Zucchetti

Here's a neat twist on pasta that raw foodists can enjoy too!! A friend of mine passed the idea onto me, but the sauce recipes are my own.

First of all - what is zucchetti? It's not as complicated as it sounds. It's a zucchini, shredded into long, thing, spaghetti-like strips. This is done using a little machine called a spiralizer.

So you put the zucchini onto the spiralizer, turn the crank, and voila! Zucchetti!

Now comes the fun part - picking the sauce. Rob and I have tried a few different recipes, some of them keeping with the raw food theme and some of them not. Here are a few that we've tried:

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

1/2 can of diced tomatoes, drained

1 clove of garlic, finely diced

6-10 grape tomatoes, halved

1 tsp basil

1 tsp oregano

2-3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Directions

1. Mix all ingredients together, adjusting amounts to taste.

2. Pour over zucchetti and toss until everything is coated.

Roasted Garlic Sauce

Ingredients

1 bulb of garlic

4 tbsp olive oil

1 shallot, finely diced

pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Chop top of garlic bulb off and peel it down, leaving just enough skin to hold the cloves together.
3. Coat garlic in 1/2 tbsp of olive oil.
4. Wrap garlic in tin foil and roast in oven for about 45 minutes, or until garlic is soft.
5. Let cool.
6. Squish roasted garlic into a small dish, being sure not to let the garlic skin fall into the bowl.
7. Add olive oil, pepper, and shallots and mash well. (You may have to adjust the amount of olive oil or even add some balsamic vinegar... play around with it until it tastes good)
8. Toss with zucchetti and other diced vegetables.

Black Bean Sauce

Ingredients

1/4 cup of black beans, drained and rinsed

1 garlic clove, finely diced

3-4 tbsp olive oil

1-2 tbsp of vinegar (your preference)

1 tsp sugar

salt and pepper

Directions

1. Put beans into a small bowl and mash until smooth.
2. Stir in olive oil, garlic, vinegar, and sugar.
3. Season to taste.
4. Toss with zucchetti and other vegetables.

IMPORTANT!

There are a few general notes to take into consideration when making zucchetti.

1. Make your sauce first. The last thing you should make is the zucchetti itself. Zucchini gives off a lot of water, and if you shred it too early, it will give off water and make your sauce runny.
2. Do not over-salt! Salt causes vegetables to lose their water, and, as mentioned above, zucchini already gives off a lot of water. Salt will just add to this problem and make your zucchetti even more watery.
3. When making the sauces, be creative! Season everything to your taste. Throw extra ingredients in.
4. You can also put other vegetables through a spiralizer. If you get a good spiralizer, you can get it to shred at different thickness. If you use the wide blade to "spiralize" a potato, you get the perfect curly fry! If you use a slicing blade, it can slice vegetables and fruits super-thin. Slice some apples and bake at a low temperature in the oven to make delicious apple chips!

Anyway, I am certainly getting good use out of my spiralizer. It's a great investment, and it can make some pretty fancy and healthy dishes!