This delicious linguine pasta dish features spinach, pea shoots, onion, and garlic, with some hearty portabella mushrooms and sweet red bell peppers.

Pasta is such an essential go-to dish to create a flavorful and easy meal with a variety of vegetables and fresh ingredients. I love me a good farm-to- table meal; and these fresh chopped veggies from the farmer’s market are the perfect companions to pasta linguine. Even better, this a fast and easy quick meal, and even the busiest of us can whip up this gourmet dinner in no time!

Pasta has been getting the cold shoulder a lot lately with the ever increasing popularity of gluten free and low carb diets. Even I personally have been limiting my carbs lately and trying to eat a lot more whole and raw foods, but there will ALWAYS be a place for pasta in my life. The key is to utilize it as a vehicle for the fabulous fresh vegetables and sauces you create. My kids love to eat pasta, and I love to give it to them loaded with nutritious vegetables and ingredients.

Pasta is also an excellent dish when you need a carb loaded meal to give a boost of energy such as at the end of a long Ramadan day of fasting!

I love this recipe because it is fast, fresh, and easy. No sooner than you finish reading this post, you can whip up this quick gourmet meal.

I simply use inspiration from the fresh produce available. At the farmer’s market I picked up some pea shoots for the first time (at the suggestion of my friend), fresh spinach leaves, portabella mushrooms, red bell peppers and tomatoes.  I made a quick marinara sauce with all the tomatoes I got, then used the remainder of the vegetables to make a delicious rainbow of textures and flavor. I always start by sautéing some onions or garlic, in some olive oil or in this case both. Then add in the mushrooms and peppers until they start to become tender, and add the leafy spinach and pea shoots at the end so that they do not get too soft and release water. I toss this fabulous mixture with the pasta and drizzle my delicious homemade marinara over it, and we have a gorgeous and colorful meal in no time!

Garnish with fresh basil or parsley. Bon a petit!

Garden Vegetable Linguine

2014-07-14 10:42:30

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Prep Time

8 min

Cook Time

5 min

Total Time

13 min

Prep Time

8 min

Cook Time

5 min

Total Time

13 min

Ingredients

1. 6-8 portabella mushrooms (2 cups sliced)
2. 1 cup chopped fresh spinach
3. 1/2 cup pea shoots, parsley, or scallions (optional)
4. 1 red bell pepper, diced
5. 1/2 cup marinara sauce or sliced tomatoes
6. 1/2 onion, sliced
7. 4 cloves garlic, sliced
8. 2 tbsp olive oil
9. 1 lb linguine pasta
10. salt and pepper to taste (about 1/2 tsp salt)

Instructions

1. Boil the linguine pasta in water with olive oil until al dente (about 8 minutes), and drain.
2. While the pasta boils, slice the mushrooms, pepper, onion, and garlic. The spinach only need a rough chop; it will decrease in size considerably over the heat.
3. Sautee the onion and garlic slices in the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and red pepper and toss for about 1 minute. If using fresh tomato slices instead of marinara, add the tomato slices. Add the spinach and pea shoots and toss gently. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Remove from heat and immediately toss in the linguine pasta. If using the marinara sauce, toss in the sauce at this point. Serve hot.

By Noha ElSharkawy

Sugar & Garlic https://sugarandgarlic.com/

I love pesto. And I love avocados. This dish combines these two loves into a flavorful and fresh pasta salad!

I’m a proponent of creative cooking, and using ingredients you have on hand to create delicious meals. Its a survival skill that comes in handy when you are a busy mom just trying to feed hungry mouths. My daughter’s school was having a family luncheon pot luck, and I had signed up for some type of pasta salad. I am known to try new recipes for the first time on large groups. Brave I know, but it hasn’t back-fired so far. I knew I wanted to make pesto, but I never make it the traditional way (you may have read in my other posts about my husband’s deathly nut allergy). So I don’t use nuts and I usually improvise.  So here I had tons of parsley, avocados, and perfectly juicy and plump cherry tomatoes.

Oh that avocado can whip into a beautiful green “butter” for my pasta salad! Who needs nuts? (omega-3 fats, CHECK)

Lulu do you want to pick some parsley leaves from the garden!?

My daughter nods enthusiastically.

And so it was created: avocado- pesto pasta salad. No nuts, but plenty of kick from garlic and earthy parsley, the creaminess of the avocado, and a tad of lemon juice and we were set for a delicious meal in no time! We used bow tie pasta because, well, they are my daughter’s favorite. What 3 year old girl wouldn’t love to eat bow ties?! Anything to make eating appealing and fun for kids, right?
Lemon or lime juice is absolutely necessary here to keep the avocado’s vibrant green color. Some salt, pepper, and crushed garlic season the “pesto” perfectly, and the fresh parsley leaves give this sauce the perfect texture and earthiness to replace the traditional basil. At the end I add sliced cherry tomatoes and I sprinkle on some freshly grated parmesan cheese. YUM.

This thick, creamy sauce is a simple combination of blended avocados, lemon juice, salt, pepper, crushed garlic, olive oil, and parsley.

Avocado-Pesto Pasta Salad

2014-06-22 18:34:24

A deliciously creamy and zesty pesto variation makes this the perfectly refreshing dish to serve to your family or friends!

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Prep Time

25 min

Cook Time

8 min

Prep Time

25 min

Cook Time

8 min

Ingredients

1. 1 lb pasta (bowties, penne, fusili)
2. 2 ripe avocados
3. 1 lemon or lime, juiced
4. salt and pepper to taste (about 1 tsp)
5. 3 cloves of garlic
6. 1 tbsp olive oil
7. 1 bunch of parsley (about 1/2 cup chopped)
8. 1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
9. 1 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

Instructions

1. Cook the pasta in boiling water with some olive oil, according to directions, until "al dente"(about 8 minutes). Drain and set aside to cool in a large mixing bowl.
2. Slice the avocado open, remove the pit and scoop out the flesh. Put it into a food processor or blender. Add the salt, pepper, lemon juice, garlic cloves, parsley, and olive oil. Blend until smooth and creamy.
3. Pour the sauce over the cooled pasta. Add the cherry tomatoes and toss in the grated cheese.
4. Place in a serving dish, and enjoy!

By Noha ElSharkawy

Sugar & Garlic https://sugarandgarlic.com/

Your other baker friends will be green with envy when they see and taste how fluffy and gorgeous these pancakes turn out! Not only because they are delicious, but because they are packed with spinach! The lovely green hue does little to the taste because the spinach is ground so fine in the Vitamix blender. All you are really getting is the healthy benefits, but the spinach itself is tasteless. Spinach is packed with more than the required daily value of vitamin A, vitamin K, manganese, and folate and plenty of iron, anti-oxidants, and anti-inflammatory phytonutrients. If you are struggling to get your kids to eat healthy spinach as I have been, then you will just LOVE this recipe. Not only is it full of spinach but it is made with whole wheat flour, less than 2 tbsp of sugar, and healthy vitamin D milk and eggs. I have little to protest in this recipe. You could use only 1 tbsp of sugar in the recipe if you plan to use syrup, but because I only topped it with fresh fruits and pureed raspberries, I added an extra dose of sugar.

The green color is very vibrant and fun, and there are a TON of excuses to eat a fun green pancake! Use any of these reasons to get your kids excited about breakfast and a spinach packed pancake (tip: you don’t HAVE to tell them there is spinach): St. Patricks day, those MSU game fans (I’ll take BLUE thanks), Halloween, conjuring Incredible Hulk powers, make a “Very Hungry Caterpillar, or just a green monster kind of morning!

This recipe yields one of the best pancakes I have ever tasted and it is adapted from allrecipes.com; find it here. I substituted the white flour for whole wheat flour and pureed the spinach with the milk to make a nice bright green spinach milk. I was thinking about how we add spinach to all of our smoothies because its flavor is so discrete, so I thought it would be a great addition to pancakes as it would not really alter the recipe. For the topping, simply puree fresh or frozen and thawed raspberries and add sliced bananas. It is the perfect balance of sweet and tart! So here it is! Enjoy!

Best Ever Pancakes (with spinach!)

2014-01-19 13:22:07

Serves 2

Healthy, fluffy, and delicious, this is the PERFECT pancake to feed your family!

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Prep Time

15 min

Cook Time

10 min

Total Time

25 min

Prep Time

15 min

Cook Time

10 min

Total Time

25 min

Ingredients

1. 1 1/2 c whole wheat flour
2. 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
3. 1 tsp salt
4. 2 tbsp sugar
5. 1 1/4 c milk
6. 2 c fresh baby spinach
7. 1 egg (at room temperature)
8. 3 tbsp melted butter
9. 1 tsp vanilla extract
10. 1 cup fresh or frozen and thawed raspberries

Instructions

1. Puree the baby spinach with milk in a blender until fine and milk is green and smooth.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
3. In a larger bowl, whisk the egg with 1 tsp of vanilla extract. Add the milk and melted butter.
4. Gradually add in the flour mixture and whisk until well incorporated.
5. Spray a griddle with butter and turn the heat to medium high. Drop a ladle full of batter on the pan to form circles. Allow it to cook until you see small bubbles form (about 1 minute). Flip the pancakes and cook for about another minute on the other side.
6. Puree the raspberries until liquid.
7. Serve with the pureed raspberries, your favorite syrup, or other fruit toppings.

Notes

1. Omit the spinach to have regular colored and a classic fantastic tasting pancake!

By Noha ElSharkawy

Adapted from Dakota Kelly (allrecipes.com)

Adapted from Dakota Kelly (allrecipes.com)

Sugar & Garlic https://sugarandgarlic.com/