Whole Wheat Pasta Primavera
I love to find new and interesting vegetarian pasta dishes. The carmelized roasted vegetables in this dish add a really nice depth of flavor. This is a variation of a recipe I saw made on Giada DeLaurentis' "Every Day Italian". I like to try and use whole wheat pasta whenever I can in most of my pasta dishes. Not a BIG fan of zucchini, so I decided to substitute broccoli instead, cuz I LOVE it sooo much!. I also roasted a head of garlic in with the veggies, but that, of course, is optional. The original recipe added the cherry tomatoes in, UNROASTED, at the end. I did not read carefully enough, and roasted them right in the pan with everything else. They ended up being just fine roasted, but you may do either way. I catagorized this recipe under "vegan", but left in the grated cheese in as an option!
DIRECTIONS
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- In a large bowl, toss all the vegetables (minus the cherry tomatoes) with the olive oil, salt, pepper, italian spices, garlic powder and crushed red pepper, if using.
- Arrange the vegetables on 2 large baking sheets, making sure they are in an even layer.
- Bake until carrots are tender, and remaining vegetables begin to brown slightly, and carmelize.
- It is a good idea to lightly toss the vegetables after about 10 minutes of cooking.
- Cook pasta according to package directions in boiling salted water.
- Drain pasta and reserve about 1 cup of the cooking liquid.
- Toss the pasta and vegetables in a large bowl.
- Add the cherry tomatoes and any of the reserved cooking liquid is pasta seems dry.
- Season again with salt and pepper to taste.
- Sprinkle with grated cheese of your choice and fresh basil leaves.