Roasted Courgette Pesto Pasta
This one is a proper weeknight hero in our kitchen. Roasted courgettes get all golden and a little caramelised in the oven, and when you blitz them into a pesto with basil, lemon and a good handful of nuts, something genuinely magical happens. It's creamy, herby, and has that savoury depth you really don't expect from something so simple. We've made this more times than we can count, and it always gets demolished. Honestly, if you've got 35 minutes and some courgettes on their last legs, this is exactly what you should be making tonight.
Before You Start
- Preheat oven to 200°C
- Large baking tray
- Food processor
- Frying pan (dry, for toasting pine nuts)
- Colander
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp Nooch
- 2 large courgettes
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 4 garlic cloves
- 60g basil
- 100g pine nuts
- 500g spaghetti
- 50g rocket
- balsamic vinegar
- Salt & pepper to taste
- olive oil - for roasting
Method
Prepare the courgettes
- Cut the courgettes at an angle into ½ cm slices
- Place the courgette slices and garlic cloves a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, place the tray in the oven and roast for 30 minutes
- Remove the garlic cloves after 15 minutes
Cook the pasta
- Put the saucepan on the stove, fill with boiling water from the kettle, add a big pinch of salt and turn the heat up
- Add the spaghetti to the pan and cook according to the packet instructions (usually 9-11 minutes)
Make the courgette pesto
- Remove the skins from the garlic cloves
- Toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan over a high heat until golden
- Halve the lemon and squeeze the juice into the food processor
- Rip the basil leaves from the stems, place the leaves in the food processor (saving a few for garnish) and discard the stems
- Add the pine nuts (saving a few for garnish), nutritional yeast, extra virgin olive oil, garlic cloves to the food processor
- Take the tray out of the oven and transfer the courgette to the food processor
- Blitz thoroughly into a sauce
- Taste and season to perfection with salt and pepper
Finish the dish and serve
- Drain the pasta with a colander and quickly transfer the pasta into the saucepan
- Pour the sauce over the pasta and stir to coat
- Use tongs to transfer the pasta to serving bowls
- Dress the pasta with rocket
- Drizzle over a little balsamic vinegar, season with salt, pepper and the saved pine nuts and basil leaves and serve immediately
Tips & Variations
- Save your pasta water: Before you drain the spaghetti, scoop out a big mug of the starchy cooking water. Stir it into the pesto a splash at a time and it makes the sauce cling to every strand of pasta perfectly.
- Swap the pasta shape: We love this with spaghetti but it works brilliantly with rigatoni or fusilli too. Anything with a bit of texture to catch the sauce is a winner.
- Make it cheesier: Stir in a generous spoonful of nutritional yeast when you're blending the pesto. It adds a lovely savoury, parmesan-ish flavour that takes the whole thing up a notch. Henry never skips this bit.
Why This Works
The trick here is roasting the courgettes rather than using them raw. It drives out the moisture and concentrates all that flavour, so your pesto is rich and silky rather than watery and bland. Peeling the garlic cloves and pulling them out halfway through the roast means they add a gentle sweetness without going bitter. That combo is what makes this sauce properly good.