Recipe: Jessica Prescott’s One-Pot Winter Pasta Is Packed With Veggies

Whether you’re a devoted plant-based eater or an omnivore, you’ll love the dishes in Jessica Prescott’s latest cookbook, Epic Veg. The follow-up to Epic Salads offers more than 80 vegetable-based dishes that will actually get you excited about eating your greens.

It includes this one-pot veggie-packed pasta – perfect for when you’re “craving greens but you’re also in the mood for something comforting,” writes Prescott.

Onion, leek, fennel and celery form a gentle, savoury base, while chickpeas and a whole 250g of greens dial up the nutritional value. Cooked all together in one pot, the pasta starches thicken the broth as it simmers, so you end up with something between a soup and a stew. The silky dinner is finished with lemon, parmesan and a scattering of chilli flakes.

It’s soupy and light straight off the stove, and gets thicker and heartier with time. The pasta keeps in the fridge for up to five days or freezes well – ideal for when you’re batch-cooking for a week of easy, nourishing meals.

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Jessica Prescott’s Super-Green One-Pot Pasta

Serves 6–8
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

40ml (2 tbsp) extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 leek, trimmed, finely chopped
1 fennel bulb, finely chopped
3 celery stalks, finely chopped
5 large garlic cloves, minced
1L (4 cups) veggie stock
400g tinned chickpeas or cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
250g baby spinach or any other leafy green, very finely chopped
250g small pasta, such as ditalini
20g (½ cup) nutritional yeast
½ bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley, very finely chopped
2 tbsp capers, finely chopped
Sea salt, to season
Black pepper, freshly ground, to season
Lemon juice, to serve
Grated parmesan, to serve (optional)
Chilli flakes, to serve (optional)

Method

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and cook for a couple of minutes, then add the leek, fennel and celery and cook for another 5–10 minutes until softened and starting to brown. Add the garlic and cook for about 2 minutes until fragrant.

Add the stock, 500ml (2 cups) of water and the chickpeas or beans. Bring to the boil and cook for 10 minutes, then add the greens and pasta, and cook for another 5–10 minutes, using the pasta cooking directions as a guide.

Remove from the heat, stir in the nutritional yeast, parsley and capers, and season with salt and pepper to taste. It will be soupy when fresh off the stove but will thicken significantly as it cools and the pasta absorbs the liquid. Both the soupy version and the less soupy version are delicious, but you can easily return it to its soupy glory by adding additional water or stock when you reheat.

To serve, ladle into bowls and add a squeeze of lemon, then top with parmesan and chilli, if using.

Notes

It will keep for up to 5 days in an airtight container in the refrigerator and freezes well.

This is an edited extract from Epic Veg by Jessica Prescott published by Hardie Grant Books.