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Vegan red pesto pasta

vegan red pesto pasta

An easy dish to make with great ingredients that you will mostly have in your cupboard. Made with wholewheat pasta it's nutritionally sound. Make the red pesto, cook the pasta and veggies and mix - and you're done.
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Ingredients
  

For the red pesto

  • 150 g sun dried tomatoes
  • 150 g roasted red peppers
  • 40 g Olive oil
  • 30 g bag of fresh basil just use the leaves
  • 15 g crushed garlic - 4 good sized cloves crushing or slicing first avoids big lumps in the final pesto
  • 50 g lightly toasted pine nuts 10 mins at 150°C
  • 10 g nutritional yeast
  • 25 g vegan parmesan I use violife vegan parmesan or you can increase the nutrional yeast to compensate if you prefer.
  • 25 g lemon juice optional but helps balance the acidity.
  • zest whole lemon optional
  • 20 g green olives approx 4 large olives - optional
  • 1/2 teasp smoked or regular sea salt
  • 1/2 teasp teasp black pepper
  • 2 teasps smoked paprika or ordinary paprika optional - but it adds colour and richness
  • 50 g tomato puree

For the pasta and veggies part

  • 250 g wholewheat fusilli pasta
  • 6 whole vegan sausages I like Linda McCartney, but any will do except quorn.
  • 2 whole red peppers can use an orange or yellow and red pepper
  • 1 whole smallish courgette optional
  • 1 whole large red onion
  • 300 g baby plum tomatoes can use cherry tomatoes
  • 60 g black olives cut in half
  • 50 g pine nuts lightly roasted 5 mins at 150°C

Instructions
 

  • Weigh all the pesto ingredients directly into the food processor.
  • Pulse blend them until you have the right texture – don’t overdo it. Put the finished pesto in the fridge while you do the rest
  • For this dish, I definitely think the Actifry is by far the easiest method. Because you can be cooking one lot of veggies while you're chopping the next lot. Slice the red onions like this, and give them 5 minutes in the actifry.
    Slicing the onions top to bottom
  • Then add in the peppers sliced like this (and courgette if you’re using it). You can also add the vegan sausages at this point and give the whole lot around 12 more minutes. If the veggies aren’t quite done, fish the sausages out and give the other veggies a few minutes more.
    slicing the red peppers into thinnish strips
  • Cook the tomatoes separately to the peppers because they would get too bashed about by the other veggies. Give them around 12 minutes
  • If you don't want to cook the sausages with the peppers and onions, do them on their own for 12 minutes.
    Linda McCartney sausages cooked
  • Meanwhile cook the pasta for 10 minutes – don’t overcook – it still needs a little bit of bite to it. Use a generous amount of boiling water, lightly salted and with a dash of oil to help keep the pasta separate.
    The cooked pasta
  • Add the pesto to the drained pasta and mix well.
    adding the pesto to the pasta
  • Slice the sausages in half, then into 5 smaller pieces.
    the chopped vegan sausages
  • Heat up the veggies in the microwave if they have cooled down.
  • Then combine all the ingredients in the pan you cooked the pasta in.
    Vegan red pesto pasta
  • Serve with hummus, salad and garlic bread.
    Pasta served with salad, hummus & garlice bread

Notes

  • if making the gnocci version of this use between 175 & 200g  with 500g of gnocci. Because the gnocci doesn't hold the pesto, you need less.
  • with the pasta version with 250g of pesto you won't need the full amount of pesto - more like half - which leaves you half to freeze and use later.
  • I've used a whole pack of sundried tomatoes which is why this makes a larger quantity, if you want to make just egough, halve the quantities.
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