Pesto Pasta with Sun Dried Tomatoes and Roasted Asparagus
A quick and easy dish for those busy weeknights, and it is chockfull of veggies!
Pesto is seriously one of my favorite things ever. It is so easy to make, it’s incredibly versatile, and it pretty much tastes amazing in and on anything and everything.
Like for this pasta dish here, I tossed the pesto in some simple ingredients like sun dried tomatoes, roasted asparagus and mozzarella cubes, finishing it off with a fried egg, and it was seriously one of the best weeknight meals ever!
It’s so simple and easy to whip up, and my most favorite thing about it is that some of the pesto gets stuck in the crevices of the shell pasta.
AH-MAZING, right?
Plus, this tastes just as good, if not better, as work leftovers since the mozzarella cubes gets all melted/ooey-gooey in between the pasta.
Pesto Pasta with Sun Dried Tomatoes and Roasted Asparagus
Ingredients
- 8 ounces medium shell pasta
- 1 pound asparagus, trimmed
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- ½ cup basil pesto
- ⅓ cup julienned sun dried tomatoes in olive oil, drained
- ⅓ cup diced mozzarella cubes
- Fried egg, for serving
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly oil a baking sheet or coat with nonstick spray.
- In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions; drain well.
- Place asparagus in a single layer onto the prepared baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper, to taste; gently toss to combine. Place into oven and roast for 8-12 minutes, or until tender but crisp. Let cool before cutting into 1-inch pieces.
- In a large bowl, combine pasta, asparagus, pesto, sun dried tomatoes and mozzarella.
- Serve immediately with a fried egg, if desired.
Did you make this recipe?
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I made this as a cold pasta salad over the weekend for my family’s fourth of July picnic and it was a huge hit! I featured it on my blog today: http://www.love-laurie.com/2015/07/pesto-pasta-salad-with-sun-dried.html
I made this last night. It truly was Damn Delicious! Next time I’ll add more asparagus as my 22 month old daughter couldn’t get enough!!!
I have recently made many of your recipes but this is by far one of my favorite meals. It might be one of my favorite meals ever! I added more sun dried tomatoes after my first serving because I thought it added the most flavor to this meal. I also left off the egg. Thank you for another wonderful recipe.
We just had this for dinner! It was bursting with flavor and everything tasted soooo fresh. I just put together an herb garden in my kitchen window and used fresh basil in the pesto- yumm! I also made sure to use thin stalks of asparagus that were delish. We will definitely make it again! Thanks mucho . . .
my family loves your recpies , so many of them are firm favourites in our house , my 3yr olds love this and the quinoa tacos and just about everything off here i give them 🙂
I don’t eat dairy. If I made the pesto without dairy and left out the mozzarella cubes, do you think it still might be tasty ?
Unfortunately, without further recipe testing, I cannot really say with certainty. Please use your best judgment to suit your dietary restrictions.
This looks so delicious and easy to make. Thank you for another great recipe.
I want to tell you how much I enjoy receiving you recipes emailed to me. I have so many loved recipes from you. You are a great cook!
Made this and it was wonderful!
Had to make a couple changes based on our diet like subbing out the pasta for spaghetti squash and I’m allergic to egg so i topped it with avocado snd threw in some artichoke hearts cause I mistakenly thought the recipe called for them when I was at the grocery store. The avocado paired especially well so if you like avocados I highly recommend it.
This recipe is a keeper though!
I made this tonight and everyone scarfed it up – adults and little people alike. I was so pleased with the flavor combination, and it was nice to have something so easy to prepare. I cheated and used store-bought pesto, but I’m looking forward to using your recipe next time. Thanks for the crowd-pleaser!!!
I just made this and it was delicious. Thank you for this recipe!!!
Thank you for the great recipe. I added some spicy paprika powder and grated parmesan cheese. Also, adding grilled grape tomatoes is really good.
This is so delicious!
When I see the asparagus on the pictures, I think one inch isn’t the same length in your country than in France… oups! excuse-me it’s a bad joke. The recipe is excellent and what a good idea to serve with a fried egg (not usual for us).
Nota : the website above is a private website, not referenced in the search engines. It’s just to help us, my lovely wife and I and some friends to find quickly a good recipe when we want to do something different of the french cooking. Cheers.
AMAZINGGG. my husband’s new favorite meal I’ve made 🙂 yum yum yum. I usually don’t like pesto but gave this a go and it was soooo good. THANK YOU!
I LOVED this dish!! I love that it was easy and with twin babies at home and not eating at all all day, it was the perfect thing to throw together at the end of the night and it really hit the spot. I used Parmesan instead of the Mozzarella, but that’s just because I wanted that flavor…I’m sure it would have been delicious either way. I loved that the asparagus tips were crispy after roasting in the oven, it made for an amazing texture. Thank you!
this looks amazing!
We did a vegan version of this (no cheese in pasta/pesto & no egg) and it was still great…Thanks!
I just wanted to let you know I have been trying your recipes…I think about 5 by now and they are all SO good. This one is our favorite so far. I added shredded chicken for protein instead of the egg, but the beauty of this recipe is that you can add any protein and it would be amazing. Thanks for the great recipes!
I love asparagus so much! I only found this out a couple years ago but it is “damndelicious”! I only eat a plant based diet , so I will be of course leaving out the mozzarella & egg for personal reasons. I’ve haven’t had sun dried tomatoes before so I’ll have a go at this and see if I find another favorite food! Thanks for the recipe!
Sundried tomatoes are awesome! So much flavor packed into a tiny little package
This was supposed to be healthy, but I found a way to make a little less that way 😉 I subbed the creme fraiche instead of the egg and it made this delicious tangy sauce. So delicious. Great recipe!
I made this last night for my boyfriend and myself with a few variations, and we loved it! I doubled the recipe so I could take leftovers to work, and instead making the homemade pesto (I don’t have a food processor, and I wanted a quick trip to the grocery store), we used Safeway Select’s Basil Pesto. It tasted great, although I’m sure it’s much more oily than the homemade version. I’ll have to try that when we move into our new place and have more kitchen space for new appliances. We also omitted the egg from the pasta this time around, but I would like to try it some time in the future.
Our other variation is that we decided to keep the asparagus separate from the pasta since we didn’t have a side dish to eat it with. I roasted it per the recipe using “Gourmet Sea Salt” and freshly ground pepper corn to taste, and then rather than chopping it up and mixing it in, I left them in spears and served them on the side. The thick sea salt was really delicious, and we love asparagus, so eating it as a side was wonderful. My boyfriend suggested that if we do it the same way next time, we should roast some bacon with the asparagus. I’ll give it a shot, but I liked it as is. My main reason serving it like this, against the recipe’s guidance, was since we didn’t have a side, I didn’t want everything to taste like pesto. If I make this next time with a side dish on the menu – maybe a yummy salad – I’ll try the asparagus in the pasta as the recipe instructs. I’m sure it will be delicious.
Overall, great recipe, and picking up the ingredients was easy and cheap! I love how it was so simple, but also tasted good after personalizing it to my needs!
I wanted to add that I ate the pasta (still without the asparagus mixed in) cold for lunch today at work. YUMMY!