Super Green Pasta

This green pasta is a wonderful end of summer dinner – with such a short cooking time, optionally virtually instant, and using ingredients that are widely available in July, August, and especially September. My garden is chock full with basil, greens, and zucchini right now, often more than I can eat.

Zucchini is quickly sautéed in a pan before blending with the greens, which adds a touch of creaminess and extra flavour from the browned bits. Garlic stays fresh for what’s essentially a twist on pesto, for a very green pasta sauce. It’s a great combination.

Depending on the type of pasta you use and the time it takes to cook, you could hypothetically have dinner ready in less than ten minutes. It took me longer to pick the ingredients for the sauce than it took to actually make the dish.

If you love quick pasta meals, also try my roasted summer vegetable pasta, quick garlic spinach pasta with pine nuts, and ready-in-minutes hummus pasta.

Why You Should Try This Recipe

This pasta is not only super green, it’s also super speedy – just what’s needed on hot high summer days. Use ingredients from your garden or easily found at markets or grocers at this time of year and have a nutrient-rich meal on the table in a very short period. If that doesn’t convince you, consider:

• It needs less than 10 ingredients: including salt, pepper, and the pasta water! You really just need pasta, greens, basil, zucchini, and lemon.
• It’s creamy without cream: while I’m not averse to added fat, it’s a joy to have a slightly creamy dairy-free recipe that doesn’t need nuts or something like coconut cream. The zucchini makes the sauce surprisingly creamy.
• You can have it on the table in 15 minutes: including the time it takes the water to boil for the pasta. This is very quick, especially if you use fresh pasta and can multitask a bit in the kitchen.

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes and Substitutions

• Greens: Any mix of spinach, rucola, chard, and even baby kale can be used here. I used a mix of baby greens that are just coming up for my autumn and over wintering greens, but any blend of hardy greens is fine.
• Pasta: Use any kind of pasta shape you like. Though short pasta is also great, green spaghetti (spaghettini in this case) is even better. If you’re making your own pasta you can also use blended spinach with water instead of plain water to go ultra green.
• Basil: If you don’t have fresh basil, you can fake it by using extra greens and a smaller amount of frozen basil. I don’t recommend dried.

Method

• Start by putting a pot of water on to boil for the pasta. While that’s heating up, chop and sauté the zucchini – this needs about five minutes in a hot pan, stirring frequently.
• While the zucchini is cooking, add the basil, greens, lemon zest and juice, and spices to a container to blend. This can be a small food processor or a container for an immersion blender. Once the zucchini is cooked, add it to the container and blend until very smooth.

• Cook the pasta once the water boils, and reserve 3 tablespoons of the cooking water before draining. Return the pasta to the pot along with the cooking water and the sauce, mix, and serve immediately.

Recipe Notes

Because I used fresh spelt pasta, which only takes a couple of minutes to cook, and my cooktop boils water in a couple minutes, I usually start the zucchini before anything else. The instructions are written for dried pasta (which needs about ten minutes) so keep that in mind if you’re using fresh/homemade.

The pasta water is part of what makes the sauce so smooth and dreamy. It’s quite starchy, so it helps the sauce stick to the noodles more effectively in addition to thinning the zucchini basil sauce out a bit. Much better than adding tap water.

To increase the protein content and filling aspects of this dish, use about a cup of cooked white beans in place of the zucchini. It’ll add the same slight creaminess to the sauce but keep you full longer.

If you really want to speed things up, you can leave the zucchini out of the equation, or use the bean sub. If you’re in a pinch, this is fine.

How to Store

Storage: like most pasta dishes, barring lasagne perhaps, this is at its very best when served immediately. Leftovers can be refrigerated in a sealed container for a day or two, but it won’t be as good when reheated.

Freezing: the pasta, mixed with the sauce, shouldn’t be frozen. If you would like to freeze the sauce separately, that works quite well. Simple blend and then cool fully before freezing in a sealed container. Thaw in the refrigerator, and then mix in the pasta water from the pasta you cook when ready to serve.

Expert Tips

While this is a pretty straightforward recipe, there are some tips and tricks that will make it go as smoothly as possible, and turn our perfectly the first time.

• Salt, salt, salt: As always, make sure you generously salt your pasta water. It’s the first step to a well seasoned pasta dish.
• Prep first: for the smoothest cooking experience, get everything ready beforehand. If you know you take a bit more time to chop zucchini, or need to carefully wash the greens, do that before starting with the recipe steps.
• Check the cooking time: if you’re making fresh pasta, it will only need a couple of minutes (rather than about ten) to cook, so the sauce should be made before adding the pasta to the cooking water.
• Use small zucchini: it’s not a better deal to get the biggest zucchini. They contain more water and seeds, and will have a poor flavour compared to the smaller ones.

More Quick Dinner Recipes

White Bean Herb Salad
Spring Green Veg Coconut Rice Noodles
Kale, White Bean, and Lemon Soup
Chickpea Quinoa Salad