2 of our tastiest boxes, usually back-to-back. For the Passover box, a lot of care goes into the kashering of the kitchen, with Rabbi Dolinger coming in to ensure the box is totally Kosher for Passover via Lighthouse Kosher.
March 15, 2023
That photo is corn fritters drizzled with maple syrup. We just started frying them up for a 2pm special – and they’re an element of our Maple Meal Box. If you head away from the city this time of year, you’ll see signs for sugar shacks, where maple sap gets boiled down into syrup and little restaurants pop up to serve pancakes, corn fritters, cider donuts, and dill pickles (to cut through the sweetness of the fresh syrup).
February 28, 2023
You’ve been asking! And finally we can announce: sunchokes are here, starting tomorrow, 3/1. Thanks to Pete’s Greens in VT for getting us local sunchokes. At breakfast we’ll be making The Sunchoke Truffle: fluffy house-baked pita, creamy truffled butter, caramelized onions, a 6.5 minute egg, and thin, crispy sunchoke slices. At lunch and dinner: The Sunchoke Mushroom: scallion-black-pepper mayo, fresh arugula, roasted crimini mushrooms, fried brined onions, and roasted sunchokes. But what IS a sunchoke?