This pasta dish is vegan friendly, filling and delicious. I was reluctant to try vegan food, I was under the impression it would be bland but seasoning is key when it comes to vegan food. This pasta is quick and easy to make and it’s also healthy so it’s a win win. As autumn has approached and it is October I thought I’d share some autumn friendly recipes and I am attempting to eat better so I thought I’d share this recipe.
You can use any type of pasta which is suitable for vegans, I only had some macaroni, but Rigatoni would be great for this dish. You’ll need some pumpkin purée, you can use canned but I used fresh pumpkin as it is October a lot of supermarkets have started to stock pumpkins. I did pumpkin two ways for this dish, I puréed some for the pasta and finely diced some pumpkin and roasted it too to add on top of the pasta. Once you get all your prep out the way it’s actually not very time consuming at all and a perfect midweek meal, or something to try for a meat free Monday!
I used some vegan cheese in this recipe, it was sliced cheese because it was the only one I could find, it was the Violife sliced cheese and I also used some plant based double milk, majority of supermarkets should stock them. Alternatively you could just use a bit of plant based milk but I don’t think the results will be the same. The vegan cheese was a pleasant surprise I expected it to taste like plastic, and stick to your mouth, but it was very cheesy complimented the pasta great and I would definitely recommend it. So let’s jump straight in! Start off by washing and prepping all your veggies, the key to this dish is bold flavours so go in with a lot of garlic and don’t be shy with it because the last thing you want is bland food. So let’s get started!
Method
-boil your pasta in some vegetable stock
-wash and chop your vegetables
-in a pot heat some oil (preferably olive oil) and throw in the onions garlic and parsley and allow to sweat
-once the onions and garlic are sweating add in your other veggies, peppers and spinach, once the spinach has wilted down you can add in the pumpkin purée a long with diced sun dried tomatoes
-dice some pumpkin into small chunks and season and bake on 175 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes
-once the purée is infused with the veggies add a splash of plant based double cream and a ladle or two of pasta water into the sauce and bring to a boil, you can now grate/shred your cheese and add to the sauce
-do not forget to season the sauce, we’re going for bold flavours here
-drain the pasta and save some pasta water if you need to add anymore water to the sauce
-bring the sauce to a simmer and taste check if it needs any salt and pepper any lemon juice and season to your preference.
-once the sauce has reduced you can add in the pasta to the sauce and give it a good stir so it’s mixed in well
-after 15minutes or so take out the pumpkin out of the oven to add on top of the pasta a long with some chopped fresh parsley
-you can add some more cheese when serving but I didn’t as my sauce was already quite cheesy.
Ingredients
-1 cup puréed pumpkin
-handful of diced pumpkin roasted
-3 slices if vegan cheese
-a splash of plant based double cream
-1 cup of pasta suitable for vegans (any kind is okay)
-half a bell pepper
-a handful of spinach
-1 medium yellow onion
-3 cloves garlic
-salt
-basil
-1 vegetable stock cube
-pepper
-paprika, 1 tsp
-garlic powder
-Lemon juice
-all purpose seasoning
-oregano
-basil
-3/4 sun dried tomatoes chopped
-handful of parsley chopped
And there you have it, it is super easy to make and tastes great cold too if you want to save it for a packed lunch. For the step by step video of this recipe follow me on Instagram and TikTok @shefshahira. Happy eating!
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