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Whenever you want a simple and a delicious vegan dish, try this quinoa pasta with zucchini, peas and pesto sauce. Among the other ingredients there is also cashew cheese or some other vegan cheeses but if you don’t have this, skip it and enjoy the food in a lighter version.

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Quinoa or rice pasta – I only use gluten free pasta

I said quinoa pasta because this is what I normally use but you can also have the dish with rice or buckwheat pasta. I wouldn’t recommend lentils or peas pasta as these are harder to digest and, besides, the dish already contains peas. It would be too much.  

Quinoa pasta with zucchini, peas and pesto sauce – what ingredients do you need

1 bag of quinoa gluten free pasta
50-100 g peas (pre-cooked)
200 g zucchini
40 g cashew cheese/some other vegan cheese
Fresh peppermint and basil leaves
1 clove of garlic
Pomegranate seeds (optional)

For the pesto sauce:

1 cup fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoo  olive oil
1-2 cloves of garlic (or more if you tolerate it well)
100 g pine nuts or ½ cup soaked cashews
Ground black pepper
Salt
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
2 tablespoons of cashew cheese

Directions

Put water to boil. When it reaches the boiling point, add the pasta. Mix it gently.

Chop zucchini into sizeable cubes. Sprinkle the chopped garlic over the zucchini. Add a little bit of chopped basil too and, if you’d like, grate some cashew cheese over it.

Cook all these for 2-3 minutes in a pan. The cheese will melt but it does not matter, it will give it a beautiful taste. Also, if you are not vegan, you can use here creamy goat cheese.

When the quinoa pasta is ready (follow the guidelines from the package in terms of how many minutes to leave it to boil), put the pasta in a large plate, mix it with the zucchini sauce you’ve made, add the peas and pomegranate seeds, decorate with some fresh basil leaves and serve with pesto sauce.

The pesto sauce is made by blending all the needed ingredients. If you want the sauce not so creamy you can add 1 teaspoon of cold water or more olive oil.

With what wines to pair this dish

This dish has pasta, but also zucchini, pesto sauce and also a creamy cheesy sauce if you are using vegan cheese. Therefore, the most appropriate wine for it would be Chardonnay, a white wine that goes perfectly with all the above ingredients.

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Viognier and Chianti would also be two other great choices.

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