When making ‘healthy living’  choices for yourself and the family,  sometimes small changes can make a big difference. This tasty chicken spelt vegetable pasta recipe substitutes wholemeal spelt (an ancient grain) pasta for normal wheat pasta and Tamari (a type of soy sauce) for salt. The result is a fast, easy family meal that is low GI, has masses of veggies and is comparatively low in sodium, and is really yummy too.

chicken spelt vegetable pasta

• 2 Ritchies skin free chicken breasts, cut in 1cm thick strips length ways
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 red onion, peeled and finely sliced
• ½ red capsicum, deseeded and finely sliced
• 2 medium garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 cups snow peas cut in strips
• 10 ripe cherry or plum cherry tomatoes cut in quarters
• ¼ cup (packed) torn, fresh basil leaves
• Spiral Tamari to taste
• 1 long red chilli, deseeded and finely diced
• 250g Absolute Organic wholemeal spelt fusilli

chicken spelt vegetable pasta method

Cook the spelt fusilli, following the packet instructions. Drain and reserve ½ cup of the cooking water. (this will be used to loosen the sauce later)

Toss the drained pasta in 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and set aside.

In a large frying pan, sauté pan or wok on a medium high heat add the remaining olive oil and sliced onion, cook. stirring occasionally until the onion softens and starts to turn light brown. Remove the onion from the pan and set aside.  Turn the heat to high. Add the chicken to the pan and cook stirring all the time, until the chicken has turned white, return the cooked onion to the pan along with the capsicum and cook for a further minute or until the chicken has just cooked through.

Add the garlic, chilli and tomatoes and cook until the tomatoes have just started to collapse. Pour in the reserved cooking water, cooked pasta and snow peas and mix together until everything is hot and the snow peas to turn bright green. Remove from the heat, season to taste with the tamari,  scatter with torn basil leaves and serve immediately.

Serves 4. Preparation time 15 minutes. Cooking time 20 minutes.