Megan makes fresh pasta vegan

Masterchef is on TV!  I've been so excited by season 4 so far.  I'm loving that the show is getting back to basics, it's all about cooking great food.  I'm hoping it stays that way and doesn't become all about he-said she-said politics and power plays.  I really want the best cook to win.  At this stage, my money is on Amina.  I think she's a wonderful cook who truly loves food and knows how to present it. 

The Masterchef pasta challenge (on TV last week) was actually a really good and fair test of skills a cook needs.  The first phase of the test involved identifying different types of pasta by their traditional Italian names.  Knowing your ingredients is an important skill for any chef.  The next challenge involved making a minimum 250g of fresh pasta, without the benefit of scales to weigh out the flour.  Another fair test of a chef.  They need to work fast and need to be able to eye-ball measurements.  The final challenge involved reproducing a dish without a recipe, just by seeing and tasting the dish.  I feel there's a few parallels to my efforts on this blog here.  Only I don't taste the meat dish before trying to make it vegan.  Occasionally I bombard my work colleagues with questions like "what does salami smell like?'  "who in the world actually likes scollops?"   I really feel for the Masterchef contestants.  They have to live in the Masterchef house, with a bunch of new people, cook on TV and do it all to some pretty serious time pressure.  Meanwhile back at home....

Meet Kavesh.  An almost unlimited source of cuteness

 My biggest challenge is typing a blog around an inquisitive kitten who likes to alternate between attacking the cursor and the keyboard.  Shows like Masterchef make me realise that what I most like about cooking is that it's so relaxing.  When I'm at home in my kitchen cooking something new, or whipping up an old favorite I'm having fun and relaxing.

Nigella says "Would you cut the crap and blog about food?"

Hey Nigella it's not all about you, in fact this blog entry isn't even about you at all!



Fresh pasta is incredibly simple to make.  If making it according to the traditional recipe, you just need flour and eggs.  100grams of flour to one egg to be precise. Mix those two ingredients in these ratios together and you will end up with pasta dough.


You can make a vegan pasta by just using flour and water.  However this will really only produce pasta that's at most one step above the dried pasta you get in the supermarket.  I want to make pasta that is really special.  So I do a little bit of extra work to replicate the chemical composition of an egg in my pasta.

I start by weighing out 200g of plain flour.  I then add 50g of chick pea flour.  You can also see Chick pea flour labelled as Besan.  It's more commonly used in Indian cooking.

Chick pea flour

The Chick pea flour is high in protein, and will help replicate the protein present in egg white.  I then add 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.  Any vegetable oil will do really.  I also add a very tiny pinch of tumeric.  This spice is also commonly used in Indian cooking, but in the quantity used here won't flavour the pasta at all but will add a little bit of yellow colour that would normally be obtained from the egg yolk.

I also needed 2/3 of a cup of water to get this mixture to become a firm dough.  Your pasta may need a little less or a little more depending on a few factors such as how dry your pasta is, how cold the water is or how humid the air in  your kitchen is.

Once I mixed my pasta dough together it looked like this.

I now need to roll this pasta out.  I don't have a pasta machine, so just use my rolling pin.  I roll it very thin (approx 2mm thick).  It looks like this.

Okay, now I've made a lovely sheet of fresh pasta what do I do with it?  I decide that since I've been receiving requests for some time from a friend to make her favorite food vegan, I figured that today was the day to make lasagne vegan.

I want to do this dish carefully, the lady I'm cooking for is a very serious lasagne connoisseur... a lasagnesseur. 

I start by preparing a vegan bolognaise style sauce.  I use.

2 cloves garlic
1 onion, diced
splash olive oil
1 can diced tomatoes
2tbs tomato paste
2 tsp mixed herbs
3 button mushrooms
1 cup TVP.

WTF is TVP?

TVP

 

You will find this bad-boy in the health food aisle.  It's made from 100% soy beans.  Prepare it to package directions (which involves soaking it in boiling water)

I start by heating the olive oil in a pot, then once it's fragrant adding the onions.  Once the onions brown throw in the can of tomatoes, herbs mushrooms, tomato paste and prepared TVP.  Taste the sauce and adjust the herbs to your personal taste.  Feel free to add salt and pepper to your own preference.  My bolognaise looks like this.

Turn the heat down low, and let it simmer away until it's nice and thick.  To make lasagne you want to have it a bit thicker than a regular bolognaise sauce that you'd use for spaghetti.

The next component in a lasagne is a really good bechemel sauce.  I decide to make a vegan bechemel sauce with a hint of garlic.  Here's what I used in my vegan garlic bechemel sauce.

3tbs nuttelex,
2tbs flour
2 cups soy milk
2 cloves garlic.

Melt the nuttelex on the stove, while finely chopping 2 cloves of garlic.  Once the nuttelex is melted add the garlic.  Add the 2 tablespoons of flour while rapidly stirring over a medium heat.  You are making a roux.  The flour and butter will thicken, if it gets lumpy don't panic.  You can do what the real chefs do and just pass it through a sieve at the end. :-D 

Here's my Roux.

Then you need to add your 2 cups of soy milk in a slow and steady stream while stirring.  Once the sauce is heated through it will be cooked.  Taste it, adjust if you need to.  I found mine was absolutely perfect!

Show off.

Now it's time to assemble your lasagne.  Start off with one ladle of the bolognaise sauce on the base of your lasagne dish.  Then a layer of pasta, then a layer of bechemel, then bolognaise, then pasta.

I only have small baking dishes, so I actually made 2 lasagnes, one square, and one oval.  The oval lasagne is shown above.

Traditional lasagne is finished with a layer of bechemel sauce then cheese on top.  Vegans don't eat cheese so I need to improvise.

I take a tub of tofutti, some garlic dried parsley, oregano, salt and a pinch of tumeric (for colour) and beat it to a smooth paste with approximately 3tbs of vegetable oil.  I topped my lasagne with this mix and baked it at 190 degrees C for half an hour.

Here's what the finished product looked like.

holy crap it actually looks like lasagne.

Here's my review:  "OMG! That vegan lasagne was great."

Thanks for trying out my vegan lasagne Stacey.  It was a pleasure to cook for you.