The other night my brothers family came over for dinner. His family includes his wonderful wife and two of my adorable nephews! I adore these kids and obviously wanted to make something for dinner that a two year old would be willing to eat. He loves pasta and broccoli. I decided to do a nice big bowl of veggie pesto pasta. I loaded it with lots of fresh veggies and I don’t know about you, but I make pesto a little differently every time I make it. It always depends on what I have on hand. Pesto really needs 4 ingredients: garlic, toasted nuts, greens, and olive oil. Now don’t go changing the garlic and olive oil, but you can change up the nuts and greens a lot. Sometimes I do pine nuts and basil, but I also like to switch it up and do walnuts and spinach or almonds and arugula. You can really get creative and find your perfect combo! This recipe includes a combo of pine nuts, almonds, spinach, and basil.
Veggie Pesto Pasta
serves 6
What you’ll need:
1 lb. of pasta (I used rigatoni)
1 purple onion, halved and sliced
1 head of broccoli, cut in 1-2 inch pieces
1 bunch of asparagus, cut in 1 inch pieces with the tops reserved
5 leaves of swiss chard, sliced
2 zucchini, halved and sliced
a couple handfuls of grape tomatoes
pesto:
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted
4 cloves of garlic, peeled (you can do more or less, but this is a good amount)
about 2 cups basil leaves and stems
about 2 cups spinach
What you’ll do:
In a very large pan, on medium heat, add a couple tablespoons of olive oil and the onion, broccoli, and asparagus stems. Saute on medium low for a few minutes and while it’s going, make the pesto. Also put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta.
In a food processor, place the garlic, then greens, then the nuts. Pulse until pureed. While pulsing, slowly drizzle in about 1 – 1 1/2 cup olive oil until the pesto is smooth.
So, your water should be boiling, so cook your pasta until it’s al dente.
At the same time, add the rest of the veggies (except the tomatoes) to the vegetable pan and saute on medium. When the pasta is done cooking, reserve a couple cups of the cooking water and strain the rest of it. In the large pasta pot combine the pasta, pesto, vegetables, and tomatoes. Gently stir together. If the pesto is super thick, add a little bit of that reserved cooking water.
Serve warm and enjoy!
PS my brothers family loved this recipe 🙂
Thank you for this post. It was very useful for me.
I made a different version of this recipe using a jar of pesto I wanted to use up. Used lots of broccoli, some spinach, portobello mushrooms and lots of plum tomatoes stirred in at the end. It got rave reviews from my dinner guests who are carnivores. I often make my own pesto adding grape tomatoes and raw almonds instead of pine nuts. It is always good but the suggestions in this recipe made it great. Thanks.
Thanks Evan! I’m so glad you liked it and I love that you added portobello mushrooms Mmmmm!