A delicate, delightful garlicky pasta with juicy snow peas and delicious new potatoes makes the perfect dinner.
Springtime pastas are my favorites. A minimalist pasta dish that showcases seasonal veggies like asparagus or leeks or green beans can satiate your belly, serenade your tastebuds, and keep you in the pink, all at the same time. But I have to admit a partiality to any pasta recipe that incorporates my two favorite veggies this time of year -- snow peas and new potatoes.
Snow peas (snap peas work just as well) are perfect in this pasta, with their delicate sweetness and succulent crunch. The new potatoes, waxy, with barely-there skins, transform a dish that'll make you go, that was good!, into something you'll want to cook and eat again and again.
The only other flavorings here come from parsley, lots of it, garlic, again lots of it, lemon zest to make everything sparkle, red pepper flakes and ground black pepper. Sprinkle on some vegan cashew parmesan, only if you want to.
In sum, a pretty simple dish, but there's nothing actually simple about how it tastes.
I like using farfalle pasta in this recipe. Those butterfly shapes make a pretty dish prettier and just seem apt for spring, and the pasta is the perfect size to spear onto the fork along with the potatoes and the snap peas and then shovel into your mouth in one tasty explosion. You could use another similarly sized pasta, conchiglie, for instance, and do just as well.
You can also, very certainly, use gluten-free pasta, if you want to make this recipe gluten-free.
I just came back from a walk outside with Jay and the dogs. It was the loveliest evening, a cloud muting the sun and the scent of gardenias in the air. Spring really is magical, isn't it? And now, I'm gonna dig into that Pasta with Snap Peas and New Potatoes to make a pretty great evening quite perfect.
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Garlicky Pasta with Snow Peas and New Potatoes recipe:
Pasta with Snow Peas and New Potatoes
Ingredients
- 16 ounces farfalle pasta (any other similar-sized pasta or gluten-free pasta is fine)
- 2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 6 large cloves garlic (crushed, then minced)
- 1 pound snow peas (or snap peas or a combination of both)
- 1 pound baby potatoes (boiled and diced)
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 2 lemons (juice and zest)
- Salt and ground black pepper to taste
- 1 cup parsley (chopped)
(Optional add-ins)
- ½ cup walnuts (lightly toasted and coarsely chopped)
- 2 tablespoon capers
- ½ cup vegan parmesan cheese (for sprinkling)
Instructions
- Bring a large, salted pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta per package directions until al dente.
- Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the garlic and saute until it turns lightly blonde, just a few seconds. Then add in the snap peas along with the red pepper flakes, ground black pepper and salt. Saute a couple of minutes until the snap peas are a little tender. You don't them to lose that juicy crunch so don't overcook them.
- Stir in the potatoes, lemon zest and juice and then add the cooked and drained pasta with ½ cup of the pasta cooking water. Mix well. Check salt and pepper. Stir in the parsley and the optional add-ins, if using. Sprinkle on the cashew parmesan.
- Serve hot, warm, at room temperature, or cold.
Nutrition
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