Sunday, March 28, 2010

Veggies and Pasta, yet again

I'm getting pretty close to getting caught up with my posting!  I compare doing this to writing up experiments in my lab notebook - when you get busy, it's the first thing to go.  And the more things that you need to add, the less you feel like doing it.  And so the cycles goes...
But anyway, this post is about the veggie and pasta dish I made last week (3/22).  I had a ton of veggies, and I wanted to do something easy with them.  This meant roasting.  When I have veggies and I don't have an actual recipe in mind, I just roast them.  It's so easy, and I think they taste best this way.  This time I had asparagus, broccoli and zucchini.
Oh and this reminds me - when I made a dish using asparagus the week before, I added the stems to my veggie scraps stash in my freezer.  I was thinking, and asparagus probably isn't the best to use for a neutral vegetable stock.  It has such a strong flavor, it would probably overpower everything else in it.  I decided to take those out, and add them to a separate bag with the stems from this dish.  I can make an asparagus stock that I can use solely for asparagus soups!  I may just eventually end up throwing them away, but for the meantime, they are hanging out in my freezer.
I used the scraps from the zucchini and broccoli to add to the main veggie bag.  I can't wait until I have enough scraps to do something with them!

Recipe:
Roasted Broccoli, Zucchini and Asparagus with Whole Wheat Rotini
Ingredients:
2 heads broccoli florets
1 lb asparagus
2 medium zucchini
olive oil
s&p
whole wheat rotini
goat cheese
red pepper flakes
freshly grated parmesan

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 F.  Wash the veggies, and cut them to similar sizes.  I snapped the ends off the asparagus and cut the remaining stalk into perhaps 3 pieces, cut the broccoli into slightly larger than bite-sized florets, and cut the zucchini into halved coins.  Put them on a foil-lined deep pan, and drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and freshly cracked pepper.
While the veggies are roasting, heat salted water for the pasta.  (I'm not sure how much pasta I used.  I just poured what I thought would be a good amount into the water, figuring if it wasn't enough I could make more for my leftovers.)
When the veggies are tender, but haven't started to brown much, add the pasta to the boiling water, and turn up the oven to 425 F.  Cook pasta until al dente, drain, and add to the veggies.  Toss them together and scrape up all of those caramelized bits.
For each serving, toss hot veggies and pasta with crumbled goat cheese and red pepper flakes, and grate parmesan on top.

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