Bowties with No-Cook Mascarpone Pesto Sauce

Yeah, I know. It’s hot, and you don’t want to cook. Totally get that. If you can stand the heat long enough to boil some pasta, then you can enjoy a fantastic dinner with this no-cook sauce. The sauce is a super easy blend of mascarpone, parmesan, pesto and a few other seasonings. It’s rich, creamy and packed with flavor. Plus, it's Meatless Monday!

No-cook sauces are such a great thing to have in your recipe arsenal in the summertime! You can quickly get the pasta made and while it’s cooking, you can throw a fabulous sauce together in no time at all. Use your favorites, and if you’ve got a garden, you’re ahead of the game! Tomatoes, herbs, peppers, cucumbers--you name it. Add some cheese and any seasonings you like, as well. Got leftovers in the fridge? Maybe some bacon, chicken, or shrimp? Add that in, too! Pick up a baguette to go with it and you’ve got a great meal.

Mascarpone. It’s easy and relatively inexpensive for me to find at Trader Joes. I’m positive that Whole Foods has it, but not sure of the price. I can’t always find it at my local regular grocery store. Not to worry of you can’t get it easily! Go ahead and use some ricotta instead. Check out these other ideas from one of my favorite sites, The Cooks Thesaurus:

Substitutes: Blend 8 ounces softened cream cheese with 1/4 cup whipping cream. OR Blend 8 ounces softened cream cheese with 1/4 cup butter and 1/4 cup cream OR Blend 8 ounces softened cream cheese with 1/8 cup whipping cream and 1/8 cup sour cream. OR Whip ricotta cheese in a blender until smooth (lower in fat)

I use the Paul Prudhomme Pizza and Pasta Magic seasoning in this recipe--well, I use it in a lot of recipes! I just happened to come across it at the store one day and threw it in the cart. It’s one of my new secret ingredients. If you can’t find it locally, you can pick some up at Amazon. It’s worth it! You’ll start wondering what else you can add it to.

Bowties with No-Cook Mascarpone Pesto Sauce

Nicely coats one pound of cooked pasta. This can be used as a guideline-add what you like and make it to suit your tastes.

-No-cook sauce:
8 oz mascarpone
1/4 cup half and half
1/2 cup parmesan, grated
1 tsp Paul Prudhomme Pizza/Pasta Magic or other comparable seasoning
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
3 heaping tbsp prepared pesto, or more to taste
fresh cracked black pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup of the pasta cooking water (taken out of the pot while it's cooking)
_______________________________________________________

16 oz pasta
16 oz small heirloom tomatoes, or cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced in half 
1/2 cup sliced fresh basil
more parmesan for sprinkling over

-Optional:
pine nuts

Mix all of the sauce ingredients together with a whisk, being sure to add some of that hot pasta water to loosen it up. Set aside.

After pasta is cooked and drained, pour it into a large bowl. Pour the sauce over the pasta and gently mix, stirring in the tomatoes and basil.

Check for seasoning and serve. Sprinkle with more parmesan, if you like, and pine nuts, if you've got them.

Meatless Monday: Roasted Veggie Pizza with Pesto

Delicious, tender crust. A fresh pesto whipped up faster than you can say food processor. Fresh, in season vegetables, roasted to a caramelized perfection. Mozzarella tops it all off, and you have the most delectable veggie pizza.

And hey--it's Meatless Monday! Who's in?

This pizza is extremely easy to make. Choose your veggies--we like baby portobellos, red onion, sweet bell pepper, zucchini, summer squash, and of course, garlic. Wash them, roughly chop them, and toss them all on a rimmed baking sheet with olive oil, kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper. In this batch, we also added some herbes de provence and dried basil from our garden last summer.

Also, we like to make a lot of the veggies--in this case, 2 baking sheets full. One large red onion, 2 smallish containers of sliced baby mushrooms, 2 zucchini, 2 summer squash, one red bell pepper, and 6-7 cloves of garlic, crushed, minced, or sliced, oh-and salt and pepper. (Would have been more peppers if we'd had more.) You can use them in a lot of different things, like wraps, sandwiches, as a burger topping, a side dish, or even in a soup. So it makes sense to roast extra while you're doing it anyway. One of my favorite ways to use them? Whole wheat naan-toasted, topped with your favorite hummus, and some of the roasted veggies (heated up or cool, your choice). Delicious lunch or easy, quick dinner.

Roasting them: My husband and I have two schools of thought on this. I like to roast them at 425 for about 30 minutes or so, stirring them around a couple of times. You can adjust cooking time to your liking. My husband likes to broil them, which works fine, but it's more labor intensive because you have to watch them. I'm far too lazy to do it his way.

So, if you're being lazy like me, and not standing over the veggies like a mom and her brand new baby, pull out your food processor. Whip up a generous handful of basil and 5-6 cloves of garlic. While those are whizzing around in there, drizzle in some olive oil until you have a nice little pesto-ey sauce. That's it--we don't add anything else for this, but if you feel the need, you can add in some parmesan and other pesto-like stuff.

Oooh, look at that garlicky basil-ly goodness!

Or, if you want to be super lazy (which is perfectly fine with me!), you can use some store bought pesto and loosen it up with some olive oil to make it saucy.

When your veggies are done, throw your pizza stone in the oven and crank that heat up! We cook at around 500 degrees. What? You don't have a pizza stone? Too expensive? Well, you could get your butt down to Home Depot (or something like it) and get some unglazed quarry tiles. They're cheap, and you can get a bunch to make a great pizza/bread baking surface. Unglazed, ok?

Yeah, we're veggies. We're roasted and we're beautiful. Don't be a hater!

Prepare your pizzas on your cornmeal dusted work surface (we use flat baking sheets with no edges). Get them sauced up, add your veggies and cheese. We used a rice mozzarella, and a dusting of parmesan. Slide the pizzas off of your work surface and on to the stone(s). Bake for 6-8 minutes and check their bottoms. We don't want soggy bottoms! Larger pizzas will obviously take more time, but we make personal size ones.

Dough? Well, we still haven't found the perfect homemade dough, so we buy balls from our local pizza joint. Dough balls, that is. hehe! They're absolutely perfect in taste, texture, and workability. So see? More laziness. Sometimes, lazy is good. In this case, it's real good.

That's it, I think! Super easy, and amazingly good. And don't feel limited to these ingredients. I'm sure you all have favorite veggies you'd like to include (or some you'd like to exclude), and some of you can't even think of pizza without tomato sauce. So have at it!

So what are you doing for Meatless Monday?

Meatless Monday: Raw Zucchini Pesto Pasta

Welcome to my first edition of #meatlessmonday! I saw this Tweet this morning, from Chris at Blog Well Done. He was looking for people to join in, so I figured, why not?

My first entry in Meatless Monday is Raw Zucchini Pesto Pasta. Yes, it's raw, and the pasta is julienned zucchini. We use one of these, from Zyliss, to make easy julienne strips. It works great, it's quick to use, and you don't have to drag out some contraption, then clean it. We also have one of these, from Joyce Chen. It works alright for soft veggies, but not for anything like butternut squash or beets. It just mangles them. So...that was $30 down the drain.

Anyway, this was a quick dinner to get on the table. Some zucchini, tomatoes, basil, pesto...you get the idea. And it's versatile--you can add whatever you like, you don't necessarily need to use what I used here. Also, with summer in full swing, and gardens bursting with zucchini, this is a great way to use some of that up! And if you can't wrap your head around zucchini being pasta, you have two options. You can think of it as a cold salad, or you can lightly sauté the zucchini, then toss with the rest of the ingredients.

And remember, organic is best when enjoying fresh fruits and vegetables, if you can swing it.  You don't really want to be putting all of those chemicals in your body, do you?  And damn, they're hard to wash off.  Getting organic foods is easier than ever in the summer time, because farmer's markets are also in full swing.

 

Basic recipe:

Raw Zucchini Pesto Pasta

This one has parmesan, it was made before we decided to eat vegan. But feel free to use it on yours!  You can also find raw milk parm, if that's something you want.

3-4 zucchini, washed and julienned
2-3 tomatoes
a handful of basil, sliced thinly (stack leaves, roll them up, and slice thinly across for ribbons)
pesto, to taste
salt and fresh cracked black pepper
olive oil, for drizzling over

Toss all ingredients in a bowl.  Serve with a drizzle of olive oil.  Eat right away.

And here's a quickie--a bonus recipe.  Well, it's not even a recipe, really.  But it's one of my favorite lunches.

A whole wheat pita, toasted in the oven.  Slather on your favorite hummus, then your favorite veggies.  Here, I've used tomatoes, cucumbers, red bell pepper, and avocado.  Lots of fresh cracked pepper over the top, and you're done.  So good!

Last order of business.  Some of you may be wondering how my husband and I are doing with our new way of eating.  Some of may not be, so you can skip to the end now, hehe.

We're doing great!  We have more energy, have lost a few pounds, and just look and feel better, in general.  My husband's blood sugar: he's been testing, and at first, without his meds, his levels were anywhere from 140 to 220.  With his meds, they were still  up and down like that.

Last week, he took a reading and was at 88.  And he hasn't taken his meds since we started eating 100% raw and vegetarian, then eventually raw and vegan.  Do I recommend that everyone try this?  Hell, no, I'm no doctor.  But this is what's worked for him. 

So when people ask me if I miss meats and dairy, my answer is no.  First, because I really don't!  And second, because I can see how healthy and happy it's made my husband.  And to make him go it alone in this journey would be selfish.  For me, anyway.  

I'm not going to get all preachy on you, but I do want to let you all know the changes we've seen.  Also, I'm amazed how satisfied I feel eating raw and vegan foods!  I never in a million years would have thought that eating this way would leave me feeling full and happy, but it does!  And everything tastes so good and clean.  It's almost like meat and dairy were clouding everything else over.  I know this isn't for everyone, and yeah, meat still looks good.  Damn good!  The smell of meat on a grill still gives me a little jolt of "aaaaahhhh."  But I know I feel better without it.  So for me, it makes sense to skip it.

Again, thanks for coming along on this journey with me!  

And don't forget to enter my giveaway!