Happy Friday y’all! Yes Fridays are always so happy and for me these days everyday is happy since I am on vacation! Everyone is in a mood to relax and unwind on Friday, which actually means no one wants to cook an elaborate meal.
One of my favourite things to make for Friday night dinner is pasta. Pasta tossed with sun-dried tomatoes and sautéed mushrooms in a creamy, sauce fragrant with garlic and basil, this vegan sun-dried tomato & mushroom pasta is sure to become a family favourite. Quick and easy to make, it is perfect for a Friday night’s dinner.
This is yet another of my “lazy one-person meal” to make when I’m home alone. Now, even though the term “lazy one-person meal” sounds boring, the taste is far from it. Three words – tasty, umami, addictive. In fact, it is one pasta dish I could eat everyday! (Ok, maybe a bit exaggerating but you get the drift.) This is not the typical bolognese, carbonara or puttanesca pasta you’ll find in Italian restaurants. If you like sun dried tomatoes and mushrooms, then this recipe is for you.
I cooked a pot of fettuccini noodles for this post but this sauce would be divine on so many other foods. Sun-dried tomato alfredo gnocchi? Sun-dried tomato alfredo cauliflower? Sun-dried tomato alfredo zucchini noodles? Ok. I’ll stop. I could go on all day singing the praises of this sauce. But you gotta try it to understand. The combination of flavours in this dish is so good, it’s a pure comfort food that you will be tempted to eat right out of the pan: The fettuccine pasta is tossed with sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, mushrooms, and basil in a very tasty, creamy and velvety sauce.
I feel like I usually always have sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, and spinach on hand, so truth be told, this recipe is that one life saving recipe I go to again and again. It is such comforting dish and you feel like you’re really hitting all the key flavours in one dish- salty and meaty. I love sun-dried tomatoes! They provide the perfect amount of “tang” to tickle the tastebuds and have a very “meaty” texture. It’s not always easy for me to be satisfied with a “one dish” meal because I’m known for liking my varietal buffet style meals lol, but this is the exception!
The creaminess comes from a homemade cashew cream, (seriously cashews, what can’t you do!?), toss that with lots of sautéed garlic, chewy and salty sun-dried tomatoes, a big handful of fresh basil, and hot pasta, then say hello to a scrumptious bowl of yum. This creamy sauce is me paying tribute to those magical tomato flavour bombs and turning them into something you can use to drown pasta. This is just one girl’s humble opinion, but I’m quite sure that sun-dried tomatoes are one of the absolute best flavours in existence. The tangy, savoury flavour is like someone took the essence of summer and made it into a concentrate. tastebud party!
Is there anything better than pasta with creamy cashew and sun dried tomato sauce and basil, mushrooms, and garlic? A big bowl heaped with noodles topped with flavourful sauce…can you say comfort food?
If you like creamy, and if you like pasta, you will like this dish. And if you don’t like those things, then you are wrong. This delicious, meatless pasta dish is totally worth making it! I’ve been eating the leftovers for 3 days now, and the pasta + the sauce still taste just great! The pasta is best reheated in a pan, on medium heat, with a little bit of milk added gradually to thin the sauce as it gets reheated.
Oh! I almost forgot to mention! Another little trick to thicken sauces without adding yet more cream is to toss the pasta in the sauce with a splash of the pasta cooking water. The starch in the water mixes with the oil in the sauce and thickens it. This is called emulsification and it’s a step in all real Italian pasta recipes. Gone are the days of dumping plain pasta in a bowl and spooning over the sauce which results in watery sauce at the bottom of the bowl. Nope, you want that sauce to stick to the pasta, and the way to do that is by tossing the pasta in the sauce on the stove. That way every piece of pasta has sauce clinging to it, rather than sliding off into the bottom of the bowl.
Still not sure about this dish? Well, let me tell you that there is no other creamy sun-dried tomato & mushroom pasta dish like this. Actually, there shouldn’t be as this came right out of my head (or pantry) on one rainy and windy day when I didn’t feel like running to the grocery shop to stock up our fridge. So this dish is one of those that I call “what I found in the pantry” dish. A perfect dinner meal for busy families and those who love creamy sauces!
IF YOU EVER GIVE THIS RECIPE A TRY, DO LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW AND/OR TAG @FRUITYEMZ AND HASHTAG #FRUITYEMZ ON YOUR INSTAGRAM POST! 🙂
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