Yield: 4 modest servings (will need a substantial side dish or side salad to make a full meal)
This easy recipe yields pasta that looks like those made from doughs “dyed” with various vegetable dyes (or animal, like squid ink–ick!). But, instead, taking Giada de Laurentiis’s lead, prepared pasta is cooked in red wine and turns this beautiful color. Clever, no? Giada also adds a little bit of tomato paste to hers, which you can certainly do. It will deepen the color for sure. But I really wasn’t after that rich cooked tomato flavor, so I left it out and my husband and I both loved it.
She serves hers with herbs and goat cheese. If I had had an of my Homemade Vegan Ricotta Cheese, I would have stirred little pieces of that into it, but we ate that right up! So, I had some beautiful yellow-orange grape tomatoes from the farmer’s market that I thought looked striking in contrast with the pasta. And it tasted delicious too.
Feel free to add whatever cooked vegetable you choose (though tomatoes are best added fresh). You can hardly go wrong unless the color is too close to the pasta color and doesn’t show up.
8 ounces whole wheat pasta (I like a thin vermicelli–not the Asian rice variety–but spaghetti is nice too, just adjust cooking time)
Sea salt
2 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup finely diced red onion or shallot, red if available (about a medium shallot)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups of dry red wine, like a Zinfandel or whatever you have on hand
16 golden grape tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup finely chopped basil
Garnish: sprigs of basil and optional nutritional yeast
Bring a large (4 quart) pot of well-salted water to boil over medium-high. Add pasta and simmer pasta for about half it’s cooking time (about 4 minutes for whole wheat vermicelli); lower heat if necessary. Meanwhile, in a large cast iron skillet over medium-high, heat olive oil. Add onion and garlic and sauté, stirring continually, until softened and fragrant, about a minute or two. Add red wine, and bring to a simmer; adjust heat if necessary. Drain pasta and add to skillet with red wine mixture, or scoop pasta directly into mixture using a slotted spoon. Cook pasta for its remaining time or a minute or so longer, stirring occasionally. When almost all of wine has cooked off, add tomatoes and basil, and gently toss until all of the moisture has simmered away. Serve immediately dusted with nutrition yeast if desired (but not enough to hid the beautiful color), and a sprig of basil.
