This colorful vegetarian pasta is a quick and easy option for after-school snack or for carry-over lunch!
This vegetarian pasta recipe is a quick stir-fry recipe and a perfect fusion of Chinese and Italian! As we are fond of spicy Chinese stir-fry delicacies, I thought why not create this stir-fried vegetarian pasta? Cooking is all about experiments, right? And thank God I did! This vegetarian pasta stir-fried with Schezwan sauce turned out to be super yummy and is a perfect fix for quick lunch which you can carry over to your office as well! The colorful veggies like carrots and green beans added extra crunch to the pasta and with the spicy kick from Schezwan sauce, it was a total winner!
I used farfalle for making this vegetarian pasta. You can use any of your choice but I would suggest you to use a short pasta instead of longer varieties like spaghetti, linguine or fettucine. The reason is simple – shorter pastas are easier to stir fry and farfalle having lots of nooks and crannies catches the schezwan sauce more densely making the vegetarian pasta more delicious. For veggies, you can add anything you like. Assorted colors of bell peppers will pair very well with this vegetarian pasta. And if you don’t like meatless pasta, then nothing is stopping you from adding some fried chicken cubes seasoned with generous drizzle of schezwan sauce. I am sure that will become another yum recipe which I think I need to give a try soon!
- Farfalle Pasta – 2 to 3 cups
- Green beans – 7 to 8
- Carrots – 2, medium
- Onions – 1, medium
- Schezwan sauce – 3 tbsp [Increase the quantity if you want your pasta to be more spicy]
- Olive oil – 2 tbsp
- Salt to taste
- Grated cheese
- Boil water and cook the pasta exactly as per the package instructions. Carefully check the number of minutes to cook the pasta on the packet and follow it strictly. It will cook the pasta till all-dente, which means “cooked to the “tender crisp” phase – still offering resistance to the bite, but cooked through”.
- Drain the pasta but do reserve some of the pasta water. You will definitely need them later.
- Chop beans, carrots and onions into thin strips.
- Heat olive oil on a wok. Add the chopped vegies and stir-fry for 5 minutes.
- Now add the Schezwan sauce and keep stirring.
- Add the cooked pasta and stir-well.
- At this phase, pasta tends to become sticky and this is when the pasta water becomes so necessary. To remove the stickiness, please DO NOT add any more oil, but add the pasta water little by little as needed and keep stirring. This will make your pasta extremely easy to stir and all vegies and sauces will mix up really well.
- Stir till there is no visible liquid. Then remove from heat.
- Serve on plate and spread the grated cheese on top.
If that’s cooked using that tri-color pasta it will look fantastic!