Vegan Red Pesto Pasta

Since we mastered standard green pesto pasta, it's now time for a top notch vegan red pesto pasta!

We've taken our approach to our lovely green pesto pasta and applied it to its bright and colourful counterpart – red pesto. This recipe uses the basis of our other recipe but we've added a couple of sun dried tomatoes and red peppers to take it to the next level.

We've only used a few sun dried tomatoes because we wanted to make sure this recipe wasn't too calorie heavy, but it's still not really a light option – sorry! Everything in moderation.

To create a rich and creamy vegan red pesto pasta, like you know and love, we've substituted the heavy dairy for cashews and pine nuts, along with nutritional yeast (or as it's more commonly known, nooch).

This vegan red pesto pasta will convince any pesto snob that it's the real deal! (In our opinion it's better).

Vegan Red Pesto Pasta

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• Author: Dan Saunders
• Prep Time: 10
• Cook Time: 30
• Total Time: 40 minutes
• Yield: 4 1x

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Ingredients

For the pesto:

• 100g pine nuts
• 20g basil
• 4 cloves garlic - crushed
• 4 tbsp nooch
• 40g cashews
• 3 red peppers – deseeded and chopped in half
• 4 sun dried tomatoes
• 1/2 cup olive oil (and a splash extra for roasting)
• Juice of half a lemon

For everything else:

• 300g pasta
• 250g cherry tomatoes
• 200g broccoli
• Rocket (to serve)

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Instructions

1. Preheat the over to gas mark 6 / 200°C.
2.  Put the garlic, cherry tomatoes and chopped red peppers into a roasting tray.
3. Cover the vegetables with a splash of olive oil and give them a good mix so they're all nicely covered. Then season with lots of salt and pepper.
4. Roast for 20 minutes in the oven.
5. Once the vegetables have been in the oven for ten minutes, put the pasta on to cook.
6. After five minutes add the broccoli to the pan with the pasta – it will be al dente once done.
7. Drain and set the broccoli and pasta aside while you make the pesto.
8. Remove the vegetables from the oven and pop the red peppers and garlic into a blender.
9. Add the remaining pesto ingredients to the blender – that's the pine nuts, basil, nooch, cashews, sun dried tomatoes, lemon and olive oil, along with a good helping of salt, then blitz until smooth and creamy.
10. Pour the pesto on top of the pasta and broccoli and mix well.
11. Done – awesome vegan red pesto pasta. Serve with rocket and a good helping of vegan parmesan – if that's your thing.

• Category: Dinner
• Method: Oven-bake, Simmer
• Cuisine: Italian

Keywords: vegan red pesto pasta, vegan pesto pasta