Green pasta with pesto and meatballs
Do you ever wonder how you can incorporate (even) more vegetables into your meals? Have you ever thought of blending them into a delicious vegetable pesto to serve with pasta? This pesto is so quick and easy to make. You can use any leftover vegetables from the day before to make this pesto. Serve with a little Penne Tricolore, which also contains spinach and beetroot. A lovely variety on your plate!
Recipe:
Serves 4
- This dish can be served with either Penne Tricolore as with Fusilli to be served
For the meatballs:
- 400 to 450 g minced chicken
For the pasta sauce:
- 1 onion
- 1 to 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 small broccoli
- 50 g shelled pistachios
- 1 handful of baby spinach
- 1 handful of fresh basil leaves
- juice of half a lemon
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes (optional)
- pepper, salt & nutmeg
- 30 ml olive oil
- 50 ml plant-based milk
- 200 ml chicken or vegetable stock
Shape the minced meat into balls. Fry them until golden brown in a pan with a little fat.
Cook the pasta in lightly salted, boiling water for 5 minutes. Then rinse briefly and set aside. Set aside a few broccoli florets for garnishing.
Steam or blanch the broccoli florets together with the onion until al dente. If you don’t like raw garlic, you can blanch the garlic cloves at the same time.
Blend the steamed broccoli, onion, garlic, pistachios, spinach and basil together with the juice of half a lemon, a little plant-based milk, olive oil and nutritional yeast (optional) until smooth. Add a little stock until you achieve the desired consistency for the pesto sauce.
Heat the pesto sauce in a pan, then add the pasta. Add the rest of the broccoli, along with a few spinach and basil leaves. Serve warm with a few chicken meatballs and finish with a few drops of olive oil.
Enjoy!
Tip: instead of chicken or vegetable stock, you can also use the cooking liquid from the broccoli.
