You’ve learned stacking, stuffing and rolling. Well there’s another secret to making a really fast, easy and delicious raw on-tray and that is raw pasta. Pasta is always a comforting main dish. But many people avoid it because it’s high in carbs and you’ve got the wheat and white flour. Well I’m going to show you how to make a low-starch pasta out of zucchini. When people like pasta, what they really like is the al dente texture and the taste of the sauce. Wheat pasta by itself really doesn’t have any taste. It’s that texture and the sauce that people like. Well zucchini is kind of bland the way that wheat pasta is so it’s very easy to turn it into a pasta if you just cut it the right way. And then once you toss it with the flavorful sauce, it’s going to taste a lot like the traditional thing.
So let’s start off with shaping the pasta. I’m going to start with a peeled zucchini, and the simplest way that you can turn this into a noodle is by using a vegetable peeler to create ribbons. Remember we did those ribbons with the carrots when we made the sushi. Well now I’m ribboning this zucchini and it’s just like fettuccini. It’s zucchini fettuccini, long wide noodles. And I’m just rotating all the way around the zucchini until we can go to the core and then we can save that core for our garden coup or something. And once you get enough of these ribbons together, they really do look like a noodle. When you toss them with the sauce, you really visually cannot tell the difference between this and fettuccini.
Another way that you can make a noodle is by using a special gadget. This is the gadget here. It’s called the Spiral Slicer. It’s a really fun tool to have because this is going to turn this zucchini into angel hair pasta. So here’s how you use it. I’m going to cut this zucchini into a shape that will fit into that machine. So for most zucchini that means cutting it in half. If you have a particularly large zucchini you might have to cut it into thirds. You want to make sure it’s really straight and that will go into the machine a little bit easier. Then you take off the top. Again, this is called a Spiral Slicer and it’s available at most cookware stores.
In the back of my book, Raw Food Made Easy, I have resource section that tells you where you can get all of these unique tools. So I just put it on. There’s a little spike right there. And I just rested the zucchini on that spike. And now I’m putting the top on. And I’m just going to use a gentle pressure and rotate this handle, and I’m making pasta. This is like the easy pasta maker here. When you get to the very end, you’ll feel it stop resisting you and that means it’s not going to go any further. You take it off. There’s always a little bit left. It doesn’t go though. Again we’ll save that for one of our garden vegetable soups. And here you have angel hair pasta. You can count on about one to two zucchini per person so this is actually faster than boiling water and making the wheat version. So I’ve got the pasta made. Now it’s time to move on to the sauce.
I’m going to make a fast marinara sauce that tastes so good and so light cooked. You’re not going to believe it didn’t simmer on the stove for hours. Really easy to do in a food processor. And I’m using the food processor because I like my marinara sauce to be a little bit chunky. And that’s what the food processor is supposed to do, blenders are going to do. It’s going to keep in some of that texture.
So I’m going to start off with some tomatoes. And I just chopped these tomatoes roughly. It doesn’t need to look perfect because they’re just going into the food processor, and some red bell pepper. And what the red bell pepper is going to do is give some sweetness to the sauce. When tomato is cooked, they develop a sweetness, and these tomatoes are raw so they might have a hint of acid to them. So adding some red bell pepper is going to put the sweetness back in and it’s also going to make it a very vibrant red color.
The secret ingredient in this marinara sauce is sun-dried tomatoes. And that’s what’s really going to give the texture and taste of a cooked marinara sauce. Sun-dried tomatoes have a very intense sweet rich tomatoey flavor and they also act as a thickener. When you process them they’re going to add some body and thickness to the sauce.
So we’re going ahead and add these. You can buy sun-dried tomatoes either totally dry or oil packed. I’m using oil-packed right now. These had been packed in extra virgin olive oil so they’re very soft. If you buy them dry, just make sure that you soak them in water for a couple of hours before you add them into your recipe. Got some sun-dried tomatoes, and let’s season that up. Everyone loves garlic in a marinara sauce. It wouldn’t be marinara without garlic. I’m going to separate a clove right here. And raw garlic is a little bit stronger than when it’s cooked, so I tend to use a little bit less in raw recipes. So I think a clove is going to be great. Let me loosen up that peel by cutting off the ends. And then I can crush the garlic a little bit with my knife, just smash into it and that loosens up the peel a lot. Peel that, and I’m going to use a garlic press. If I were making this in a blender, __ garlic at all, I would just put right in the blender. But in the food processor you do need to crush it in so that it gets incorporated.
Alright, some other seasonings, I want to use some herbs in here. We’ve got some basil and oregano. Those are traditional seasonings in marinara. Of course if you have fresh on hand, that’s great. But this sauce tastes great with dried. Little basil, little oregano and a little salt. Don’t add too much salt to this recipe because sun-dried tomatoes are already a little bit salty naturally. Just a couple of pinches there. Little bit more olive oil, make it nice and rich. And let’s add some spice in here too. A little pungency. I’m going to add just a little bit of cayenne, just a hint. Not enough to make it really spicy but get some heat in there. And a little bit of black pepper. And we’re ready to process the sauce. It’s as simple as putting in the food processor.
That is looking so thick and rich, and I can smell all the herbs in there. Just going to scrape it down with the spatula. This is one of my favorite recipes. I just love this marinara. We’ll go ahead and process one more time, and that’s it. That is really fast.
So I’m going to go ahead and add the marinara to the zucchini. If you’re serving this dish to friends, just wait to toss it with the marinara until a few minutes before you’re going to serve it. Because the zucchini will get a little bit watery if it sits too long in the marinara sauce. But separately this sauce keeps for a week in your refrigerator, and the zucchini keeps for several days. So if you made this sauce in the beginning of the week, you can have an on-tray on the table within a matter of a couple of minutes. Oh, that is smelling so good. I’m going to give that a toss. So exciting to know that you can still eat spaghetti and be healthy, and these noodles are just softening right up. When you’re making your sauce at home, make sure that you make it highly seasoned. Add enough of the herbs and the salt and the oil because the zucchini is a little bit bland and so it’s going to dilute the sauce slightly. We are getting a very flavorful, soft dish here. I can feel the al dente texture in these noodles just with my thongs.
Let’s put some of that in a bowl. Let’s say that you want to serve it warm, you can do that. You don’t have to eat cold foods just because they’re raw. What I would do is heat up just the sauce, not the noodles. Just put them on the stove just for a couple of minutes, stirring it constantly just until it’s a little above body temperature. And then go ahead and toss it with the noodles and you’re going to have a warm pasta dish. You can warm up your soups that way too if you want to.
I want to add a little color to that with a little bit of basil. So remember that chiffonade cut we did the cayenne, we’re going to do that with the basil just for a little garnish. Just rolled it up, thin strips. It looks like the original dish. It tastes like the original dish. I guarantee that if you try this, you’ll be eating raw pasta at least several nights a week.