Jan 12

Jan 12 Vegan spaghetti alla "vongole"

Whenever I do a poll over on my insta stories and ask what you want to see more of, a vegan spaghetti alle vongole always comes up. Fish is by far the one thing I still struggle with to veganize. Apart from a few fairly easy ones like my calamari or tuna. Most recipes make use of seaweed and I absolutely find it disgusting. But today I made an attempt to make “spaghetti alle vongole”, without seaweed, trying to be as true as possible to the original recipe. But feel free to add some seaweed if you like it. The beauty about vongole are the shells in the pasta, but that’s really a no go if you’re vegan. So you can see this recipe as a spaghetti alle vongole without the shells, deshelled vongole in other words. To mimic these deshelled vongole I used kind oyster mushrooms cut into half moons. They are bit chewier than vongole but still delicious as I find this mushroom to have a slight fishy taste.

if you’re Italian, don’t come at me, “these are not vongole” Yes I know, my dad will not approve either but in this case see of this recipe as a simple aglio e olio with mushrooms. ;)

Recipe

serves 3-4 people

Ingredients

300-400 gr of spaghetti
200 gr of king oyster mushrooms, regular oyster mushrooms work too, cut into bite size pieces to resemble deshelled vongole
1-2 tsp of white miso paste
2-3 large garlic cloves, minced
a big handful of flat leaf parsley, minced + extra for garnish
100 ml of olive oil
80 ml of white wine
salt and pepper to taste
Optional, a sheet of nori seaweed if you like the taste, shredded

Instructions

Start by adding water to a pot for the pasta. Add salt and let it come to a boil.
Meanwhile heat the olive oil in a pan on medium heat.
Add the garlic and parsley (and seaweed if using).
Slowly simmer for a few minutes so the flavors and aroma’s of the ingredients come out.
Add the mushrooms and turn up the heat slighty.
Add the miso paste and stir to coat every piece of mushroom and to let the miso melt.
Fry until the mushrooms are cooked through and are starting to slightly brown but be careful to not burn the garlic.
Deglaze with the white wine and leave to evaporate for a few minutes.
Cook the pasta in de boiling water until al dente.
Add it to the pan of mushrooms and add a cup of pasta water too.
Stir and flip the pan to emuslify the oil and pasta water to create a “sauce”.
Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve with some extra parsley on top.
Buon appetito!