Top 10: Healthy Pasta Dishes

Melissa Rubel combines roasted almonds, parsley and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese for a nutty, fresh-tasting pesto. This pasta dish is terrific served warm, but it can also be refrigerated and served as a cold pasta salad.

Instead of using heavy cream, this tangy, spicy dish calls for low-fat yogurt, which is packed with protein and calcium. Stirring a little flour into the yogurt prevents curdling as it simmers and creates a thick, rich and satisfying sauce for all kinds of pasta and vegetables.

"This dish makes you understand the less-is-more approach of Italian cooking," says Andreas Viestad about his pasta tossed with a raw tomato-and-zucchini sauce.

This is Australian chef Neil Perry's variation on the Italian classic spaghetti vongole (pasta with clams). He adds green beans to make the dish fresher-tasting, and then finishes it with a sprinkling of Parmigiano-Reggiano. As he says, "Serving cheese with seafood is not the norm in Italy, but I just love it here."

When he was trying to lose weight, Mark Strausman relied on this garlicky, rustic whole wheat pasta. Not only is it loaded with fiber and lycopene-rich canned tomatoes, but it's also deeply satisfying.

This delicate, Asian-influenced chicken is satisfying yet light.

A vast improvement on the usual sesame noodles made famous by a million Chinese take-out menus, this silky version includes chunks of tofu and sweet, crunchy slices of red bell pepper.

The silky carrot puree mixed with the cheddar here is a terrific source of vitamin A and helps reduce the amount of fat in the recipe.

Olive oil infused with crushed red pepper flakes lends this dish with a perfect amount of spice.