If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ve probably noticed that we feature a lot of pasta recipes. And there’s a good reason for that: pasta is pretty versatile as a base for all different types of dishes, and there’s also many, many ways you can cook it up into a great meatless meal. And now here’s a new version that we’ve come up with, made with vegetables, herbs, and four different types of cheeses, then baked to a light, crispy perfection. You can feel good about this recipe since it has a ton of green vegetables, but it’s also totally delicious because of all that cheese. And best of all, it’s fairly simple to put together – so here’s how you can make it too.
You’ll need:
- A pound of pasta
- Olive oil
- A bunch of scallions
- Garlic
- Red pepper flakes
- An 8-ounce package of cream cheese
- A 5-ounce package of goat cheese
- 2 heads of broccoli
- A package of fried onions
- A 6-ounce package of mozzarella cheese
- Parsley
- Chives
- Parmesan cheese
Start by boiling water and cooking the pasta, and while you’re waiting thinly slice 3 or 4 scallions. Place them in a large saucepan with high sides, along with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and cook for 5 minutes until the scallions are softened. Slice up 4 garlic cloves and put them in the pan with a sprinkling of red pepper flakes to cook for just a minute or so.
Pour 1 1/2 cups of water in the pan, then cut your cream cheese and goat cheese into cubes and whisk those in until you have a smooth mixture.
Shred the mozzarella and slice up a cup of chives and add both of those in, plus a cup of parsley leaves.
Then cut the broccoli into florets and stir those in, along with a cup of fried onions. Add in water, 1/4 cup at a time, until you have a creamy sauce that’s not too thick.
Once the pasta is done, drain it and then mix with the sauce. Turn the pasta into a large casserole dish.
Top with the rest of the fried onions and 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese.
Now bake for 15 minutes at 425°F until the top of the pasta is very lightly crispy and browned.
Once the pasta is slightly cooled, scoop it out and serve!
And now you should have a huge dish of warm, creamy baked pasta and broccoli. Yes, there is a ton of cheese in this dish, but that just makes it really tasty – the cream cheese and mozzarella help hold everything together, and the goat cheese works surprisingly well when cooked with all the other ingredients. The broccoli helps balance out the richness of this pasta to make this feel at least a little bit healthy, and fried onions might seem like an unusual topping but they make for an interesting crunchy addition. It’s pretty simple as well to whip up this baked dish, because there’s only a small amount of vegetable prep and then the sauce comes together easily. And yeah, while we know there’s a ton of different ways you can make pasta, we’d like to suggest that you try this new recipe as a great veggie-packed comfort food.