By Guest Intern, Holly Kalyn
Adapted from Alicia Silverstone’s recipe for Rustic Pasta, this dish is simple, quick, healthy and compassionate, but also sticks to your ribs, fills you up, and tastes like home. When I flipped through her Kind Diet cookbook for the first time, my eye almost uncontrollably gravitated to the first familiar favorite. I’ve always been a sucker for hearty pasta dishes, but I also knew my boyfriend would be smitten with this one. Alicia Silverstone even admits, herself, that this is a guy-pleaser. As I looked at the ingredients, there didn’t seem to be anything complicated about this recipe—few ingredients and very basic cooking instructions. But when I tasted the finished product, the flavor was anything but dull. The depth of flavors unfolded in delicate layers and I felt like I was in Tuscany.
One of my favorite things about this recipe is that there’s so much texture going on—the crunch of the celery, onions, and cabbage (I also added carrots to this version)—not to mention the abundance of flavor and earthiness they bring to the recipe. But the sauce is what really marries everything. A light combination of tomato and shoyu just gently coats the spaghetti and results in a perfect balance of tangy tomato and savory umami. I used tamari, which works perfectly. You could also use soy sauce.
This recipe is one you can curl up with in front of the fire or eat outside on a spring evening. There’s really never a wrong time for spaghetti in my book.
Simple Rustic Pasta
Ingredients
- ¾ pound of whole wheat pasta (I used Capellini)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 medium onions, thinly sliced
- 3 small carrots, cut into 1/8 inch coins
- 4 celery stalks, diced
- ½ cup shoyu, tamari, or soy sauce (I always opt for low-sodium), plus extra for the end
- 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped or thinly sliced
- 1 small head green cabbage, halved, cored, and cut into ½ inch pieces
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- 1 ½ teaspoons garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 2/3 cup marinara sauce of choice
Instructions
- Bring large pot of water to a boil and cook pasta according to directions for al dente. Reserve ½ cup of pasta water. Heat oil in extra large skillet over medium high heat. Add onion, celery, and carrots, and cook until onions are translucent. Add garlic, tamari, and salt, and garlic powder. Cook for another 4 minutes or until some of the tamari is absorbed into the vegetables. Add cabbage to vegetable mixture and sauté for another 5 to 6 minutes until softened a bit. Lower heat, add pasta, tomato sauce, black pepper, and a few more dashes of tamari and toss over low heat for a couple minutes until the pasta is coated in light sauce. Add some reserved pasta water to loosen pasta, if needed. (I didn’t need to.) Serve in big bowls.
