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Spinach Pesto Pasta with Roasted Vegetables

What you need: 

2 cups fresh spinach
1/4 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic, chopped or crushed
1/4 cup walnuts
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
salt and pepper, to taste
vegetables (I used golden beets, tomatoes, and asparagus)
pasta
pine nuts

What you do: 

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. For spinach pesto, blend spinach in a food processor with olive oil until fairly smooth. Add garlic, walnuts, yeast, salt, and pepper and blend until smooth, adding more olive oil if necessary.
2. Roast vegetables. If using asparagus, tomatoes, or similar veggies, add during last 15 minutes. Cook pasta according to package directions, drain, rinse with cold water, and toss with pesto. Let sit until needed. This will allow the pesto to soak into the pasta.
3. After all the veggies are done roasting, remove and cut into small pieces. After veggies are removed, roast pine nuts for 2-3 minutes. Assemble roasted veggies on top of pasta. Sprinkle roasted pine nuts on top.
This would be great with all sorts of roasted vegetables, I used what I had on hand: beets, asparagus, and tomatoes. Other good things would be red peppers, garlic cloves, red onion, broccoli, eggplant, fennel, or zucchini. Go wild! To be honest, the veggies were good, but the spinach pesto really stole the show!
Source of recipe: Dreamed this up while procrastinating at work.

Preparation Time: 
15 minutes, Cooking time: 45 minutes
Cooking Time: 
45 minutes
Servings: 
2
Recipe Category: 

SO HOW'D IT GO?

This was a big hit in my household. I roasted cauliflower and only a small amount of cherry tomatoes because I couldn't imagine roasted tomatoes, but I was wrong. The tomatoes were bomb, next time im going to put a whole heap of them. Definitely a keeper, thanks for sharing. 

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I made this using pumpkin seeds instead of walnuts and pine nuts.
And used roast beets and cauliflower.

I actually think the beets are an odd combination with the pesto, but the cauliflower was awesome!

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WOW!
This was so delicious I made it twice this week :D The first time I used red peppers and asparagus, and the second time cherry tomatoes and asparagus - both were wonderful, but I preferred it with the tomatoes. I also increased the amount of pesto, because you can never have too much pesto :) Even my religiously carnivorous brother loved it!

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This recipe is definitely a keeper! YUM!
Instead of roasting the veggies, I just sauteed them... carrots, broccoli, red onion, red bells, and zucchini! And I added a ton more garlic!
Thanks for thinking this up and sharing it! It will be a regular at my house!

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Mmmmm... So good!

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This pesto was awesome! I used the sauce with vegan gnocchi for an extra special dish for my family Christmas Dinner (A mix of omnis, ovo-lacto vegetarians & vegans). I had never actually made pesto before, so I wasn't sure what the optimal consistency was, I used a bit more olive oil than the recipe indicated (maybe 1/2 c. total).  I also had some issues using a my blender instead of a food processor, but fortunately, I got a food processor for Christmas  :). I also added a squeeze of lemon juice at the very end and fresh basil. Next time, I will probably add some extra garlic, as my husband really, really likes garlic. The roast veggies were a perfect compliment to the pesto, I used asparagus, plum tomatoes and portabella mushrooms. The whole dish worked really well with gnocchi and I absolutely can't wait to make it again. Thanks so much for thinking this up!

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This was absolutely delicious! I added dried basil (about a teaspoon) to the pesto, because I simply cannot imagine pesto without basil. That's how I usually make it anyway, unless I happen to have fresh pesto in my garden....

I also added baby carrots and winter squash (acorn, I believe, cubed) to the beets. The squash was delicious. In the summer, I would probably use summer squash, added in the last 15 minutes. I tried using lima beans, too, but in the future I'm not going to roast them, just boil and add at the end. They added some good protein.

My husband liked it, so it must have been good!

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I kind of made this pesto the other day, but with pinenuts and sunflower seeds instead of walnuts, and only half the amount of oil.
It was really tasty, and my husband has been liberally spreading it on his lunch ever since. Simple, tasty, healthy - I like : )

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this was delicious. I used spinach pasta and the flavor of the pesto went excellent with it. I make this weekly :)

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Made this (got a hold of fresh spinach) and it was terrific! It makes a lot so it is happily in my freezer right now. The only thing I did differently was adding a little lemon juice, I always do that when making pesto. I was really surprised how close this tasted to being basil (good for me because I'm only now learning to love spinach)! Thank you!

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