Creamy Pasta Primavera
A variant of Pasta Primavera — An ingredient branch from the authored reference, with its selected additions included in the quantities and method.
Contains gluten, dairy
Restrictions
Containsgluten · dairyIt is in an ingredient you cannot leave out.
Diets
VegetarianPescatarianNo porkNo alcohol
Worked out from the ingredient list. It knows nothing about brands, shared equipment or cross contamination, and it is not a certification — if you have an allergy, you still have to read the label.
Ingredients
Servings:
| 12 oz | pasta (penne or fettuccine) |
| 3 tbsp | olive oil (divided) |
| 1 ½ cup | broccoli (small florets) |
| 1 unit | zucchini (half-moons) |
| 1 unit | bell pepper (strips) |
| 1 cup | cherry tomatoes (halved) |
| ½ cup | peas |
| 3 clove | garlic (sliced thin) |
| 2 tbsp | butter |
| ¾ cup | Parmesan (grated) |
| ¼ cup | basil (torn) |
| 1 unit | lemon (zest) |
| 1 tsp | salt |
| ½ tsp | black pepper |
| ⅓ cup | heavy whipping cream |
Optional
Not counted above. The dish works without them.
| ¼ tsp | red pepper flakes |
Steps
- boil9 minwell-salted, 1 minute shy of the packagepasta, with two cups of the cooking water saved before the drain — in the no-cream version that cloudy water is the sauce; forgetting it is forgetting the sauce at the store
- saute5 minhigh, in waves, don't crowdbroccoli first in half the oil, then zucchini + bell pepper, salted lightly as they go — each vegetable gets hot pan time instead of a communal steam; they should blister and stay bright, not slump
- saute2 minmedium, garlic then tomatoes+ remaining oil + garlic until fragrant, then tomatoes + peas just until the tomatoes slacken and their juice starts to run — that juice is the acid half of the sauce
- toss3 minmedium heat, cream and pasta water added graduallyAdd the pasta, butter and listed cream to the vegetables over medium heat. Add reserved hot pasta water a little at a time and toss until the sauce coats the pasta; do not pour in a full cup automatically. Keep the next Parmesan addition off the heat and loosen further only as needed.
- toss2 minoff heat, cheese in stages+ Parmesan a handful at a time with more pasta water as it tightens — cheese dumped at once on high heat clumps; fed in gradually off the flame it dissolves into gloss
- top1 minbasil + lemon zest + black pepper over the top — the zest is what makes the vegetables taste like spring instead of like a side of vegetables; that lift is the entire argument for the name