Now that you’ve whipped up an amazing pesto sauce, it’s time to throw it over the best bucatini you can find. I love bucatini for its wide gauge pasta size and when you throw some perfect pesto sauce on it, you get one of the best pesto pastas you’ve had. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know I can’t stop talking about Rainbow Grocery, so get up off your ass and go there to get THIS.
They have this pasta in the dried pasta section and don’t just get a handful of it, get like half the box cause you’ll never want to use anything else after you try their bucatini.
Now, you can make pesto pasta plain with no toppings if you’d like, or you can make my go-to dinner, by adding in some fresh cherry tomatoes and brown mushrooms.
Mushrooms and cherry tomatoes are in our lives to add umami to our food, so why not use them for everything, right? The bonus about this, is that Christmas will come early in the form of a green and red carb crash, right on your dining room table.
To begin, we’ll need to boil some pasta in salt water. Bucatini is perfectly al dente in 12 minutes so just set a timer for that. While we wait for the pasta to boil, we can get the mushrooms seared on a non-stick pan in some olive oil. The key to making really good mushrooms is the sear and browning of them.
Trying not to flip them too much is important and when you brown them, the most amazing flavors come out. The worst is soggy mushrooms with no caramelization so really focus on getting a good sear here. Once done, turn off heat and toss in cherry tomatoes to warm them. We’re not trying to cook down the tomatoes, we’re just warming them through.
When the pasta’s done, take them straight out of the water with tongs and into a glass bowl with a touch of Vegan butter. It’s important that the noodles retain some of that pasta water so straining them completely is not necessary. We’ll want to let the pasta cool for a couple of minutes with the butter, so that when we put the pesto sauce on, it doesn’t taint the bright green color we’re going for.
Once pasta is cooled, throw in half of the pesto sauce and toss. Once evenly coated, put tomatoes and mushrooms in with the remaining sauce and give a quick second toss. If you need to loosen up the noodles at this point, use a couple of tbsp of the pasta water you have reserved on the stove. (A special note here! If you have any mushroom liquid remaining, do not throw that in the bowl as it will muddy the bright green pasta color we’re going for.)
Next up, the plating! I like to top everything off with a nice basil oil, additional hemp seed, nutritional yeast, and just a small sprinkle of truffle salt. I also get my basil oil from Rainbow Grocery in their bulk olive oil section.
This combination of finishing ingredients really brings everything together. If you want to get really fancy, shoot for the stars and zest some lemon all over for a refreshing taste.
And there you have it. What I’d like to call the triple P killa’, Perfect Pesto Pasta!
Perfect Pesto Pasta
A futuristic twist on a Northern Italian sauce. Packed with omega-3 shining in red and green.
Ingredients
- Pesto Sauce
- 250g bucatini pasta
- 2 cups sliced brown mushrooms
- 1 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes
- 1 tbsp vegan butter
- 1 tsp. olive oil (basil)
- 1/4 tsp black truffle salt
- 1/4 tsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp hemp seed
Directions
- Boil Pasta in salt water for 12 minutes
- Slice and prepare brown mushrooms and cut cherry tomatoes in half, length-wise
- Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in non-stick pan over medium-high heat and sear brown mushrooms. Flip mushrooms every one minute, until nicely browned (~4 min). Turn off heat and add in cherry tomatoes to warm them through
- In a glass mixing bowl, bring pasta straight in from pot while reserving some pasta water. Let pasta cool with vegan butter for 3-5 minutes.
- Once pasta has cooled a little, add half amount of pesto sauce and toss to evenly coat the noodles.
- Add in mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and remaining pesto sauce to the pasta, and give one last toss.
- Plate pasta and top off with hemp seed, black truffle salt, and nutritional yeast to your preference. Drizzle basil olive oil to finish.
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