Brussel Sprouts with Creamy Pasta and Oven-baked Cod

If you start following this blog regularly, you’re going to quickly realize I am a pasta freak. Much of what I cook is pasta-based. And these days I’m cutting down on red meat and trying to add more veggies in my diet. What better way to do that than to combine it with pasta?

Here’s a helpful tip: purchase a large deep pan. You will not regret it. It is so much easier to make veggie pastas with this pan as it holds all the ingredients and cooks them evenly. The one I have is a Calphalon and I LOVE it.

So it’s been a while since I’ve had brussel sprouts and I figured tossing it in some wheat pasta would be a good idea with a side of cod. Another idea is to bake cod with the brussel sprouts and have pasta on the side. This recipe looks absolutely delicious. But I decided to leave that for another time.

I got some ideas for the pasta with brussel sprouts sauce from the following sites:

• NYTimes
• Food and Wine
• Bon Appetit

So here is what I did for the brussel sprout pasta:

Ingredients:

• ¾ pound Brussels sprouts (about 16)
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• 2 teaspoons finely grated or choppedlemon zest (I use a microplane for this)
• 2 tablespoons minced chives or parsley, or a combination
• 1/4 cup of finely grated parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup of half and half
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 1 egg
• juice of 1/2 small lemon
• 1 tbsp dry or fresh basil
• 1 tbsp dry or fresh parsely
• a box of wheat spaghetti

Cod Fish:

For the cod recipe, I kept it simple. Butter, lemon, garlic and parsley baked in the oven. I mostly followed Rachel Ray’s recipe except I added some butter instead of the olive oil and did not include the bread crumbs. I also added 1/2 lemon juice. I cooked it in a cast-iron skillet in the oven for 15-20 minutes and then broiled for another 5 to give the fish some color.

Approximate calorie information:

• 1/3 of the cod: 195 calories
• a serving of the pasta: 197 calories

Here are the delicious results.