Okay, continuing with my series of nutritious and comforting foods…this is one of my favorite meals because you can literally use whatever you have on hand in your fridge. Whatever you normally like to eat (or can tolerate), it will taste great in this warm pasta dish.
I’ll show you what I used and also give you a whole bunch of possible subs to give you ideas for anything you might have on hand. When my 15 year old son ate this pasta after soccer practice, he screamed:
“OMG Mom! This is INCREDIBLE!! Why don’t you cook anymore??!!”
Too funny, and bless him. Remember, this is my son making cinnamon rolls, sesame ginger chicken, and eggs benedict (perfect!) from scratch. I think HE should cook more!
Okay, here are the ingredients I had on hand in my fridge and cupboards:
- Gluten-free brown rice rotini noodles. You can also use soaked or sprouted quinoa (quinoa is a protein-rich seed, not a grain, so it is often well tolerated) or millet instead.
- Zucchini spaghetti (but I usually use diced zucchini). Alternatively, you can also use cucumber cubes.
- Shiitake mushrooms
- Roma tomatoes (remove peel and seeds if avoiding lectins)
- asparagus
- green beans
- mixed organic power greens (baby kale, bok choy, spinach, arugula, etc., pre-mixed in a plastic container from the supermarket),
- Olives
- dried oregano, dried basil, garlic powder, olive oil, toasted sesame oil, Himalayan salt, pepper
The secret to making a fresh pasta like this taste divine is to NOT overcook the vegetables. AND cutting your veggies to the size you want in your mouth!
How many vegetables? How much spices, salt, etc.? Let YOUR BODY decide! This is also a great listening/dialogue exercise with your body. Trust me, this will work. I call this intuitive cooking, and I once showed a couple of 19-year-old young men how to make Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo – one of them had never cooked before and had no idea what garlic was! I told him to just ASK his body how much it wanted and it made a great meal. YES, it’s entirely possible and surprisingly easy if you try it.
So for all the ingredients listed below, use as much as your body wants. Either hold the ingredient in your hand and ask your body, “How much?” – then trust the first answer that comes to mind. Or imagine the ingredient in your pasta and visualize how much of it feels good to you.
Here’s how to easily prepare Pasta Fantastico:
1. Decide how much pasta you want and bring salted pasta water to a boil. I don’t like too much pasta (I like a higher vegetable content than I ever get in a restaurant), so I add a large handful of GF Rotini per person.
2. Slice shiitake mushrooms and fry in a large skillet with olive oil and ghee (medium heat), sprinkle with garlic powder and salt. You can also use coconut oil if you prefer. Note: If I were using onions, I would cook them first (they take longer than mushrooms), then I would add the mushrooms to the almost cooked onions and sauté everything together.
3. While the mushrooms are cooking, cut the asparagus and green beans into pieces and add them to hot/boiling pasta water. If you are using other vegetables that require a longer cooking time (e.g. carrots), add them to the hot pasta water as well.
4. Chop/dice Roma tomatoes (remove the peel first and then remove the seeds if you want to avoid lectins) and set aside. Dice any other vegetables, olives, etc. you want to add.
5. When hard vegetables are cooked (asparagus, green beans, carrots, etc.), remove them from the boiling pasta water with a slotted spoon, add them to the pan with the mushrooms and stir.
6. Add pasta to water and cook until al dente (not mushy!)
7. While the pasta is cooking, add the zucchini to the stir-fry mixture. If I were adding Napa cabbage (Chinese cabbage) or baby bok choy, I would add them to the pan now too.
8. Drain the pasta and add the mixture to the skillet low heat. Drizzle with LOTS of olive oil, toasted sesame oil to taste (for 4 people I used 2 tablespoons toasted sesame), dried oregano, basil, coriander – any dried spices you have on hand, and Himalayan salt. Mix well. You want to add enough olive oil so that the pasta is well coated and juicy. If you had some basil pesto, this would be great to use in place of olive oil or half of it (see variation #2 below). If you are minimizing the oil content, use broth instead to add liquid/juiciness to the dish.
9. The final step is to add the ingredients that don’t need to be cooked, just warmed: baby power greens, spinach, tomatoes, olives, and any fresh herbs you might have (fresh parsley, cilantro, basil are all great in this pasta!). Turn off heat.
10. If you want to add soft goat cheese, feta cheese, or other meats (diced chicken, fish, shrimp, scallops, sausage, bacon), now is the time to do it. Mix well and then season with Himalayan salt and pepper. If your pasta feels like it needs something to boost the flavor, drizzle it with a little fresh lemon juice and toss to combine. However, if you have olives and tasty tomatoes, this isn’t necessary.
Surcharge! I ate my pasta straight away, but the rest of my family didn’t get home until 30-40 minutes after it was made. So I just put a lid on the frying pan and left it on the back of the stove. The heat just allows the flavors to infuse – no need to reheat, as long as it’s at room temperature it will taste like my son Hugo said: “UNBELIEVABLE!!”
Oh, one last thing: I didn’t want any meat, but we had some leftover turkey sausage that I knew the rest of my family would enjoy. So I heated them up in the toaster, then chopped them up and added them to the pasta after taking out my bowl:
TIP: It’s easy to keep a can of mixed organic baby greens or even just arugula on hand and add a handful to any pasta, soup, stew you’re cooking or heating. The young greens are much easier to digest and light cooking improves digestion and deactivates the nutrient blockers in the plants. A great and easy way to get powerful nutrients/minerals from vegetables.
I also had some hummus and dried tomato pesto in my fridge – yay! So I threw a ball over each one. Basil pesto also works well, as does a drizzle of ranch dressing or garlic mayonnaise if you like. If you have pine nuts or pistachios, sprinkle them on top. Seriously, this is one of the easiest ways to make a super nutritious, comforting meal with whatever you have on hand.
Variant No. 2
A few days later I still had most of the ingredients in my fridge AND I had fresh parsley and a box of basil pesto! So I made this pasta again, but instead of just using olive oil, I added a whole lot of basil pesto for the sauce:
Everything stirred together and ready to serve:
This time I sprinkled mine with some goat feta:
*And remember: If you’re skipping grains, you can easily replace the pasta with soaked or sprouted quinoa or millet. It will be just as delicious.
If you make this, let me know what ingredients you added. And upload an image if you want – we have a new image upload feature here on the blog. I would love to see your bowls of deliciousness!
Jini Patel Thompson is an internationally recognized expert in natural healing for digestive diseases. She healed herself from widespread Crohn’s disease and has been medication and surgery free for over 25 years. Jini has appeared on numerous podcasts, TV and radio shows in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, giving people hope and vision on how to heal their colitis, Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) using all-natural methods. Her books on natural healing of digestive diseases have been sold in over 80 countries worldwide. Jini is married and has three children, nine sheep, 11 horses, a cat and three dogs.
