We don't always have steak, you know! We actually barely every have it, really. Now THIS pasta is much more like what we end up eating 3-4 times a week.
This is a really easy pasta to make for a lot of people. Between having to finish projects, train for various work places, video games, and who knows what else, most meals we make at the house are pretty quick and easy. Also, kale. Kale kale kale. Any and every way we can make it and eat it, we've been doing it. Raw, baked, fried with veggies for stir fry, or just thrown in with the pasta like we did here. Tonight, we grill it. BUT UNTIL THEN: pasta!
This made enough food for about four hungrier people. It fed three last night and two for lunch today!
Mixed Vegetable, Chipotle-Pesto Pasta with Kale
1 box of your choice of noodles (I usually use whatever we happen to have...hence the elbow macaroni!)
1 bell pepper
1/2 onion
1 sweet potato
1 clove garlic
1 chipotle pepper
optional sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 small can of tomato paste
1/3-1/2 cup pesto of your choice!
decent amount of kale
*optional bacon recipe explained at the end. we ate it the first way last night and the bacon way for lunch today! not as healthy though...
FIRST:
Put water in a pot big enough for your pasta and cook your pasta as per the instructions on the box!
SWEET POTATO:
If you use microwaveable sweet potatoes for quick cookin' like I do, microwave your sweet potato for five minutes (instead of seven) before taking it out of the microwave and running it under hot water. This stops it from cooking too much more as well as making it easier for you to hold! Then, I just pop off the plastic and chop it up in cubes!
If you don't cheat and microwave like I do, I would slice my sweet potato up and then boil the slices until tender. Then, like with the microwaved ones, cube them. Just makes nice, bite-sized pieces.
Next, you want to smash your garlic and mince it. Cut up the onion, bell pepper, sun-dried tomatoes, and chipotle. (you can add any veggies you want. we added a bit of green onion just because we had it, but feel free to add snap peas, broccoli, squash, etc.)
While your pasta is boiling, put those veggies in a pan with either some oil or some butter and get them cooking too!
Once your peppers are tender and your onions are a bit more yellow/transparent, add the tomato paste and pesto. Although these seem a bit clumpy or thick at first to be making a pasta sauce with, we really just want the oils to coat the noodles...kind of like when you just olive oil and a bit of cheese on noodles. Just keep mixing around until the tomato paste and pesto are both evenly distributed around the vegetables.
OH YEAH KALE. For the kale, what I did, was put the fresh kale in with the noodles when they only had about a minute or two left to boil until time for straining.
We had an avocado that needed to be used, so I put half in with the pasta at the same time as the pesto/tomato paste. It added a nice kind of creamy texture to the veggies.
FINALLY
Put your vegetable pesto medley in with the strained noodles/kale! Mix everything up and enjoy!
To make the unhealthier, bacon version (or to make your leftovers tastier, like we did):
Fry up some bacon in a pan. However much you may want, go for it. Or pancetta! That'd be good. Once you have crispy bacon, crumple it up and it to the pasta mixture. Remove some of the bacon grease (but not all of it!) Now throw the pasta into the pan and kind of fry it/heat it up in the natural bacon extract. It makes a delicious, hearty pasta!
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