Fall

Veggie Spaghetti

August 28, 2012
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0 Ratings
  • Serves Four
Author Notes

So I went to a friend's Pampered Chef party to be a good sport. I'm not into kitchen gadgets at all. My favorite tools are my hands and my chef's knife. I bought a muffin pan and a meat tenderizer and felt I did my duty. Low and behold! With your purchase that month, you got a free gift! Yay, I thought. I really didn't want anything because I don't like a cluttered drawer, but acquiesced and selected the julienne peeler.

A few weeks later, my order arrives. I looked at the julienne peeler and wondered what to do with it. Hmmmmm...In an effort to be more healthy and promote Meatless Mondays in my house, I decided to make vegetable pasta. This is not necessarily unique (since it's been done before), but I wanted the vegetables to be the stars, not the sauce that usually smothers pasta.

OXO makes a juliene peeler, but clearly a mandoline works for this as well. Use whatever veggies you'd like, and have fun with flavor combinations. Here is what I did: —kitchenista

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 1 bunch carrots
  • 6 zucchini
  • 6 yellow squash
  • 1 bunch scallions
  • 1 cup pecorino romano cheese, to taste (if 1 cup is too much or too little)
  • 4 sprigs tarragon
  • 1 pinch cracked pepper, to taste
  • 1 pinch salt, to taste
Directions
  1. Wash all of your veggies. Peel the carrots. Julienne all of the vegetables. You'll need to use your knife to julienne the scallions (just use the greens, not the white bulbs). Finely chop the tarragon. Your mise en place is ready.
  2. In the largest saute pan you have, heat some olive oil. I only used about three seconds' worth of oil dribbling out of the bottle with a pourer on it. Once the oil is heated, add your vegetables and keep tossing them around the pan. If you don't have room for all of them, make batches. The veggies will give off some water which you can retain or discard. I chose to discard almost all of the liquid so that the vegetables remained al dente, the way I like my pasta.
  3. While the veggies are warm in your serving bowl, season with salt and pepper. Toss the chopped tarragon in and add the pecorino romano. You can use reggiano, but I found the sheep's milk paired better (I tried both).
  4. If you'd like to add a protein to this, I think shrimp with a nice char would be a welcome addition. I also think pressed tofu would work.

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