Vegetarian Peanut Pasta
As you know, I’m hosting the LA Food Blogger Bake Sale that’s happening in a little over a month. It’s a lot more work than I had imagined, calling vendors left and right, responding to emails every 10 minutes, creating beautiful eye-catching flyers, and trying to come up with clever tweets to advertise the sale. But as much work as it is, I’m having a blast. Sure, it’s annoying when local vendors take forever to get back to you or don’t respond at all but every time I get an email from a baker who’s interested in helping or a phone call from a vendor telling me that they’ll donate 12 of their best selling cupcakes, my heart is screaming for joy. The food community is so great, and I’m so happy to be a part of it.
Here’s a preview of one of the flyers that I made. Looks pretty great, right? Well, I guess I can’t take all the credit. The amazing Ali Ebright at gimme some oven granted us permission to use her beautiful red velvet cupcake photo. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and it fits so well with the color scheme. So thank you, Ali, for sharing your wonderful photography skills.
Anyway, let’s talk about this quick pasta dish I made the other day.
As I am continuing my clean-food cleanse, I made a simple Asian-inspired vegetarian pasta dish with a light peanut sauce. It’s packed with tons of flavor and plenty of peanuts to give you a nice crunch in every bite. Feel free to tweak the recipe and use your favorite kind of noodles, and adding any other veggies to your liking. I really wanted to use rice noodles but since I wanted something a bit more lighter, I used spaghetti noodles. It was easy, light, healthy, and made in less than 20 minutes. Score!
Spicy Peanut Veggie Pasta (adapted from Becky Bakes):
Yields 3-4 servings
- 8 ounces spaghetti
- 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1/4 cup low-sodium vegetable broth (I used chicken broth since that was all I had on hand)
- 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon chili garlic sauce
- 1/2 cup shredded carrots
- 1/2 cup chopped green onion
- 1/2 cup salted peanuts
In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions; drain well.
In a large bowl, whisk together the peanut butter, vegetable broth, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, ginger and chili garlic sauce.
Add the pasta, carrots, green onion and peanuts.
Gently toss to combine.
I love your site/blog–thank you for sharing your delicious recipes! I have two questions: 1) what can I use in place of oyster sauce (shellfish allergy in my house) and 2) I am confused by all of the different kinds of Asian noodles (which I would rather use than spaghetti)–can I use the refrigerated Yaki Soba noodles in stir fry dishes and if so, do I cook/boil them first? Or just rinse and use? I have also bought dried lo mein noodles and rice noodles…and I saw some dried Udon noodles at a local market…is there a noodle tutorial?? (And I read that I could freeze the unopened Yaki Soba noodles–do you freeze them? Sorry! More than 2 questions!)
P.S. Your lettuce wraps are AMAZING!! I found some firm tofu cubes, and using them in recipes like this is my next endeavor! I love fried tofu–do you season before or after frying?
Kim, here is a great forum discussing acceptable substitutes for oyster sauce. You can also use any kind of noodles – it’s up to you! But depending on the recipe, you may need to cook them first according to package instructions.