How to Make Vegetarian Pumpkin Pasta From Scratch.
Great Tasting Pumpkin Pasta.
Pumpkins look as good as they taste.
Cook Time
Make this Dish Vegan or Vegetarian. You decide.
Vegetarian Pumpkin pasta recipe
Pumpkins and squashes are usually cheap and can be very tasty. The pumpkin in this vegetarian-friendly recipe is roasted in the oven to give this dish a wonderfully sweet caramel flavour. The ingredients given below will serve four people, this dish is quick and easy to make.
This recipe can also be made using the scrapped out pumpkin flesh from a Halloween Jack O Lantern. Just reduce the roasting time for smaller pieces of squash. Butternut squash is also excellent in this pasta recipe.
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Ingredients
- 1 small squash or pumpkin, diced
- 500g dried pasta
- 5 spring onions, sliced
- small handful sun dried tomatoes, sliced
- large bunch rocket or basil leaves
- small amount extra virgin olive oil
- few drops lemon juice
- salt and pepper, to taste
- handful pine nuts, toasted
- 100g vegetarian cheese, optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6
- Peel the butternut squash or pumpkin and remove the seeds. Cut up the flesh into small cubes and toss in half of the olive oil.
- Spread the squash in a single layer in a large roasting dish, season well and cook for around thirty minutes or until the squash is tender when you stick a knife in it.
- Spread the pine nuts onto a dry baking sheet and toast them in the top part of the oven as the squash is cooking.These should take about ten minutes to cook and are done when they start to turn a nice golden brown colour
- Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a large pan of boiling salted water until just tender.
- Fry the spring onions in the remaining olive oil for around five minutes and then add the sliced sun-dried tomatoes, keep stirring over a medium heat for a further two or three minutes and then remove from the heat
- Drain the pasta and place it into a large serving bowl, toss in the lemon juice. Add the roasted squash, spring onions and tomatoes and the juices from the frying pan and mix all the ingredients together.
- Add the rocket or basil and the toasted pine nuts and toss together.
- This dish is vegan at this point but if you want to add some vegetarian cheese then this is the time to crumble some over the top. Serve with thick slices of bread or garlic bread.
Good Served hot or cold.
Pumpkin pasta tastes just as good served hot or cold. It makes a great salad dish for parties too, as it can be made in advance and stored in the fridge for up to two days.
If you are using a pumpkin to make this recipe try using toasted pumpkin seeds instead of, or as well as, pine nuts. They taste even better if you sprinkle them with a little Turmeric or curry powder before you toast them. They will need to be cooked a little longer than the pine nuts, around fifteen minutes should do.
Pumpkins seeds not only taste good, they are good for you too. Pumpkin seeds are very rich in magnesium, they are a natural anti-inflammatory agent and can even help to lower levels of bad LDL cholesterol.
© 2010 Galaxy Harvey
