For as long as I’ve been old enough to worry about things like weight and fitness and beauty and health, there has always been one constant diet “truism” that I loathe. No or low carb.
I admit it, I am a carb-a-holic. Despite that I managed to lose 25kg in 2018 which means that I have no plans to give up my love of healthy, complex carbohydrates anytime soon. And that brings me to the craving I had recently.
Romesco.
For the uninitiated, Romesco sauce is a delicious, hearty and flavorful sauce that originated in Catalonia, but can be found in most Italian restaurants these days to go alongside your favorite pasta dish. Rather than using it as a dip, I turned into a pasta sauce and it was
FAN-TAS-TIC!!!
The key to a good Romesco sauce, in my opinion, is getting a good roast on pretty much everything. I toasted the blanched almonds, roasted the red bell peppers and a whole head of garlic, and for a little extra flavor I added a couple sun-dried tomatoes. Once everything has been roasted and cooled, peel what you can from the peppers and add everything to a food processor. Here is the fun part where you can decide how chunky or smooth you want your sauce to be. Of course for the pasta I wanted it thick and creamy-ish but I didn’t want to add any oil to it, which is also a key ingredient by the way. I relied on the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes which might have totaled 1.5 teaspoons maximum.
To thicken the cream and give it enough oomph for the pasta, I added Take It Veggie brand of vegan cooking cream, about 1/2 cup which was all it needed for about 350 grams of pasta.
The rest of the sauce was pretty easy, just saute a yellow onion and I added this new dried soy granules, which have the same effect as any kind of tofu crumbles but I was curious how this worked (btw, great!) so I wanted to give it a try. The onions & tofu completed the sauce and all that was left…cook the pasta.
The pasta was the easy part. Just grab a bag of whole wheat anything–I used fusili because I wanted the Romesco to get stuck in all the nooks & crannies of the pasta, so the flavor was EVERYWHERE–and cook it according to the instructions.
This is another simple vegan meal for the lazy vegan in all of us, but the great part is that this is where serving size can really help if you have weight loss goals. This meal is satisfying, calorie & fat friendly and easy to make because the oven does most of the hard work.
Plus if you only eat one serving–moderation and all that–you have plenty of room for a cocktail or dessert!
No surprise which one I chose! Try this recipe and let me know how it turns out and as always, photos are welcome!
the-spicy-spatula.com 