Mushroom Scallop Spaghetti

Hey guys!

One of my favourite vegan blogs is Hot for Food and I reached out to her literally years ago on twitter because I fell in love with her recipes for vegan food, so if you are new check them out! She’s a proper cook so it’s really cool for anyone out there looking for a vegan guide other than here!

Ingredients 

• Oyster Mushrooms

• Red Wine Vinegar

• White Wine

• Liquid Smoke

• White Onion

• Red Onion

• Soy Cream

• Olive Oil

• Cornstarch

• Sundried Tomatoes

• Parsley

• Chilli Flakes

• Salt

So my challenge for Issue Three was to create things that I personally find repugnant. One of those, is mushrooms and you can read all about it here. I just find them impossible to even pretend to like the look of them and I absolutely enjoy the stuff they can make, like the vegan meat replacements and so on. But the look of them give me the heeby jeebies. But I saw her make these crazy looking scallops, which from what I understand are some sort of insect from the deep that you have with spaghetti. So I had to try them as a challenge, and here we go!

So you chop up a white onion finely and set aside. With the mushrooms, they come with major steps so you wipe them down with some wet tissue and chop them up. Now the Hot for Food version added vinegar and I used red wine vinegar and rice vinegar to a bowl with some water and left to soak for about half an hour. I guess the longer you do the more this would be a potent flavour but I didn’t think the point of it was to disguise the mushroom taste, but to give something extra? So I drained them after 30 and added them to a pan with some hot sunflower oil. They browed super easily and I flipped them until both sides resembled the scallops.

Adding white onion, chilli flakes, white pepper, salt and oil to the same pan, I began to sweat out the onions until they were beginning to brow. I then added finely cut up sundried tomatoes, using scissors as they are way easier and then the oil from the deli pot to give extra flavour. I added liquid smoke to this part to give them a sort of baconish thing, and you can add paprika and some sauces to add to that if you like. I added a very small amount of white wine and cooked off the alcohol.

So this part is super easy, you just add some corn starch or flour to the pan, about a dessert spoon evenly distributed throughout. Then you add either some stock or cream, I chose to use soy cream and they emulsify into this delicate sauce. Make sure to keep the heat on low for this part and continue to stir. Mushroom stock would have been excellent to add some further hearty flavour but I think the splash of white wine was enough.

I added some parsley and chilli to the finals as they were very delicate in the sauce and I wanted to give it something to enliven it, but it was a delicious pasta I have to say. The sundried tomatoes and liquid smoke gave a balance to the creamyness.

So what can I say? The scallops? Meaty. If you’re into that I’m into it too, but it was a bit of a culture shock for me to try these because the texture was so out of the ordinary to my palette haha.

But they’re very nice so I hope you guys eat these instead of the bugs!