Pesto Zucchini Noodles with Fresh Mozzarella and Roasted Garlic & Tomatoes
It's been 10 years and 2 months since I married my hairy, nerdy, wonderful Italian partner. Fourteen years and nine months since I started dating said Italian. And in all that time, I have never once managed to make an Italian dish that fell anywhere on the spectrum above "that was pretty nice" (minestrone), and most of them were more along the lines of "well, that won't kill us, at least."
I'm French/German, I think, and Appalachian 100%. I don't do Italian food (and Italian food doesn't do me - except to do me in, why pasta feels the need to expand and make me ill every time I eat it is a mystery to modern man).
That all changed today.
I've decided to go low-carb for the month of July this year, just because we eat a) way too much bread and b) waaaaaaaaay too many sweets. I'm trying to get us away from that. So far, I've been mostly successful (though the second week was the hardest - I think this happened when I experimented with vegetarianism, too), and today, I think we had our biggest success. Not just because it didn't involve eggs (we've been eating SO many omelettes lately), but because it was amazingly tasty, healthy, inexpensive, and easy.
Is there anything better? I don't think so.
So here's a low-carb, high-veggie, relatively inexpensive, and fall-off-a-log easy recipe that you should all be trying. NOW.
This recipe makes two lunch servings (small) or one big serving for starving Molly who is totally doubling the recipe next time because GIVE ME ALL OF IT IN MY FACE NOW.
Ingredients
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp minced garlic (3 cloves)
1 tsp olive oil
Gratuitous black pepper
Pinch coarse salt
1 zucchini of zucchini noodles (shredded with this magical contraption, you need one, you just don't know it yet)
3 tbsp pesto (I could probably make my own if I stopped killing my basil plants every chance I get)
1/2 cup? fresh mozzarella cheese (this is the soft stuff that doesn't have much flavor, in case you're an ignoramus like me and thought mozzarella only came in bags, shredded, for use on pizza)
1 bottle Two Buck Chuck (which is $3 in Massachusetts, wtf?), mixed with cranberry juice because then it tastes more expensive? Shuddup.
Instructions
- Preheat oven (or toaster oven, which is what I use) to 425*F.
- Cut the cherry tomatoes into thirds (for the bigger ones) and half (for the smaller ones).
- In a medium mixing bowl (trust me here), toss them with the garlic, olive oil, black pepper, and salt.
- Dump that onto a silpat in a roasting pan and roast in the oven/toaster oven for 15 minutes.
- While that's roasting, spiralize your noodles. I'm deep enough into this here bottle of Two Buck Chuck to go a little misty over how UNBEARABLY FUN spiralizing noodles is.
- In the medium mixing bowl, toss your noodles with the pesto using a rubber spatula.
- You can use the remaining time to hula-hoop your abs into steel plates. I did. BEYONCE ABS GET.
- Once the tomatoes are done roasting, get them out and dump them onto one of the plates onto which you plan to serve dinner. It's cool, don't fret.
- Put the noodles on the roasting tray and roast them 10 minutes.
- While the noodles are baking (roasting? what's the difference, really) slice or rip up the cheese into small pieces (like maybe ... postage-stamp size pieces?).
- After the 10 minutes are up, layer the tomatoes on top of the noodles, layer the mozzarella on top of that, and put it back in the oven for like 3 minutes, or until the mozzarella's melted.
- Serve hot and try REALLY hard not to scarf it all down. No one will judge you if you fail that last bit. This stuff is seriously, seriously delicious.
And I'm dead serious about doubling the recipe next time so David and I can just like ... shovel it into our faces. I mean, what's the harm there? Eating twice the zucchini and tomatoes? Horrors. Oh, and I'm also planning to pan-fry some haddock to go with it (I'm trying pescatarianism this year), but if you're not down with fish, there's always eggs. We've been through seriously two dozen eggs this WEEK, I'm actually kind of tired of eggs? Except I'd eat eggs right now, if they were offered to me. Perfect food. Eggs. Boom.
Wheeeeeeeee~!
I'm French/German, I think, and Appalachian 100%. I don't do Italian food (and Italian food doesn't do me - except to do me in, why pasta feels the need to expand and make me ill every time I eat it is a mystery to modern man).
That all changed today.
I've decided to go low-carb for the month of July this year, just because we eat a) way too much bread and b) waaaaaaaaay too many sweets. I'm trying to get us away from that. So far, I've been mostly successful (though the second week was the hardest - I think this happened when I experimented with vegetarianism, too), and today, I think we had our biggest success. Not just because it didn't involve eggs (we've been eating SO many omelettes lately), but because it was amazingly tasty, healthy, inexpensive, and easy.
Is there anything better? I don't think so.
So here's a low-carb, high-veggie, relatively inexpensive, and fall-off-a-log easy recipe that you should all be trying. NOW.
This recipe makes two lunch servings (small) or one big serving for starving Molly who is totally doubling the recipe next time because GIVE ME ALL OF IT IN MY FACE NOW.
Pesto Zucchini Noodles with Fresh Mozzarella and Roasted Garlic & Tomatoes
Ingredients
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp minced garlic (3 cloves)
1 tsp olive oil
Gratuitous black pepper
Pinch coarse salt
1 zucchini of zucchini noodles (shredded with this magical contraption, you need one, you just don't know it yet)
3 tbsp pesto (I could probably make my own if I stopped killing my basil plants every chance I get)
1/2 cup? fresh mozzarella cheese (this is the soft stuff that doesn't have much flavor, in case you're an ignoramus like me and thought mozzarella only came in bags, shredded, for use on pizza)
1 bottle Two Buck Chuck (which is $3 in Massachusetts, wtf?), mixed with cranberry juice because then it tastes more expensive? Shuddup.
Instructions
- Preheat oven (or toaster oven, which is what I use) to 425*F.
- Cut the cherry tomatoes into thirds (for the bigger ones) and half (for the smaller ones).
- In a medium mixing bowl (trust me here), toss them with the garlic, olive oil, black pepper, and salt.
- Dump that onto a silpat in a roasting pan and roast in the oven/toaster oven for 15 minutes.
- While that's roasting, spiralize your noodles. I'm deep enough into this here bottle of Two Buck Chuck to go a little misty over how UNBEARABLY FUN spiralizing noodles is.
- In the medium mixing bowl, toss your noodles with the pesto using a rubber spatula.
- You can use the remaining time to hula-hoop your abs into steel plates. I did. BEYONCE ABS GET.
- Once the tomatoes are done roasting, get them out and dump them onto one of the plates onto which you plan to serve dinner. It's cool, don't fret.
- Put the noodles on the roasting tray and roast them 10 minutes.
- While the noodles are baking (roasting? what's the difference, really) slice or rip up the cheese into small pieces (like maybe ... postage-stamp size pieces?).
- After the 10 minutes are up, layer the tomatoes on top of the noodles, layer the mozzarella on top of that, and put it back in the oven for like 3 minutes, or until the mozzarella's melted.
- Serve hot and try REALLY hard not to scarf it all down. No one will judge you if you fail that last bit. This stuff is seriously, seriously delicious.
And I'm dead serious about doubling the recipe next time so David and I can just like ... shovel it into our faces. I mean, what's the harm there? Eating twice the zucchini and tomatoes? Horrors. Oh, and I'm also planning to pan-fry some haddock to go with it (I'm trying pescatarianism this year), but if you're not down with fish, there's always eggs. We've been through seriously two dozen eggs this WEEK, I'm actually kind of tired of eggs? Except I'd eat eggs right now, if they were offered to me. Perfect food. Eggs. Boom.
Wheeeeeeeee~!
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