Vegan Mexican inspired pasta salad

This is the perfect recipe for a mid-week meal or something that you can prepare on the weekend for a healthy and speedy lunch to take with you to work or school during the week. Pasta is a great dish to cook for the whole family and make in bulk batches. This particular dish is also completely vegan and also gluten free, made with brown rice pasta! This pasta from Rizopia is a fantastic gluten free option, as it’s made from natural ingredients and is 100% brown rice; so is therefore naturally gluten free. It’s also available in a variation of different shapes such as: spaghetti, penne and lasagne sheets.

This dish is packed full of colourful vegetables and flavour and what’s even better, is that it only takes a short amount of time to throw together and actually requires very minimal cooking and prep work! You can be a little creative here and customise the veggies to suit what you have in the fridge, but this is just one idea of one of the flavour combinations that you could go for. I’ve created a Mexican inspired pasta salad, with fresh vibrant flavours from the corn, tomatoes and red onion, with a hint of spice from the chilli flakes. For the dressing, I’ve opted to keep things really simple and used a combination of fresh lemon and olive oil. Something that we discussed in a previous post regarding the world vegan month was plant based protein sources and for this dish, the protein source of choice is black beans. These are a great addition to a meal as they’re a good source of fibre, taste great and are also very affordable.

Ingredients:

200 brown rice pasta

1 can of sweetcorn

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

120g black beans

Handful of cherry tomatoes- sliced in half

Sea salt and pepper to taste

Chilli Flakes

1/2 red onion- finely diced

1/2 large avocado

Fresh lemon

 

Method:

Cook the pasta according to the packets instructions.

Combine the black beans, corn, red onion and tomatoes into a large serving bowl.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain and rinse before adding it into the bowl with the other ingredients. Toss everything together so the veggies are evenly distributed.

Add in the olive oil and season to taste with salt, pepper and chilli. Finally, add a generous squeeze of fresh lemon juice and mix well.

Garnish with cubes of the avocado and serve.