This pasta sauce uses blended hazelnuts and dairy-free cream as the base, and is flavoured with sage and nutmeg to create a deeply savoury, warming sauce. Once it’s stirred through fried chestnut mushrooms, onions, garlic and pasta you have an aromatic, hearty dish. I found that tagliatelle worked really well for this, as the sauce coated the cooked pasta perfectly
Serves; Four Cook time; 20 minutes, plus soaking the nuts overnight
You’ll need;
- 100g roasted hazelnuts, soaked
- 350ml dairy-free milk
- One teaspoon of dried sage
- One quarter of a teaspoon of ground nutmeg
- Two tablespoons of nutritional yeast
- One teaspoon of oil
- One small onion, diced (roughly 125g)
- Two cloves of garlic, minced
- 235g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
- Salt and black pepper
- 300g (this is the dry, uncooked weight) of pasta I used tagliatelle
Method;
- Place the hazelnuts into a bowl and cover them with cold water. Leave them overnight to soak. Once they’ve soaked overnight, discard the soaking liquid and place them into a high speed blender. *If you’re pressed for time you could do a quick soak for 30 mins with boiled water*
- Add the milk, sage, nutmeg and nutritional yeast into the blender and blend until smooth. Season to taste with a little salt and black pepper
- Next, heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Once it’s heated up, add in the onion and fry for ten minutes. While you’re cooking the vegetables, cook the pasta as per the instructions on the packet
- Then add the mushrooms and garlic to the frying pan and give them five minutes to cook
- Once the mushrooms have been cooking for five minutes, add the sauce into the frying pan and give everything a good stir
- When the pasta is cooked, drain it well and place it into the frying pan
- Give the pasta a good stir so that it gets evenly coated in the sauce. Once everything is evenly mixed through it’s ready to serve
If you’d only like a portion or two at a time, I would recommend making the sauce and then putting the remainder in the fridge. If you keep it in an air tight container it should keep well for roughly five days. To reheat the sauce, pop it in a small saucepan and warm it up slowly over low heat. Don’t blast it with a high heat, as it may break
Bethany's Vegan Kitchen 