Gluten Free Pesto Pasta Buddha Bowl

3 reasons I made my Gluten Free Pesto Pasta Buddha Bowl:
- Buddha Bowls are filling my Instagram feed BUT where are the pasta based ones at?! When you’ve got gluten free pasta as good as Garofalo, you need to celebrate it with Buddha Bowls and find reasons to eat it every single day.
- Everyone’s jumping on the grow-your-own bandwagon at the moment and I love it!! Fresh basil pesto was calling me. And once you’ve made your own, you’ll never go back to shop-bought.
- Rainbow colour food is a must…
Challenge: find a colour that is NOT in this photo. If you’re thinking pink, there’s pink hearts in that napkin in the background.

Before we get into the recipe, can we talk about the pasta?
It absolutely has to be Garofalo for me. I am not exaggerating when I say there is at least 10 different types of Garofalo pasta in my cupboard at all times.
It doesn’t fall apart or go sticky, it doesn’t require any special coeliac skills to cook it AND it tastes the same once cooked. No other pasta tastes quite so like the “normal” stuff. My non-gluten free boyfriend only ever wants Garofalo.
This time I used their “Pulses and Grains” range. It made of chickpeas, lentils, corn and a beautiful mix of other grains to create such a yummy pasta. The shapes are insane too for absorbing lots of sauce (or holding onto the pesto in this case)!
You can purchase it on Ocado, Amazon & independent stores.

Gluten Free Pesto Pasta Buddha Bowl
Ingredients
Pesto Pasta
- 20 g pine nuts
- Handful of basil (about 10 grams)
- 1 tbsp olive oil - the best you can get but sunflower oil will also be fine!
- Squeeze of lemon - just a little one!
- Sprinkle of Salt
- 1 portion of your fav Garofalo Gluten Free pasta
Optional Buddha Bowl Extras
- 2 sundried tomatoes
- 1/2 shredded carrot
- 1 tbsp hummus
- 1/2 tin sweetcorn
- Bit of lettuce & purple cabbage
- 3 cherry tomatoes
- Handful of chickpeas
- Sweet chilli drizzle
Instructions
Pesto Pasta
- Boil a large pan of water with a sprinkle of salt>Make sure you use about twice the amount of water than you would with regular pasta – this prevents it from going gloopy.>Also NEVER add the pasta until the water is boiling. Top tip from the best pasta company themselves 😉
- Add your Garofalo pasta to the pan and leave to boil for as long required on the packet.
- Drain and run under cold water to stop it cooking and get it ready for our buddha bowl! Set aside.>You can keep it warm if you'd like to, I just like this recipe cold 🙂 Also makes it perfect for your work lunchbox (when we finally return!)
- Place all of the other pesto ingredients into a blender and mix. >I use a smoothier maker for this>I like to leave it slightly chunky but totally your preference! If you're not sure what your preference is, blend it for 10 seconds and try it. If you want it smoother, blend for another 10 and repeat until you're in love haha 🙂
- Mix the pesto into the pasta
Construct your Buddha Bowl
- Time to use up everything in the fridge! As the saying goes "you eat with your eyes" so spend some time making it pretty 🙂
- Tip: roasted paprika chickpeas are amazing. Drain a can of chickpeas, rinse with water, sprinkle with paprika and place onto a baking tray at 180oC for 5-10 mins until slightly crunchy.
Want some more pasta recipes? Here’s my fav 3…