This courgette pasta recipe with farfalle is a pretty quick one to throw together, but is rich, creamy and delicious. What’s more, it’s pretty low fat, as you can use half fat creme fraiche and there’s no need for cheese or meat, with the pesto and sriracha giving a lot of flavour themselves.

Why Use Farfalle Pasta?

I’m a big believer in using the right sort of pasta for the right sort of recipe. Farfalle, roughly translating as “butterfly” pasta, is great for creamy sauces as it holds its shape very well, and also has a distinctly chewy texture. What’s more, with the way it’s pinched and folded when made, it has a large amount of surface area to pick up flavour, and won’t coagulate and stick together which pastas like spaghetti can do when combined with a creamy sauce. You can find out more about farfalle (and indeed all sorts of other pastas) here.

Ingredients

 

• 150ml half fat creme fraiche
• 1 tbsp green pesto
• 1tsp Sriracha hot sauce
• Half a courgette
• Half a pepper
• Half a red onion
• A clove of garlic
• Farfalle pasta
• 1/3 of a head of brocolli
• 1tbsp olive oil
• Vegetable stock (optional)
• Salt to taste

 

Method

Start off by finely chopping your red onion and garlic, and adding the sriracha, oregano, salt and pesto. Heat up a tablespoon of oil on a medium heat, then fry the above ingredients for around 15 minutes until the onion is soft. If it seems to be drying out, add a little salted water or vegetable stock.

Whilst it’s frying, finely chop the pepper and courgette, then add to the onion and garlic mix. Fry this for another 5 minutes, until it’s all softened too.

Next, remove the veg mix from the heat, and then add the creme fraiche. Give it a mix and leave on a low heat. Be careful for the creamy sauce thickening up too much. If this happens, add another splash of water or veg stock. Prepare your broccoli now by chopping into small pieces.

Next, cook your farfalle a in salted water. Once it’s about 5 minutes from being finished. Add your brocolli in with the pasta. This will obviously cook it, and no more washing up.

Finally, combine the sauce with the farfalle & brocolli and serve. Top with black pepper, and parmesan if you fancy it. Hard to beat a good creamy courgette farfalle sauce.

Lovely