Sweet & Spicy Zucchini Rotini
1 cup rotini pasta
1/2 large ripe tomato, cubed
2 tablespoons tamari
1 teaspoon Thai garlic chili sauce (or to taste)
ketchup
1/2 of one vegetable bouillon cube
garlic powder
pepper
nutritional yeast (optional)
green manzanilla olives
1/2 of a very small zucchini
dash of apple cider vinegar
pinch of flour
Dissolve 1/2 of one bouillon cube in boiling water and add pasta (any pasta will do, rotini just makes it fun).
While the pasta's cooking, cube 1/2 of the tomato and add to a small pot. Add tamari, chili sauce depending on how spicy you want it, garlic powder, and pepper; bring to a boil, then turn down heat slightly and let stew.
About halfway through, add a little bit of ketchup - just enough to make it slightly thicker. If your ketchup is sugar-free, add about a teaspoon of sugar here. If, by the end, it's still super thin, add a bit of cornstarch. It's not meant to be a thick spaghetti-like sauce, however.
Let all of that stuff do its thing while you slice the zucchini; you don't need a lot, maybe 8-12 small, thin slices. Put them in a bowl, add a dash of tamari and a dash of apple cider vinegar, enough to get them wet. Sprinkle in some garlic powder and pepper on these, too. Add a dash of flour to lightly coat the zucchini. Fry in a scantily oiled pan until brown on both sides.
When the zucchini is done, add it to the tomato sauce, along with the olives (however many you want; I like to slice mine to pretend there's more than there actually is).
Drain pasta, stir in nutritional yeast (to your liking; optional) until dissolved and serve, adding as much sauce as you want and mixing when it's in the bowl/on the plate.
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I would love to cook that recipe. It looks really yummmy, I'm gonna tell my boyfriend to go buy the ingredients since we're both vegans.
I don't really like the recipe as is, but I think it's a good basis.
First, there needs to be some liquid with the tomato + soy sauce + other sauce ingredients; otherwise it's too dry to stew. Even though the recipe is only for a cup of pasta, I think it needs more tomato personally, but maybe it's just supposed to be a thin sauce.
There also isn't very much zucchini, and the process of cooking it is pretty messy. Zucchini cooks down a lot, so the amount can easily be doubled. The process of coating it in flour and sautéeing it wasn't very successful, as without a cohesive batter and significant oil, the flour coating comes off on the pan (I used a non-stick pan). I would rather fry/sautée the zucchini by itself, or go all the way and batter & fry several zucchini.
That aside, it's not a bad recipe. I like the addition of soy sauce, which makes it sort of like pasta salad but not quite.