Vegan Calamarata. On today’s edition of Big Pastas, we tackle the Calamarata. It’s a quick, easy pasta dish and you will love it. Hopefully.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and tell me what your favorite big pasta is.

Vegan Calamarata, in a white wine sauce…with broccoli and seitan.

VEGAN WHITE WINE SEITAN CALAMARATA

prep time: 10 minutes
cook time: 45 minutes

O O O O O

This recipe requires you to cook some seitan, make a sauce, cook some pasta and finish the pasta in the sauce.

First you’re going to make your seitan.

What you’ll need:

seitan
salt
pepper
olive oil
dried basil
dried oregano

Toss some olive oil into a pan. Add your seitan and season with the aforementioned. Cook until browned.

You can eat a few, go for it. But just a few.

Once your seitan is cooked nicely, take it off the flame and set aside.

Now you’re going to make your sauce. I’ve listed a N/A substitute for wine at the bottom of this here recipe.

What you’ll need:

shallot
garlic
white wine
vegan butter
all purpose flour
vegetable broth
oat milk (or soy)
salt
pepper
parsley
olive oil
lemon
broccoli (optional)

Dice up half a shallot and mince as much garlic as you want. Pictured above is five cloves. Dice up some parsley and broccoli for later. The broccoli was optional yes, but it does add a very nice earthy element to the final result.

Add a generous glug of olive oil to a saucepan and bring the heat up to a medium flame. Add your shallot and garlic and cook both until aromatic. Please don’t burn them. Stir! Toss two knobs of butter into the pan and stir that up too. I never said it was particularly a healthy sauce.

Once your kitchen smells nice, add a pinch of salt and crack some pepper in there. Next you’re going to deglaze your pan. The trick here is to add your white wine little by little and reduce it way down. Then do the same with broth and cream. I’ll explain.

Add a 1/3 cup of white wine to your saucepan. Bring the flame up to just shy of medium high. You want to cook the alcohol off and reduce the sauce. And continue to repeat this process a few times. I did it four times.

Scrape the bottom of the saucepan each time you reduce. Each time will take about 30 seconds or so to cook out so keep an eye on the sauce and stir every so often. Add half a tablespoon of flour into the sauce and stir that up.

Add a 1/3 cup of vegetable broth into the mix and then let that reduce down as well. Then add a 1/3 cup of cream to the sauce and let that reduce too. Add more broth/cream to your liking.

And you should have something like this.

The sauce will continue to reduce and you will soon have a light, but decadent white wine sauce on your hands. Drop the flame on your sauce to a gentle simmer and we can get your pasta started.

What you’ll need:

calamarata pasta
salt
boiling water
the seitan from earlier
broccoli from earlier
parsley from earlier
lemon
vegan parm

Boil up a pot of water and salt it generously. Cook your pasta until al dente. Should be right around nine minutes but just keep an eye on it. Taste a few as you go for texture. When the pasta is al dente, it will be added directly to your sauce to finish cooking.

While your pasta is cooking, add a fistful of broccoli to your sauce and stir that up. No one wants raw broccoli.

Look how beautiful and cohesive your sauce is now.

Once your pasta is cooked use one of those wire spider things you use for frying stuff and ladle the pasta right from the pot into your sauce. You can double check their texture this way unless you’re a fucking pro then in that case do it however you want, chef. Get some of that pasta water in the sauce too.

Give it a gentle stir so you don’t rip any of those O’s open.

Next, you’re going to add salt and pepper to taste. Then squeeze half a lemon into the mix. If it’s a tiny lemon, use the whole thing. Add that pile of parsley into the mix and add your seitan too. Add some vegan parm now too. I didn’t havre any on hand but you should.

Send this picture to Rachael Ray and get me on her show.

Stir up the pasta gently and let those flavors meld for a minute. Then gently spoon your new concoction out onto a plate. Make sure you add more sauce.

N/A subs —

And for my N/A friends, as a deglaze you can use apple cider vinegar with vegetable broth and water. I would call it one part water, one part apple cider vinegar and one part broth.

So your deglaze mixture should be a little less than an ounce each of ACV, water and broth to equate to a 1/3 cup each time you deglaze.