Pasta Primavera with Roasted Garlic Shrimp

I have wanted to make pasta primavera for over a year now. My husband isn't fond of vegetables, he refuses to eat anything that has vegetables in it, so it is difficult to make something where the main ingredients are vegetables. I've been making dinner for my parents and I thought, "Hey they like veggies, perfect!".

Primavera means spring so typically the vegetables you would add to this pasta dish are spring vegetables. Theres several different versions of this dish out there. I wanted to do a more classic approach and omit any thick sauce. So my best friend Google and I searched for Pasta Primavera recipes and came across a recipe from Food Network, Everyday Italian. It is as follows:

Pasta Primavera

Ingredients

• 3 carrots, peeled and cut into thin strips
• 2 medium zucchini or 1 large zucchini, cut into thin strips
• 2 yellow squash, cut into thin strips
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 yellow bell pepper, cut into thin strips
• 1 red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon dried Italian herbs or herbes de Provence
• 1 pound farfalle (bowtie pasta)
• 15 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan

Directions

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

On a large heavy baking sheet, toss all of the vegetables with the oil, salt, pepper, and dried herbs to coat. Transfer half of the vegetable mixture to another heavy large baking sheet and arrange evenly over the baking sheets. Bake until the carrots are tender and the vegetables begin to brown, stirring after the first 10 minutes, about 20 minutes total.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente, tender but still firm to the bite, about 8 minutes. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the cooking liquid.

Toss the pasta with the vegetable mixtures in a large bowl to combine. Toss with the cherry tomatoes and enough reserved cooking liquid to moisten. Season the pasta with salt and pepper, to taste. Sprinkle with the Parmesan and serve immediately.

Roasted Garlic Shrimp

This is so easy I shouldn't even add it on here but I will.

1lb frozen shrimp, peeled tails on, dethawed

1Tbsp olive oil

Roasted Garlic and Herb seasoning to taste

Pepper and Garlic Salt to taste

You toss everything together in the pan and cook until the shrimp is a nice pink color. You can find Roasted Garlic and Herb seasoning in the grocery store its basically dehydrated minced garlic with some extra jazz, its good stuff. I practically toss it in everything.

This recipe is extremely easy and delicious. I was worried it wouldn't turn out but the roasting of the vegetables are key. They bring the flavor to this dish. The only difficult part is all the chopping, and cutting you have to do with the vegetables. I gave up on cutting carrots in to thin strips and shredded them instead. I used grape tomatoes instead of cherry but seriously, there isn't much of a differance between the two in my opinion.  Herbes de Provence is extrmely hard to find in any store. Its basically something you would have to throw together youself by growing your own herb garden. I am sure some speciality store carries it but dried italian seasoning was just fine, and EASY to find in a regular grocery store. This makes a ton of pasta though. So in the end we ended up using the left over pasta for Chicken Alfredo. I just tossed the leftover pasta in a pan with olive oil to warm it up and bought a jar of Alfredo sauce in the store to add to it.