‘Creamy tomato pasta’ is a regular dinnertime dish over here. It turns out a little different every time — it’s such a versatile dish. You can pretty much include any veg you’ve got kicking around in the fridge, lentils, beans and even plant-based meat. But last week when I made this meal, it turned out so well, I felt it was time to share the recipe here on the site.
A few recipe notes: for the sausage, I prefer Beyond Meat’s non-spicy Sweet Italian version. They really up the decadence of this dish. If you don’t have garlic powder, you can definitely use fresh garlic (the only reason I use garlic powder is to save time and energy). For the mushrooms, any kind will work. I happened to have white mushrooms when I made this dish and, bonus, they are the least expensive type. Mezzetta Marinara sauce is hands down my favourite — any of their plant-based marinara-type sauces will work here.
For dairy-free cream sauces, cashews are often used, but I’ve found that most nuts work in their place. I used walnuts here and it was delicious! The walnut flavour isn’t strong — if I hadn’t made the dish myself, I wouldn’t have guessed walnuts were the base of the cream sauce.
I used cashews because I didn’t have walnuts on hand. Used Italian sausage from Field Roast and frozen green beans instead of green pepper (didn’t have any peppers on hand). It was wonderful! The kids devoured it! I used 500g of spaghettini
So easy! So delicious! What a satisfying meal. The walnut cream sauce wasn’t overwhelming in flavour. It complimented so well. Will definitely make this a staple!
Just made this with pecan and hemp seeds for the cream sauce (just what I had!) and swapped zucchini for the mushrooms (again, scavenging what I had in the fridge). So creamy and delicious and it totally saved my mid-week ‘what do I have to cook that’s quick and easy’ dilemma.