Great Green Vegetable Pasta

With this recipe, we are definitely getting our daily intake of vegetables! Being in between road trips, we figured we'd better take advantage of our one week at the farmer's market this past weekend and make recipes that require a lot of veggies. We've picked two veggie intense dishes that we haven't made before and this was the first one we tried.







This recipe comes from our favorite cookbook, Simply in Season. I'm not quite sure how we've skipped over it before because it's the perfect quick and easy dinner. Being that it was a Sunday, I was in charge of making dinner and this was such an easy dish for me to put together. Will was home before I started to make dinner, so he cut up all the veggies while I did the sauce and got the pasta going. All in all it maybe took 15 minutes to make this dish? Beyond easy and incredibly satisfying.



Cooking Notes: The recipe suggests using broccoli, zucchini, green beans, peas, and green onions with optional spinach or asparagus. We ended up using broccoli, zucchini, spinach and green onions for our first version. (Second version was broccoli, zucchini, green beans, green onions and kale with bowtie pasta.)

Great Green Vegetable Pasta (adapted from Simply in Season; serves 4-6)
1 cup ricotta (or cottage) cheese
1/2 cup milk (optional if using cottage cheese)
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp fresh basil
2 tbsp fresh parsley
1/2 tsp salt
8-12 oz fusili, linguini, or spaghetti (we used whole wheat fusili)
2 cups broccoli
2 cups zucchini
1 1/2 cups spinach
1/4 cup green onions
2 tbsp butter

Combine ricotta cheese, milk, Parmesan, garlic, basil, parsley, and salt in a blender. Puree until smooth, then store in refrigerator until pasta is ready.

In large pot, bring water to a boil. Begin to cook pasta (usually takes around 8 minutes). Add broccoli 6 minutes before pasta is done, boiling for 3 minutes. Add zucchini and green onions (and green beans, if using) 2-3 minutes before pasta is done. Add spinach (and peas, if using) 1 minute before pasta is done. Check pasta for doneness and if ready, remove from heat and drain well before returning to pot.

Toss in 2 tbsp of butter with pasta and veggies until melted. Add ricotta cheese puree and toss gently to coat. Serve sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and fresh ground pepper.

The veggies, prepped and ready! Look at all those fresh greens!