This wholesome tomato pasta recipe makes a wonderful weeknight dinner! This feel-good recipe is warm, comforting, and lightly creamy, but not heavy.
It’s bursting with Mediterranean flavors—roasted cherry tomatoes, hearty chickpeas, creamy goat cheese, pops of briny olives, and garlic. Each one benefits from the heat of the oven, and the end result is just fantastic.
I love how this recipe comes together and I think you will, too. Basically, we’ll cook the pasta on the stovetop and roast the remaining ingredients in one baking dish. Stir it all together, add fresh basil, and you’re ready to eat. You’ll have plenty of time in between steps to tidy the kitchen or chat.
This recipe is a variation on last summer’s Baked Feta Dip with Cherry Tomatoes, which was inspired by the viral TikTok roasted cherry tomato and feta pasta and Deb’s version of it.
It’s always fun to see how recipes morph over time, and this one is a real winner. Please give it a try and let me know what you think!
Tomato & Chickpea Pasta Tips
This recipe comes together beautifully! You’ll find the full recipe below, but here are a few tips before you get started.
Choose small cherry tomatoes at the store, if possible. Grape tomatoes will work if that’s what they have. Bigger cherry/grape tomatoes have tougher skin that can be distracting in the final dish.
Be sure to salt your pasta cooking water. The water should taste a little salty, but doesn’t need to taste “like the sea” (if you’re taking that phrase literally, you’d have to use an incredible amount of salt). Use at least 1 teaspoon of salt here, or more. In my experience, if pasta water is insufficiently salted, it’s impossible to get that flavor back by adding salt later. Most of it gets poured out, anyway.
Arrange the garlic cloves (peeled but left whole) in one corner of the dish. That way, they’re easy to find later. They develop irresistible caramelize flavor as they roast, and we’ll simply smash them against the side of the baking dish when we’re done.
Leftovers keep well for up to four days. That’s my standard time frame for all recipes of this nature. Leftovers make a great lunch, warmed in the microwave or even served cold like pasta salad.
Watch How to Make This Pasta
What to Serve with this Pasta
This pasta dish is rather hearty and doesn’t need complex accompaniments. The easiest option is my Super Simple Arugula Salad, which goes with just about anything. This Chopped Greek Salad or Vegetarian Italian Chopped Salad would complement these flavors, and you can simplify the additions if you’d like.
Outside of salads, green beans are in season along with tomatoes. Try my Perfect Roasted Green Beans for a simple side that can roast in the oven with the tomato mixture, or my Green Beans Amandine for a special occasion.
More Tomato Pasta Recipes to Make
All of these fresh pasta recipes make use of ripe summer tomatoes. Make them while you still can!
As always, please let me know how the recipe turns out in the comments. I love hearing from you.
Tomato & Chickpea Pasta with Goat Cheese
- Author:
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 35 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
- Category: Pasta
- Method: Baked and stovetop
- Cuisine: Mediterranean
- Diet: Vegetarian
This easy pasta recipe features cherry tomatoes, chickpeas, goat cheese, olives and basil! It’s bursting with fresh Mediterranean flavors. Recipe yields 6 medium servings.
Scale
Ingredients
- 8 ounces short-cut pasta noodles
- One 4 to 5 ounce log of goat cheese
- 4 medium cloves garlic, peeled but left whole
- 1 can (15 ounces) chickpeas, rinsed and drained, or 1 ½ cups cooked chickpeas
- 2 pints (4 cups) cherry tomatoes – smaller tomatoes are better!
- ½ cup Kalamata olives, pitted and roughly chopped (optional)
- ⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- Salt, to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional, for heat)
- ⅓ cup thinly sliced fresh basil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit with a rack in the upper third of the oven. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and cook the pasta until tender according to package directions, then drain and rinse the noodles well with cool water.
- Place the goat cheese in the center of a 9 by 13-inch baking dish. Arrange the garlic cloves in one corner so they’re easier to find later. Add the chickpeas, tomatoes, and optional olives around the goat cheese, in that order. Then drizzle the olive oil all over the mixture. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt, several twists of pepper, and the red pepper flakes, if using.
- Bake for 20 minutes on the upper third rack, then place the dish on a heat-safe surface. Gently stir the goat cheese into the tomatoes and tuck the garlic cloves back down to the bottom of the dish.
- Return the dish to the oven and bake for 12 to 15 more minutes, until the tomatoes are juicy and shriveling and the goat cheese is starting to turn golden on top.
- Remove the dish from the oven. Carefully, using a fork, find each of the four garlic cloves and smash each one against the side of the pan. Gently swirl the cheese and tomatoes together.
- Carefully transfer all of the tomato mixture to the pot of rinsed and drained pasta. Taste, and add a pinch or two of salt if desired (if you omitted the olives, you may want even more).
- Sprinkle all over with fresh basil. Serve warm, or let the pasta cool to room temperature before refrigerating it for later. Leftovers keep well, covered and refrigerated, for up to 4 days.
▸ Nutrition Information
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