Who doesn’t love a good pasta dish! A dish so good you hope you could continue eating it forever. Yeah, I’m giving away a lot of expectations here but seriously this is a really good pasta dish! A flavourful, nice and easy to make pasta carbonara filled with a bunch of tastes which warms your heart and soul. It’s even amazing as a good leftover dish.

A while ago my boyfriend wanted pasta carbonara. So we went into the kitchen to play around to see what we could create. Something which a lot of folks think can’t be done vegan. A rich, flavourful and creamy pasta topped with parmesan and facon (mushroom bacon).

Now I won’t say there aren’t a bunch of recipes out there already for this exact dish both plant based and animal based ones. We aren’t the first ones to make this either, but this is ours go on a sweet classic. Hope you like it.

By the way, it’s also easy to convert into gluten-free. Just replace the pasta and oat cream for gluten-free options. Now let’s get cooking shall we.

 

Ingredients

Facon

200g /0.44 lbs cremini mushrooms

1 tbsp tamari (soy sauce)

1 tsp smoked paprika powder

 

Pasta 

250g / 0.55lbs spaghetti of choice (preferably whole grain)

1tsp vegetable salt or 1tbsp veggie stock powder

 

Sauce

2 big shallots, peeled and thinly sliced

150ml / 5 fl oz cream (we used oatly’s brand. A un-sweet cream based on oats. )

200ml / 6.7fl oz vegan sour cream (again from Oatly)

4.5tbsp nutritional yeast

1/4 tsp black salt (Asian stores usually stock them). It gives the sauce a more non-vegan taste as it tastes and smells like eggs.

1tsp dried parsley or dried dill

1/8 – 1/4 tsp black pepper (aftertaste)

 

Topping

Vegan parmesan of choice

Freshly chopped parsley

Facon

 

 

Direction 

Facon

  1. Preheat the oven to 225 degrees Celcius or 430 degrees Fahrenheit.
  2. In a bowl add the mushrooms, tamari and smoked paprika.
  3. Lay them out evenly on a tray covered with a non-stick parchment paper.
  4. Bake the mushrooms in the oven for about 10 minutes then turn them around and bake 5 more minutes. They are supposed to get crunchy but not burned.

Pasta

  1. Boil the pasta after the instructions on the package but add a little veggie salt or veggie stock to the water.
  2. Drain and slightly rinse.

Sauce

  1. In a pot add a little water (totally fine to use some water from the pasta as this will thicken the sauce up a little with the help from the starches).
  2. Add the shallots and sautée until translucent (about a couple of minutes)
  3. Pour in the cream and sour cream. Stire and simmer on low heat for about 3minutes.
  4. Now add nutritional yeast, black salt, parsley and black pepper. Simmer yet another couple of minutes. You might want to taste your way through the salt and pepper part.

 

 

Assembling

  1. Add the pasta into the sauce. Gently fold it together. Add in about 2/3 of the facon and fold them in there too.
  2. Place the pasta on a plate. Top with some vegan shredded parmesan and facon. Then sprinkle a bit of chopped parsley on top.
  3. Serve and enjoy.