Name: Pasta Primavera
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 3 carrots, peeled and cut into thin strips; 2 medium zucchini, cut into thin strips; 2 yellow patty pan squash or extra zucchini, cut into thin strips; 1 onion, thinly sliced; 1 yellow capsicum, cut into thin strips; 1 red capsicum, cut into thin strips; 60ml olive oil; salt and freshly ground black pepper; 1 tbsp dried Italian herbs; 500g farfalle (bowtie pasta); 15 cherry tomatoes, halved; 40g grated parmesan

Primavera means spring in Italian, and despite the name this dish is actually an Italian-American invention from the 1970s rather than a traditional recipe from Italy. The idea is simple: roast whatever spring vegetables you've got until they catch a bit of colour, then toss them through pasta.

Roasting rather than sautéing is what gives this dish its depth. A hot oven dries out the surface of the vegetables fast enough that they caramelise instead of just steaming in their own liquid, which is what tends to happen in an overcrowded frying pan.

Cut everything into even, thin strips so it all cooks at roughly the same rate. Uneven pieces mean you're either pulling some vegetables out early or leaving others in until they're mushy, trying to get the rest done.

Save a cup of the pasta cooking water before you drain it. That starchy water is what brings the whole dish together once you toss the pasta through the roasted vegetables, loosening everything into a light sauce instead of a dry, clumped-together mix of pasta and vegetables that haven't quite merged.