A healthy pasta dish is just what’s needed after a day at the beach, lounging by the pool or pretty much after any summer activity. This grilled chicken and vegetable pasta is not only a well-balanced meal, but now you can eat your vegetables IN your pasta. This pasta recipe is a perfect fake-out meal. Even if your picky children and even pickier husbands leave out the grilled vegetables, they won’t even know that you’re feeding them something that’s good for them with this colorful Italian pasta. The recipe starts with making a marinade/dressing, a double duty item that has delicious light, bright summer flavors. Whole garlic cloves are slowly browned in oil (my quick way of getting that sweet roasted garlic flavor). This not only flavors the oil, but browning the garlic helps bring out it’s natural sweetness. This method not only cooks the garlic, but because it’s going into an uncooked dressing and I prefer not to have the raw garlic flavor (plus it’s more palatable for children). Fresh lemon zest, juice, fresh basil, the browned garlic and the oil are all blended until smooth.
Chicken breasts are marinated in half the dressing (the rest is reserved for the vegetables and to pour over the finished dish). They are then grilled along with vegetables, mixed with the pasta and everything is tossed with the dressing. The finished pasta is adorned with chopped fresh basil and lots freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Parmesan cheese is one of the lowest calorie cheeses, so this makes this dish even more of a fake out because who would think that a pasta dish doused in cheese is healthy If you’ve tried this Grilled Chicken and Vegetable Pasta or any other recipe on the blog then don’t forget to rate the recipe and let me know how it turned out in the comments below. I love to hear from my readers! You can also FOLLOW ME on FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM and PINTEREST to see daily recipe updates.
