Homemade Pasta with Incredible Mushroom Sauce

V is for Variety and H is for Homemade

Welcome to the Vegan Month of Food (VeganMoFo)  I intend to post 20 times during the month of September – all about vegan food. Check out the gals who organize the project here, and search out other fantastic vegan bloggers. I decided on the theme of “V is for Variety” because, honestly, once I quit the chicken breast – my food choices exploded! Join me!

One of my favorite memories is making pasta with my kiddos when they were little. How they loved turning the crank and catching the fresh noodles. Everyone had to have a turn. Flour all over the counter. Trying not to fret over flour on the floor. Accepting the thick, ugly strands of pasta along with the super long thin ones. Playing around with different colors of dough: green from spinach, red from beet juice, orange from baby food carrots. Watching them devour what they had created.

Nowadays I can get a batch of pasta done in about 1 hour, and that’s including the 30 minutes you need to rest the dough.  Practice makes perfect, as they say.

This pasta was very soft, which surprised me because it called for semolina instead of regular flour.  I always thought semolina was harder flour, but I do think we cooked it a bit too long, and as you probably can tell from my photo at the top of this post, we mixed it too vigorously, so it broke apart. But none of that bothered us. I am definitely making this again – especially the sauce!

Here’s what you need for the pasta:

2 C semolina flour

2 T olive oil

1 T water

½ -3/4 C silken tofu (replaces the egg, which you don’t really even need. The tofu helped create a really silky dough)

1 t salt

Here’s what you do for the pasta:

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until it all comes together. Wrap in plastic and allow to rest for about 30 minutes. Cut dough in quarters and run it through a pasta machine. Don’t overcook it….maybe 2-3 minutes at most!

Here’s what you need for the Incredible Mushroom Sauce:

Minced onions – to taste, but don’t be hesitant to load them on

Dried oregano

Minced garlic

Portabella mushrooms – remove the stem and gills and slice

Shitake mushrooms – remove the stem and slice

White button mushrooms – sliced

¾ C dry red wine

Fresh tomatoes – lots!

Fresh basil

Here’s what you do for the sauce:

Sautee the onions for a few minutes. Add the oregano, garlic, mushrooms and some salt. (A great trick to enhance the oregano is to rub it between your hands which releases all the beautiful oils of the dried leaves. Sprinkle the herb directly on the onions and you will love what a difference this makes to the flavor.)  Continue to cook the onions and mushrooms for a bit. Add the red wine and fresh tomatoes. Cook until it all gloriously comes together. Maybe 30 minutes or so. Add fresh basil at the end.