Your delicious little secret: Weeknight Pasta with Cottage Cheese and Chives

This simple vegetarian pasta dish is creamy and flavorful, really good for you and—bonus—quick and easy to make. Recipe below.

TO BE HONEST, THIS RECIPE IS SOMETHING I INVENTED A LONG TIME AGO, I don’t even remember how or why, and I always kind of kept it secret. To be completely honest, for a very long time it was kind of my weeknight-easy secret shame. I mean, pasta with cottage cheese.

But as Terry reminded me the other day, cottage cheese is having a moment. A comeback. The thing a few people have known for a long time—that cottage cheese is a nutritional marvel—is being more widely understood.

And marvel it is. Cottage cheese is full of protein. It’s relatively low in calories. It’s rich in micronutrients—riboflavin, selenium, phosphorus, and calcium—that are great for cell function and bone health, and it helps tissues and muscles repair themselves.

Also, you know how we are now being advised to eat something fermented every day? Cottage cheese is one of those excellent fermented foods, made by adding a culture to milk, and naturally rich in gut-balancing probiotics. As a fermented food, it’s up there alongside sauerkraut, kimchee, yogurt and kefir.

As a bonus, this dish is super simple to make. And adding in the chives or scallions to this sauce gives this a delightful mild onion flavor, and a delicate pale green color. This is both super-healthy and very pretty.

Print Pin

Weeknight Pasta with Cottage Cheese and Chives

This vegetarian pasta dish is creamy and flavorful, really good for you, and quick and easy to make.

Course Pasta

Servings 2

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cups cottage cheese
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup chopped chives or scallions plus a teaspoon or so for garnish
• a little cream or milk, if needed
• 7 – 8 ounces dried linguine (or other long pasta)

Instructions

• Put a pot of water on the stove and bring it to a boil.
• While the water is heating, put the cottage cheese, sour cream, olive oil, Parmesan and salt into a blender and process until it is very smooth (if it seems too thick to easily toss with pasta, add a tablespoon or two of cream or milk).
• Prepare two shallow pasta bowls. Scoop about 2/3 cup of the mixture into each bowl.
• Cook the linguine to al dente in salted water (probably around 10 minutes, but check the packaging and your own taste buds), then drain through a sieve and rinse with hot water.
• Add half the pasta to each bowl, then quickly toss to mix everything together. Add a couple tablespoons more of the mixture to each and lightly toss again. Garnish with chives and serve immediately, while the pasta is still nice and warm.

Kitchen Notes

Blenderific. Alternatively, instead of using a blender, put all the ingredients in a deep bowl and zip around with a hand blender—it won’t be quite as sleek, but it will be easier to portion out.

Full fat cottage cheese? Low fat? I use either, depending on what we’ve got in the fridge.

Moving parts. You can strip this recipe down to just cottage cheese and olive oil, or cottage cheese and sour cream, and it will still be pretty awesome. But we like it best with all these components.

Leftover sauce? Save any extra sauce (or make extra!) to beat into mashed potatoes or mmmmm just to snack on by the spoonful. Or, if you are feeling extravagant, gently fold in some beautiful salmon caviar and use it to top scrambled eggs—add some fresh fruit and corn muffins and you’ve got an easy, wonderful weekend brunch.