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Tag: pasta alternative

Roasted Chicken, Chickpea Spirals, Broccoli and Extra Virgin Olive Oil

So simple. So yummy. I find that the key really is to season my food properly, but I am a veggie lover all the way, so they don’t need much for me. The chicken adds even more fantastically filling protein and tasty fat. I had a skinless chicken breast already roasted in the fridge, but this would be a great meal for a rotisserie chicken or really any leftovers. If you are starting from scratch, I roast chicken breasts, that I usually season the night before with salt and pepper, in the Ninja at Bake/400 degrees for about 15 minutes. Cooking time will, obviously, depend on the thickness, but I take the internal temp to 165 degrees and then let them rest for at least 10 minutes before I slice them…or whatever it is I might be doing with them.

Before
After

As always, substitute in your favorite products, but I have taken gluten, dairy, and added sugar out of my diet for a month. Even when I am not restricting gluten, it turns out that I enjoy a lot of the “pasta” products that have come out recently. It’s not because I think that pasta is “bad” or I shouldn’t eat it, but because I love the extra bang for my buck that I get in the protein department with some of them. A word of caution for any beginners…I have given many a lecture about pasta replacements that go something like this, “Please, accept this food for what it is. You will be disappointed if you think that what you are about to eat is comparable to semolina pasta, but you may decide you really like it if you let it stand alone.” Now that I have gotten that noodley bit caveat out of the way….
My favorite of the bunch on the market these days are the Chickapea brand products. I love all of their shapes and the noodles cook really fast, which means that I can still reap all the time saving benefits of a box of pasta. You also get all the other benefits. They are reasonably priced, shelf stable, and they have a little selection of shapes to keep it interesting. They are a huge part of my rotation these days. 🙂

“Cheesy” Chickpea Linguine with Cauliflower, Arugula, and Mushrooms

Endless variations, tons of plant based protein…I’m a big fan of the Chickapea brand of alternative pasta. The ingredients are chickpea flour, red lentil flour, and yellow lentil flour. Flours in general are highly processed but these pay the tax with extra protein. 23g and 220 calories per 2 ounce serving. The “pasta” cooks in 7 minutes and I heat up whatever veggies I want to cook in the very salted cooking water for the last couple of minutes. Sometimes, it’s green beans or peas, but tonight, it was just the cauliflower. I don’t put the greens or mushrooms in at the same time because they would get slimy, so they go in at the end. I put a small bowl underneath the strainer to catch some of the cooking water when I drain the pot, but everything in the strainer goes immediately back into the pan. I don’t rinse or shake the excess water out because I am going to use that as well.

From there, I added whatever ingredients didn’t want a bath. In this case, it was the mushrooms, arugula, nutritional yeast, and EVOO. They all went into the pan with the noodles and the cauliflower. I turned the burner to low and returned the pan to the heat. After I mixed everything together, I added as much of the reserved cooking water as I needed, probably 1/4 cup, to loosen everything up and make it kind of saucy. Mac and cheese it is not, but it is not trying to be that. It is, however, in my opinion, a yummy and filling meal that I am recently obsessed with.