If you crave carbs during winter and love nothing more than eating a hearty pasta dish, you will enjoy this Zucchini Noodle Pesto Salad with Capsicum and Pine Nuts. This salad is the perfect winter salad for a tradie’s lunchbox.
I don’t know why I haven’t used is sooner! Probably because I thought it would be harder than it was!
The reason for my conversion was because I had a Zucchini Noodle Salad at the Royal Pines resort a few weeks ago and it was so filling and delicious. Anything that tastes like carbs but isn’t carbs must be a good thing?!
To try out my first ‘zoodle’ recipe, I decided to make a simple sauce using ingredients I already had.
We have so much basil growing on the side of our house, so I decided to use this to make the pesto.
I added some capsicum and pine nuts to my zoodles to add a bit of sweetness and protein to the dish. I like having something sweet and nutty in my salads. That extra crunch gives the salad something I reckon.
I think zoodles are now going to be my ‘sphagetti’ of the future when I do spaghetti Bolognese and all the other pasta dishes I do for the kids.
Technically, you could call this a summer dish, but you can cook the zoodles if you want the dish to be warm. Obviously you can’t do that if you’re on a work site, but if you’re preparing this at home, you can cook the zucchini noodles in boiled water.
I know this dish will be on high rotation for lunches. I love that it’s carb free but still tastes like carbs. I’d say that’s a winning dish!
Bec Senyard
Serves 2
10 minPrep Time
3 minCook Time
13 minTotal Time
Save RecipeIngredients
- 1 Large zucchini
- 1 red capsicum
- 1/4 cup of pine nuts plus extras to bake and sprinkle on top of salad
- 1 cup of basil leaves
- 1 teaspoon of minced garlic
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 teaspoon of lemon juice
Instructions
- Use a spiral slicer to turn your zucchini into noodles
- Place oven on at 180 degrees Celsius. Bake some of the extra pine nuts for a couple of minutes until they are golden. Set aside to cool.
- Place rest of pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, basil and lemon juice into a food processor and blitz until smooth.
- Cut capsicum into strips and mix with zucchini noodles.
- Mix or rub the pesto over the zucchini noodles and capsicum and then sprinkle with roasted pine nuts.
