Think of all the ways tomatoes become pasta sauce – blister pack of cherry tomatoes for a pasta salad, whole tomatoes simmer slowly to rag. But swapping tomatoes for the spring produce on the market or for the veggies on their last legs in your fridge opens up so many possibilities for satisfying and exciting vegetable-centric pasta dishes.
With a little time and some stock ingredients, many veggies can get spicy enough to coat noodles. Some firm ones, such as broccoli or onions, may need to be cooked until subdued. Others, such as basil or sweet peas, don’t need to be cooked at all.
The following techniques combine the noodles lurking in your cupboard with fresh produce to maximize flexibility and flavor. These methods extract the best flavors and textures from vegetables, so you can use what you have to cook whatever you want. These quick and casual ways to put together vegetable-driven meals involve little effort and great reward. Just remember: do more with less. Don’t think too much about it. And also: it’s just food.
Break down the products to make sauce from them.
The smaller the vegetable pieces, the easier they collapse into sauce. You can grate juicy options like corn, tomatoes, and summer squash. Leave small things like peas alone as you can break them in the pot. Boil firm vegetables, cool them in ice water and chop them to soften them. Everything else (cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, leeks, shallots, fennel, mushrooms) can be thinly sliced or roughly chopped.
Recipe: Frying Pan Broccoli Spaghetti
For particularly sweet vegetables, roast them slowly.
The faster way to coat pasta with chopped vegetables is to sauté them on the stovetop, perhaps with aromatics and certainly with salt, until they resemble sauce. Add the pasta and pasta water and stir until the mixture smooths the noodles.
The hands-off version is done in the oven: Roast vegetables and aromatics with a generous amount of olive oil until very soft. The veggies will caramelize and concentrate, while the oil becomes intensely delicious with anything swimming in it. Toss this jammy, oily mess with pasta water and it becomes sauce. (For a smoother texture, mash everything first with a fork or potato masher.)
Recipe: Gnocchi With Roasted Peppers And Tomatoes
Trust those not-so-secret ingredients: salt and time.
Since vegetables are mostly water, season them with enough salt to get that water out, soften them slightly, and distill their natural flavors. This is especially important with an uncooked sauce. The longer the vegetables mix with salt, fat and spices, the more intense the flavor of the sauce.
Recipe: Spring Soba With Canned Fish
Look for bright spots for brown foods.
A long-cooked vegetable is a flavorful vegetable, but it can also need some texture and freshness. Consider adding invigorating, acidic ingredients to deeply caramelized ingredients. Stir a splash of wine or vinegar into a hot pan to scrape out the sticky, browned bits as it cooks, or grate cheese or lemon zest over the pasta just before serving. This is also a great place to add fresh, mild herbs, such as mint, parsley, or dill.
Recipe: Caramelized Zucchini Pasta
Make a fresh green sauce any time of the year.
Tender herbs and similarly tender veggies are reliably tasty and always available, meaning a perky green sauce can be too. To use up whatever you have on hand, combine 2 packed cups of greens with 1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese, ½ cup of nuts, ½ cup of olive oil, and some garlic. The greens can be parsley, basil, mint, dill, arugula, spinach, carrot tops or beet greens. Use a mix or just one, but know that some, like mint and dill, are more flavorful than others, like parsley and spinach. The nuts, which add firmness and creaminess, can be walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, pistachios or pine nuts. (Keep them raw for a milder sauce.) You can swap the garlic for scallions, shallots, chives, or other spring alliums. Chop all the ingredients together and it smells like spring inside too.
Recipe: Pasta With Chopped Pesto And Peas
This article is an excerpt from “I Dream of Dinner (So You Don’t Have To)” by Ali Slagle (Clarkson Potter, 2022).