Eat Your Vegetables: Pasta with broccoli

Advocate staff photo by HEATHER MCCLELLANDThe recipe for this pasta dish with a broccoli cream sauce calls for linguine, but works equally well with other pastas, such as bowtie and penne.

Present this refreshing broccoli pasta, Linguine in Broccoli Cream Sauce, as a summer side dish. My grandchildren asked for seconds, so that’s usually a good sign. I paired it with freshly sliced tomatoes for a nice lunch.

This is simple to make because you’re just steaming broccoli, processing the tender stems and then making a cream sauce with the broccoli puré e. Parmesan cheese finishes off the cream and it’s also sprinkled over the warm pasta.

If you like, you can make the broccoli sauce (purée) ahead of time. The recipe, from “Crème de Colorado Cookbook” by The Junior League of Denver, calls for linguine. However, when I got ready to test the recipe and take the photograph, I didn’t have linguine; I only had partial packages of bowtie, penne and a few spirals, so I used that combination.

Corinne Cook is a columnist for The Advocate. Reach her at [e-mail].