Serves: 4
How much does it cost? This lean ‘n’ green pasta recipe cost me less than 25p per person.
What are the benefits? This dish is suuuper high in antioxidants, very low in fat and somewhere between two to three of your five a day.
When you’re trying to eat healthier, it’s very easy to get swept up in the diet culture of calorie counting and restrictive eating, and I’ve had to really train myself out of those habits (I still fall off the wagon, believe me).
Nowadays, when I want to eat a little healthier, I just try to think of obvious changes, like making sure you eat your five a day, cutting down on processed food and, of course, eating your greens.
Recently I made a very conscious effort to inject some more “green” into our diets. It’s not my favourite colour to serve up on the plate, but many green veggies are super good for you, full of health benefits and definitely worth making space for. For me, it’s about combining these sorts of ingredients with things I love and eat regularly, like pasta.
That’s how I came up with this lean ‘n’ green pasta recipe, which can be pretty much made up with any leftover greens you’ve got at home, a spoonful of pesto and whatever pasta shape you can find. I’ve used broccoli, peas and kale, but these are totally interchangeable!
INGREDIENTS
300g Dried Pasta
1 Large Onion, Chopped
8 Small Broccoli Florets
50g Curly Kale
300g Garden Peas
2 tbsp Green Pesto
1 Vegetable Stock Cube
SEASONING
I know not everyone is the biggest fan of green veggies and their often unique flavour, so a great way to disguise this is using plenty of garlic (dried or fresh), salt and pepper, as well as the pesto, to season this dish.
HOW TO MAKE LEAN ‘N’ GREEN PASTA
1. Put on a large pan of salted water, bring to the boil, reduce the heat to simmering and cook the pasta according to packet instructions (mine takes around 15 minutes!).
2. In a decent-sized frying pan, throw in the onion and garlic, cook for a couple of minutes until soft and then reduce the heat.
3. Add the broccoli, crumble in the vegetable stock cube and scatter in some salt and pepper. Pour in 200ml (or around one quarter of a standard mug) of water and simmer for around 5 minutes.
4. Throw in the peas and kale and finish cooking for another 5 minutes, or until the liquid dries up.
5. Drain the pasta, combine with the veggies and stir in a couple of spoonfuls of pesto, and that’s that!
#ThisGirlEats 