Roasted Vegetable Spaghetti with Capers and Pine Nuts

So many of my favourite ingredients come together to form this thoroughly comforting dish. You can use leftover roast veggies of any kind in it as well, you may just need to cut them up smaller.

Keeping my foot in the door with one post a month at the moment and hoping to be able to increase it soon!

Roasted Vegetable Spaghetti with Capers and Pine Nuts

Ingredients
1/2 medium eggplant, diced into 1cm cubes
1 zucchini, diced into 1cm cubes
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 x 400ml cans of diced tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp capers
2 tbsp pine nuts
300g thin spaghetti

To Make
1. Spray a baking tray lightly with olive oil and spread the diced eggplant and zucchini out. Spray with additional olive oil and season to taste with salt and pepper. Roast for 10-15 minutes at 180 degrees. 
2. Meanwhile, heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a pan and cook the onions and garlic until the onions are softened and translucent. Add the canned tomatoes and tomato paste and bring to a simmer.
3. Add the roasted veggies and simmer for up to 5 minutes, just to soften any that may have dried out in the roasting. Stir through the capers and leave on a very low heat to stay warm while you cook the pasta.
4. Cook the spaghetti to al dente according to the instructions on the packet, with thin spaghetti varieties this may only take a few minutes. Drain the spaghetti and stir the sauce gently through.
5. Toast the pine nuts in a dry frypan until golden and then remove from the heat immediately. 
6. Serve up the spaghetti and sprinkle generously with pine nuts. 

Makes 4 fairly modest serves or 2 very generous serves (or 3 just right?). 
Depends on how much you love pasta!

If you love pasta as much as I do, you might want to check out all my other pasta recipes too :)

Vegan Nutmeat Bolognese with Zucchini and Carrot Spaghetti (low carb)

Like every other Australian kid, I grew up eating a lot of spaghetti bolognese. It's so commonly cooked in Australian homes that it's practically a national dish. Nobody in my family was vegetarian or vegan at the time, but my father used to switch around between making our bolognese with meat or with nutmeat. Even as a kid, I loved the nutmeat one more than the meaty one. When I grew up I learnt to cook it for myself and made it often. I introduced it to my Italian best friend and even he loved it more than the meat version. He wasn't a vegan then, but he is now and it's become the lunch we always cook whenever we catch up at, in either of our kitchens. So, it's a sentimental dish for me, and one I probably should have shard on the blog earlier.

Usually, I'd have it with thin spaghetti (the thinner the better!), but cutting back on my carb intake has meant experimenting with other options. These zucchini and carrot noodles taste wonderful with this sauce, and make for a much lighter meal. I've left mine raw, and then ladled the hot sauce over them which cooks them just slightly. You can also blanch them for a minute before eating to soften them up, but don't cook them much or they will break apart and become mushy. You'll want a julienne slicer to get them nice and noodle-y, but I seem to recall mine cost less than $2 from eBay.

 

Vegan Nutmeat Bolognese with Zucchini & Carrot Spaghetti

Ingredients1 tbsp. Olive oil

1 onion, diced

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1 carrot, finely diced

1 x 400g can of nutmeat, chopped finely

2 x 400g cans diced tomatoes (or even better - 1 can diced, 1 can crushed)

1 tbsp. Tomato paste

1 tbsp. Soy sauce

Pinch of nutmeg

1/2 cup fresh oregano, chopped finely

Cracked pepper, to taste

1 zucchini, julienne sliced into noodles

1 carrot, julienne sliced into noodles

(or, use spaghetti)

To Make:

1. Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté the onion until just starting get translucent. Add the garlic and carrot and fry for a moment. Then add 1/3 cup water and simmer, covered, until the carrot is cooked through.

2. Add the chopped nutmeat, cans of tomatoes, tomato paste, soy sauce and nutmeg. Add 1/2 cup water and bring to a simmer. Simmer, uncovered,  for about 15-20 minutes by which point the sauce should have reduced and thickened nicely. Stir in the fresh oregano and add cracked pepper to taste.

3. Shred your zucchini and carrot into noodles using a julienne slicer and divide between two bowls. Ladle the hot sauce over them. If you like, sprinkle with some (vegan) parmesan cheese.

Makes enough sauce for 3-4 people, and enough noodles for 2.

Chilli Tofu Lettuce Wraps

You saw that last post I did about all the cake I ate in Sweden right? So it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear that now I'm back home I am on a serious health kick! I've been very strict and serious since I got back - absolutely no desserts or sugary things and severely reduced carbohydrates in general. I'm living on a diet of vegetables, fruits, beans, pulses, tofu and healthy fats (such as coconut oil and olive oil).

Just before I left for my trip overseas I received an exciting package in the mail. Bertolli sent me some bottles of their different types of olive oil so that I could experiment with using different types for different uses. I'll confess, I have never in the past given thought to which type of olive oil was better for different styles of cooking. So, although I went overseas immediately afterwards and didn't actually get a chance to use any of it, I was really looking forward to trying it out when I got back.

In a healthy eating plan such as the one I've put myself on over the past couple of weeks it is really important to make sure you're getting some good fats and some proteins into your diet to help you feel full. If you just live on little salads and veggies you're going to find it hard to feel satisfied and you're more likely to fall off the wagon because you're feeling so hungry! Coconut oil, olive oil and avocado are real winners to help you feel satistied after your healthy meal. Olive oil is also a really important element in a vegan diet - because vegans don't get any fats from animal sources (meat, butter, cheese, yoghourt etc.) sometimes vegans actually find themselves in the position that they need to consciously add more fats into their diet. I can tell you though that eating more cake and sugar isn't the healthy way to do it! Try to pick naturally occurring and unprocessed fats!

Bertolli sent me three different types of their olive oil - Extra Virgin, Classic and Light. I had a hankering for a tofu and salad wrap for lunch yesterday but I didn't want to eat the actual bread of a wrap so I went for a lettuce wrap. They fall apart a little bit sometimes but they do the job pretty well and I felt much better after this lunch than after eating the wheat and starchy carbs of a traditional wrap. To add some protein and healthy fats to my lunch I wanted to fry up a bit of chilli tofu.

I fried my chilli tofu in the Light Olive Oil, because it's ideal for frying. It has a light flavour which doesn't detract from the flavour of the chilli tofu and the tofu came out crispy and not oily at all. Even though I used plenty of olive oil in my pan, the light olive oil cooked the tofu without actually coating it all in oil. So most of the oil remained in the pan (and I used this chilli oil to cook something else in later than night), which meant my lunch tasted fresh, healthy and not doused in oil!

Chilli Tofu Lettuce Wraps

Ingredients:

300g hard tofu, drained and squeezed (just squeeze as much of the liquid out of it as you can)

2-3 tbsp Bertolli light olive oil (I used 2 tbsp in a non stick saucepan, if your pan isn't non stick you may need more)

1 tsp chilli flakes

1 small zucchini, sliced into ribbons (use a potato peeler)

1 ripe avocado, sliced

1 medium carrot, grated

Alfalfa sprouts

2 tbsp pepitas

6-8 big iceberg lettuce leaves (you'll need the big softer outer leaves of the lettuce - if you use the crunchy inner leaves your rolls will split apart the moment you roll them)

To Make:

1. Slice the tofu into 1 cm thick slices and pat away any moisture with a paper towel.

2. Heat the light olive oil in a frypan and when it's hot sprinkle the chilli flakes over the oil. Let fry for about 30 seconds.

3. Add the tofu slices and fry until crispy, turning once or twice during the cooking to ensure they're cooked on both sides. Once crispy and golden set aside on a plate (I didn't need to drain mine on paper towel as they were not oily at all - but if your seem a little oily then you can place them on paper towel after frying).

4. In a small saucepan dry fry the pepitas over a medium heat for 1-2 minutes so that they pop and become round. Remove and set aside to cool down.

5. Assemble your wraps: take a big lettuce leaf and add zucchini, carrot, alfalfa, avocado, tofu and pepitas to the middle of it. Roll up as best you can (you may need to employ some toothpicks if they don't hold together well enough).

Makes about 6-8 rolls (this will depend on how much you stuff them).

Making the lettuce wraps is mildly fiddly - so if you can't be bothered doing that then you can always just toss all this together in a salad instead, it's also pretty delicious (although without the added fun/mess of eating the lettuce wraps!). You can make yourself a simple dressing of extra virgin olive oil, soy sauce and lemon juice to go with it. 

A quick note on this post: I received free olive oil from Bertolli to use on my blog, however, I am not being paid for this post nor am I an ambassador for this brand. 

Baked Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice, Zucchini and Broad Beans

These tasty stuffed tomatoes look fiddly but take surprisingly very little time to make. They're a delicious combination of crunchy baked on the top and deliciously juicy inside. They make a perfect (and very healthy) dinner with a salad or vegies on the side. When we had this (pictured above) I just made a basic salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado, olives and continental parsley drizzled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and then sprinkled with some sumac. They went together perfectly.

Ingredients:

6 large round tomatoes

1/2 cup long grain rice

1 cup shelled fresh broad beans (substitute frozen if fresh is unavailable)

1 onion, finely diced

3 cloves garlic, finely diced

1 zucchini, grated coarsely

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp dried Italian herb mix

Salt and Pepper

Olive Oil

To Make:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

2. Bring a pot of water to the boil and add the rice and broad beans. Simmer for 15 minutes or until the rice is cooked through. Then drain and rinse thoroughly.

3. While your rice is cooking away prepare your tomatoes. Cut a wide hole in the top of each one (like carving a pumpkin to make a lantern) and discard the top bit (and by discard I mean give it to your guinea pig). Scoop out the contents of each tomato and put aside.

4. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a pan and sauté the onions until soft. Add the grated zucchini and garlic and sauté until softened. Chop the tomato middle bits up and add to the pan. Turn down low and simmer gently.

5. Pick the broad beans out of the rice and put aside (if you don't want to have to do this you can cook them in a separate saucepan but I just use the same one to save washing up). Peel the broad beans (just make a little cut or tear in the wrinkly outer skin and then just squeeze gently and the bean will pop out). Cut each bean in half.

6. Add the rice, broad beans, herbs, soy sauce and salt and pepper to the pan. Stir well and heat through.

7. Fill each tomato as full as you can with the rice mixture and place upright in a slightly oiled baking dish. You will have a bit of mix left over (unless you managed to find awesomely huge tomatoes in which case kudos) but just eat that while you're waiting for them to bake :)

8. Bake for 20 minutes, turning the dish around about half way through. Serve with a salad or some vegies on the side.

Makes 6 tomatoes so serves 3 adults (or 2 adults and 2 kids).