Spaghettini in Garlicy Vegan Brown Butter with Almond Gremolata
At our office, pasta ends up on the table for lunch about four out of five days – sometimes with veggie "meatballs", with lemon sauce or as vegan mac'n'cheese. Today's pasta dish, however, makes us reminisce a bit about our childhood. Pasta with butter was probably not only our absolute favorite dish for a while – we didn't need tomato sauce or basically ANY sauce at all. How wonderful that our sense of taste has since expanded, but how wonderful also that we can always bring back those moments of childhood. That's why we prepare pasta in vegan brown butter today.
And yet we directly encounter a problem: anyone who has also tried to prepare vegan brown butter will have noticed directly that you don't always succeed. During our research we found this great article, which explains well why it often doesn't work. The browning process has a lot to do with the composition of the butter and the addition of dairy products. Butter contains water and milk solids in the form of casein and whey proteins. By heating the milk proteins and sugar, the butter browns – the so-called "Maillard reaction" takes place. Therefore, vegan butter has no chance of browning at all. Luckily, we have a little trick for you, that was also mentioned in the article. We simply add some nut butter (in our recipe, it's brown almond butter) to the vegan butter which provides protein and natural sugars that help us imitate the Maillard reaction and thus browns the vegan butter.
To make sure that this dish of buttery pasta doesn't sit heavily on your stomach, we topp it with a wonderfully fresh gremolata for serving. This is a topping from Lombard cuisine and according to Wikipedia consists of parsley, lemon zest, and garlic. We have adjusted it a bit: our topping is made of fresh herbs, lemon, toasted almonds, salt, and pepper. However, the almonds can easily be replaced with hazelnuts or peanuts, or kicked out at all.
For the paste, we used spelt pasta from [DINKEL MAX] this time and were absolutely thrilled. Just between us: for a long time, we thought that spelt noodles are certainly not as tasty as the wheat noodles that we've been eating for years. Well. We were so wrong. Light spelt noodles hardly differ from the wheat variety in terms of look and taste, making them a great alternative. Whole spelt pasta is a bit more tart, has a stronger taste, and is therefore perfect for all whole grain fans – it also keeps you full for a particularly long time.
Since our recipe is quickly prepared, we needed some pasta which doesn't take long too cook. That's why the new variety "Spelt Spaghettini thin" from DINKEL MAX was a perfect fit, as they only need 4 minutes to be al dente. As all of their products, they are organic and without eggs. And as the name suggests, DINKEL MAX only has pasta made from spelt flour in its range – a total of 18 different varieties in "light spelt" and in "whole spelt". You can fin them in many larger supermarkets, but also in the online shop of DINKEL MAX.
Spaghettini in Garlicy Vegan Brown Butter with Almond Gremolata
Ingredients
For the pasta:
- 250 g (9 oz) spelt spaghettini (e.g. from DINKEL MAX)
For the almond gremolata:
- 50 g (1.75 oz) almonds
- 20 g (0.75 oz) parsley
- 0.5 lemon (zest and juice)
- salt
- pepper
For the vegan brown butter:
- 150 g (1.33 sticks) vegan butter
- 1 onion
- 3 garlic cloves
- 50 g (1.75 oz) brown almond butter
- 0.5 tsp chili flakes
- 0.5 lemon (juice)
- salt
- pepper
Instructions
For the gremolata, toast almonds in a fat-free frying pan until they are lightly browned. Then remove from the pan and finely chop the nuts. Wash and finely chop parsley. Mix almonds, parsley, and lemon zest in a small bowl. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste, and set aside.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the spelt pasta according to package directions. Before draining, reserve some of the pasta water and set it aside.
For the sauce, peel and finely dice onion. Peel and thinly slice the garlic cloves.
Melt 125 g (1 stick) of vegan butter in a frying pan over medium-low heat. Add onions, garlic, and chili flakes and sauté for approx. 5-10 minutes, or until the vegan butter has browned. Then add brown almond butter and lemon juice and whisk to combine. Bring the vegan butter sauce to a simmer again. Just before serving, remove from heat and add the remaining 25 g (0.33 oz) butter and let it melt to get some extra creaminess.
Toss the spelt spaghettini directly in the brown butter. While doing this, add some of the pasta's cooking water until a creamy sauce is formed. Sprinkle the pasta with gremolata and serve.
