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Mellen’s Lake Placid Pasta Recipe

Mellen’s Placid pasta recipe  

I’ve been making this since I was a student and perfected the recipe living in staff housing: with the goal to maximize flavor with minimal ingredients. I started replacing pasta with zoodles about 18 months ago in order to reduce calories and eat more vegetables. This recipe is nothing fancy, but it’s really quick when I’m rungry, or travelling with a kitchen in my accommodation – all of which describes us in Lake Placid!

Ingredients:

1 jar Classico marinara sauce

½ cup red wine

2-3 tbsp pesto sauce

Extra-lean ground beef/hamburger (or mushrooms + miso paste for vegan)

2-6 zucchini

2-3 cups baby spinach (optional)

Parmesan cheese (optional)

Directions

  • Put pasta sauce in pot to heat.
  • Form ground beef into twonie-sized flattish meatballs.  Put some of pesto in non-stick frying pan and brown meatballs in small batches with more pesto on top, periodically draining pan juices into sauce. (For vegetarian/vegan, use mushrooms + miso paste for umami flavor). When done frying the meatballs, place into pasta sauce, then use the red wine to lift the remainder of the pan browning and add to sauce.
  • Boil 2-3” water with a pinch of salt in 2nd pot
  • Prepare zoodles:

Zoodles (zucchini noodles)

Cut the non-stem end from zucchini. You’ll need 1 large, or 2 small per person – it’s deceptive when they’re raw. Use a spiralizer (check Winners/Homesense, you can usually find one for $3).

Use the spiralizer like a pencil sharpener on the zucchini to turn it into zoodles.

     or    

  • Boil zoodles for ~2 minutes, until bright green. For more carbs, boil ½ serving of regular pasta as usual, and add half a serving of zoodles to the top of the boiling pasta water when pasta has 2 minutes left to cook. For more green, add in a few handfuls of baby spinach to the top of the zoodle/pasta water to steam for 1 minute.
  • Drain zoodles (or pasta/zoodle/spinach mix) in colander or from pot, serve onto plate, put meatbally pasta sauce on top, sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
  • Enjoy!

 

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