Vegan Non Anchovy Garlic Spaghetti

Rachael Ray is one of my favorite celebrity cooks. One thing that fascinates me in her cooking is her use of anchovies in pasta dishes. She assures you that once the anchovies are sauteed in EVOO, her trademark abbreviation for extra virgin olive oil, you would not detect their fishiness at all. They rather impart a delicious saltiness that excites the umami receptors in your tongue.

She prepared a simple spaghetti dish with anchovies yesterday on her show and like at other times when I watch cooking segments my craving for the pasta dish skyrocketed. When that happens I just have to prepare it. I decided to make my life exciting by throwing in a challenge. Make it vegan. Here is my attempt with all the tweaking I made.

Somewhere in my search in the internet I read one source using soy sauce as a substitute for anchovies which I followed. If I had miso paste I would have added it instead.

Rachael mentioned that cheese is never added to seafood dishes in Italian cooking but she did anyway by adding parmesan cheese with the bread crumbs she used as toppings. In my case I used nutritional yeast and skipped the bread crumbs.

I tried as best as I could to not add too much salt in developing the flavor of the dish. Adding the nutritional yeast helps since it does not have salt in it and yet imparts a cheesy flavor. The added garlic powder and lemon zest and juice also help stimulate the centers in the tongue to compensate for what would have been achieved by salt. The result of all the tweaking is a pasta dish I can devour in one sitting, make it that two, whatever. I like this. You will too whether you are vegan or non vegan.

Vegan Non Anchovy Garlic Pasta

• 1 lb spaghetti
• 1 cup pasta water
• 2 tbsp oil 
• 8 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast plus 2 tbsp for topping
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Zest and juice of 1/2 lemon

Cook the spaghetti according to package directions. Do not forget to save one cup of the pasta water.

Heat the oil in a large saute pan and add the garlic, onion, celery and walnuts  Saute the mixture till the vegetables are cooked.

Add 2 tbsp nutritional yeast and the rest of the ingredients including the pasta water and stir and heat the mixture.

Add the mixture to the spaghetti and mix till sauce coats the pasta. Top with the two tbsp of nutritional yeast.