Roasted Beets And Garlic Pasta / Roasted Beets Pasta / Pink Pasta

I made this roasted beet and garlic pasta / pink pasta for my friend Priya R of Cook like Priya as a virtual birthday treat to her. But because of my kiddo's health issue i could not share this post on time, so sorry Priya but hope you had a blasting celebration with your family and enjoyed gawking other delicious pink dishes made by our friends. This is a simple and healthy Pasta recipe and also a kid's friendly dish. The pinkish red colour pasta sure attracts kids particularly the gals would love this a lot. My boys too liked this pasta but asked me too many questions that why i prepared pink pasta for boys? Somehow i managed to answer their questions and happy that they liked the taste. we decided to share some pink recipe for her virtual birthday treat but I was not sure about the end colour of the pasta since i tried the dish with half mind so i did not take step wise pictures. After trying the ground roasted beet and garlic paste with pasta i got the right colour so took only the end process. If you like cheese feel free to add some grated Parmesan or Goat cheese or serve with a scoop of Ricotta as mentioned in the original recipe.

Recipe Source : Slightly Adapted from Simplebites.

Preparation Time : 15 minutes

Cooking Time : 1 hour

Serves   6

Ingredients

1. Whole Grain Spaghetti or any Pasta    1 lb
2. Beet root   2 medium 
3. Garlic   4 fat cloves
4. Walnuts Toasted    1/2 cup (chopped, i used toasted Almonds) 
5. Tomato   1/4 of a one medium tomato
6. Olive Oil    3 tbsp
7. Red Chilli Flakes    2 tsp or to taste
8. Salt    to taste

Method

• Prepare spaghetti according to package instructions. Reserve 1 cup of pasta water.
• Preheat oven to 400 F. Drizzle beets with olive oil and wrap beets, garlic cloves and tomato tightly in foil. 
• Roast until very tender, approximately 1 hour. After removing from oven, remove foil and let cool slightly. Carefully peel beets and coarsely chop.

• Now in a blender, add roasted and chopped beets, garlic,tomato, 1 tbsp olive oil and toasted almonds and using pasta water blend it to a coarse paste.
• Then heat a pan, add 1 tbsp olive oil heat it and add chilli flakes let it sizzle and add cooked and drained spaghetti and toss well.

• Switch off the stove then add ground beets paste and toss well. If desired add grated Parmesan or ricotta and mix well.
• That's it..Roasted Beets and Garlic Pasta ready. 

Notes:
For the light color i added less beets paste and after taking picture, i tossed the pasta with generous beets paste.
So add the beets paste according to your taste.
I tried mixing the left over beets paste with ildi batter and made dosa for kids.