Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Pasta with Spinach and Esme's Special Sauce.



Wow! This ridiculously simple pasta sauce is so delicious. Esme from the Post Punk Kitchen Forums came up with this recipe. It's rich and creamy with the smooth flavors of sesame paste, saltiness of soy sauce and miso and sweetness from rice vinegar. This recipe has been going around the vegan blogs and has been quite popular. I decided to give it a go tonight and I am happy. I will make this again very very soon (like this weekend). Serve this with crushed red pepper sprinkled over the top. It's fantastic.

Esme's recipe is basically this (my additions are noted with a *):

Equal parts of: (For a pound of pasta, I used 4 TB of each.)
-tahini
-miso paste (*I used mellow white miso.)
-soy sauce (you can cut this to 2TB if you like it less salty.)
-olive oil
-nutritional yeast or mustard (*dijon is good)
-lemon juice or vinegar (seasoned rice vinegar is good here.)
-and a few cloves of garlic, minced

Cook pasta according to package directions. *Before I drain the pasta, I like to save at least 1/4 cup of the pasta water to dilute the sauce a bit. Drain pasta and set aside. Pour above ingredients into the pasta pot on low heat. Stir to get it all combined and then add the pasta water and stir until smooth. Then pour hot pasta into the pot and toss to combine with sauce. At this point you can add some chopped spinach or other green and let it wilt from the heat. Add black pepper to taste.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's it! I'm definitely making this tomorrow. Thank you! :)

kmouse said...

destiny-
I made a mistake on the amount of each ingredient. I said 2TB of each for a pound of pasta. I meant 4 TB! I guess it's a matter of preference as well. Some like less sauce and some like more. :)

Kim

Anonymous said...

No worries, I just made it (after you'd already edited it) a few minutes ago! I've only made the sauce, since I'm going to prepare the whole deal for dinner later, but it's so good! Thank you again. I can see this becoming my new "ranch"; in other words, what I use to dip everything into! At least this has some health attributes, unlike Vegenaise.

sweetie said...

YUM! i might try this out this week. how does it compare to "creamy" sauces made w/cashews or other nuts? could i serve it on top of spaghetti or are shaped noodles better?

kmouse said...

sweetie,
I think cashew based sauces are much creamier but this sauce is creamy enough. I think it would go just as well with spaghetti but I've only ever tried it with shaped pasta.

Gauri Radha गौरी राधा said...

Must try this out, looks lovely!!