And pasta of the year goes to....

Are you serious?  This one goes in to the hall of fame in the category of good stuff mixed up with some noodles.  This thing is creamy and roasted garlicky and olive oily with a splash of parmesan cheesy.  Not to mention all of the fine vegetables all up in the mix.  This one is a winner, so don't even think twice, just grab a pen and paper and plan on fixin' this for dinner like yesterday.  It is decently quick too, but you may want to grab a beer or a glass of wine and crank up the Christmas tunes anyway.  Start out with roasting up some garlic again by cutting the top off of a head, pour some olive oil in there, wrap it in foil and bake it at about 350 for about an hour or a little less.

For this recipe you will need the following:
One leek
1 can artichoke hearts
Half of a red onion (chopped but not too fine)
1/2 cup(dry) mung beans cooked in veggie stock
2.5 cups rough chopped broccoli (I used frozen)
5 cloves roasted garlic and 3 fresh cloves
The juice of about 1/2 lemon
2 cups collard greens (I used mine from the garden but frozen will do fine)
A couple pats of butter and some extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup milk or cream and about 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella and some parmesan cheese.

Saute your onions, a couple cloves of minced garlic, broccoli, sliced leeks (white portion), and collards all together in butter and olive oil while the mung beans are cooking.  Go ahead and salt the mixture a little and give it a few splashes of that fresh lemon juice.  As all the veggies start getting a little soft turn them to low heat and mix in your milk or cream along with a small pat of butter and incorporate together.  After the mung beans get soft, dump them along with their juices in to the veggie mixture along with the shredded mozzarella and stir it all up well.  Go ahead and get your noodles of choice going while the veggie mixture stays on low heat.  I used brown rice spaghetti noodles.

After the noodles get done, drain 'em and transfer 'em in to another bowl, and then take out the roasted garlic from the oven and squeeze some of that fine smellin' mess right over the veggie mix (about 5 cloves will do just fine).  Salt and pepper to taste and if you're like me you'll add about 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper and then add some fresh lemon juice and dump the whole mix over the pasta and mix it all together in to a big heapin' pile of I don't know what.  Grate some fresh parmesan over it before you serve it and dang - that's right on.  This one didn't even need a salad.

 
One last thing.  I took some of those mung beans and sprouted them as my first attempt at doing some sprouts here at home instead of buying them.  It worked pretty darn well, so I left a picture or two here for you to check them out.  It's not hard to do at all and I'm sure you can figure it out, but my advice is don't do mung bean sprouts unless you have accquired a taste for them.  I'll be honest, I can get used to alot of things, but mung bean sprouts just won't do.  I had to smother them in refried black beans just to get them past my tongue.  The pictures are cool anyway - stay tuned for broccoli sprouts!!