Do You Do Meatless Monday?

I like the combination of broccoli and pasta, but the last time I made it for meatless Monday (or maybe it was meatless Sunday, or Thursday) I steamed the broccoli and it was disappointing. This time I decided to roast it, and the results were terrific. This is another of those dishes that doesn’t require a recipe, but calls on your imagination and personal preferences to make it your own. I will walk you through what I did, and hope you’ll tell me what you do when you make it.

Recently my local Acme grocery store had a sale on pasta ten for $10, and I stocked up on all my favorite shapes; rotelle, campanelle, farfalle. All of these are great for holding sauce and are neater to eat than long pasta. For this dish I used campanelle, but any pasta will do. I almost always have fresh goat cheese on hand; I like to add it to salads, and it forms a creamy kind of sauce when tossed with hot pasta. And I used pine nuts, but you could use other toasted nuts you have in-house. 

Roasting the broccoli has a few things to recommend it. It intensifies the flavor, it won’t fall apart when you toss it with the pasta (as steamed or boiled broccoli does) and you can mix it with some oil and your choice of spices to enhance the flavor. I used three cloves of sliced garlic, salt, about two teaspoons of crushed red pepper, and tossed that and some olive oil with the raw broccoli. I toasted the nuts (half a cup) while the oven was preheating, it took about eight minutes, but you want to pay attention they can go from perfect to burned in seconds. There is no need to use any fat to toast nuts.

For a pound of pasta I used about four ounces of crumbled goat cheese, and two good sized broccoli crowns. Some sliced cherry or grape tomatoes would have been a nice addition, and I’ll probably add them next time. I would use a pint. With just the cheese, broccoli and nuts it was  a little dry, so we added some of the starchy pasta water and oil, but tomatoes would have done the same things and added color and flavor. I also sliced the broccoli stems thin and roasted them with the florets.

To roast the broccoli I put it into a 375° oven for about twelve minutes, so the edges were just starting to crisp. If  you let them get too brown they and the garlic will turn bitter. Of course we added grated Parmesan as well, because we believe in cheeses. This is certainly a dinner you can get on the table in a hurry, and a perfect meatless Monday (or any day) option. Mondays aren’t the meatless days at my house; we’re meatless on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Do you have a particular meatless day?