Put a Little Primavera in Your Step Spring is here, and it’s time to celebrate by adding a little freshness and lightness to your favorite year-round dishes, such as risottos and pasta. Primavera means springtime in Italian, but pasta primavera, while Italian in name, has American roots. It was created in the 1970s in the famous New York restaurant Le Cirque, and it embraces the season with fresh vegetables and herbs enveloped in a lemony cream sauce. This risotto takes inspiration from pasta primavera, with fresh asparagus and peas studding the rice, along with sweet briny shrimp and juicy Meyer lemon.