One Pot Pasta

I think everyone loves a good pasta dish and this one in particular is great because its a vegetarian dish and its all done in one pot, so it takes less prep time and less cleaning up to do when you’re done.

Ingredients:

• 1 pack of pasta
• 1 large onion (chopped)
• 4 cloves of garlic (minced)
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 large zucchini (cubed)
• 4 tomatoes (diced)
• 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1 sweet pepper (chopped)
• 1 tbsp roucou
• 1 tbsp butter
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• tsp scotch bonnet pepper (minced)
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 1/2 cups hot water
• salt & black pepper (to taste)

Method:

1. Melt butter in a pot and add combine with two tablespoons of olive oil
2. Saute some chopped onions until translucent
3. Add garlic, bay leaves, zucchini and scotch bonnet pepper. Saute for 1 minute
4. Add tomatoes, 1/2 of the fresh basil leaves, sweet pepper
5. Season with salt and black pepper and saute for 1 minute
6. Add roucou and pasta
7. Combine mixture then cover and allow to cook for 4 minutes on low heat
8. Add coconut milk and water
9. Taste for seasoning and season with salt and black pepper to taste
10. Combine then cover and allow to cook on medium heat for an additional 8 minutes
11. Remove from heat and drizzle with olive oil and finish off with remaining fresh bail leaves.
12. Serve and enjoy!

It might seem a bit crazy to add pasta to the pot with no liquid but that is the point where we  mitigate the seemingly mandatory vegetable stock addition that many of these recipes use. Covering the pasta and allowing it to cook with the veggies for 4 minutes on low heat uses the steam coming from the veggies and aromatics to infuse all the intense flavors into the pasta itself. So no need to use any vegetable stock or flavor cubes.
Of course you can make the recipe your own by adding whatever vegetables you like and you can also add cheese to it but I assure you, you’re not going to miss any cheese in this dish. It is absolutely delicious.