Creamy Pesto Pasta with Zucchini & Goat Cheese

This fast pasta recipe is my summertime go-to when I want a quick dinner - ESPECIALLY during the omgthere'smore zucchini season.

I added pesto, goat cheese and vegetables to my pasta and yet AGAIN I feel like I invented something that will land me on the front page of The New York Times cooking section.

The exact same thing happened when I thought I invented quesadillas which had very much already been invented and named.

So my concoctions were not "Mexican pizzas" as I'd dubbed them 20 years ago (which I understand is all kinds of wrong) but were in fact an historic culinary delight dating back centuries. There's some debate over whether quesadillas originated with the Aztecs or Spanish settlers but the evidence is fairly strong that they did not originate in my kitchen.

Even though I'll accept the same is probably true for my pasta dish it doesn't make it any less delightful.

This will take you 20 minutes from beginning to end, but here it is in 20 seconds ...

Creamy Pesto Pasta (Video)

What makes it so good?

1. You can use any vegetables you have in the fridge.
   
2. You can use any pasta you have around.
   
3. There are only 5 ingredients.
   
4. Even though it's pasta it tastes bright and fresh, like summer.
   
5. It's done in 20 minutes from beginning to end.

If you made my garlic scape pesto earlier this summer this is a PERFECT place to use it.

I should have mentioned the other reason this is so good is that it's easy. All you do is cook pasta, sauté vegetables and then mix all the ingredients together.

There's that super fantastic non stick Carote pan on the left that I told my subscribers about a couple of weeks ago.

A reader sent me one as a gift. He had been introduced to them by his brother. And then for her birthday I gave one to my sister. Word of mouth, man. It is THE best advertising.

Also I *really* need to do a post on how buying individual pieces is a much better idea than buying a "set" of pots and pans.

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A word about dicing a zucchini. I don't know about you but when I'm using up the few zucchini that I haven't thrown into peoples cars and open house windows, I like a nice even dice.

Dice it up

Below is a recap on how to dice a zucchini, you can read the full how-to on how to dice a zucchini with a video in this post.

1. Grab your zucchini and cut the ends off. Then cut the zucchini into 3 chunks.

2. Flip each piece on its end and slice ¼" thick.
   
3. Lay down then slice ¼" in the opposite direction.

TIPS

1. For the pasta use a noodle that's going to hold the sauce well. Something swirly or with ridges is ideal. Example: Rotini, penne, cavatappi or rigatoni.
   
2. Don't worry about the amount of vegetables you use. I often double up on the vegetables if I have lots.
   
3. Add what you like and what you have. Experiment! I also had some pickled Sweetie Drop peppers in the fridge from when I made pizza the other night so I added some of those as well.
   
4. If you're using store bought pesto squeeze some lemon juice over the dish before you serve it. My pesto has lemon juice in it so you don't need to do that if you're using my scape pesto recipe.