I’m back with another fresh and *vegan* pasta recipe! Today I’ll be outlining how I make this soft and light spinach tagliatelle. As with all of my recipes, I hope I’m able to take away the scare factor and break down each stage of pasta-making so you can see how simple and fun it really is! This pasta recipe only contains three ingredients – spinach, water and semolina (or plain flour).
We’ll be using plain old elbow grease to get this dough perfectly thin and ready for shaping, although if you do have a pasta machine, feel free to use it! Some pastas contain eggs for a slightly different style of dough. As we keep everything vegan, we’ll be omitting the egg and going for a water/spinach-based pasta instead. I love making pasta and hope to encourage you to join me in making this recipe, whether you’re a seasoned pasta chef or a beginner.
Back to Basics
I find that making fresh pasta from scratch is quite calming. I didn’t grow up regularly making fresh pasta – just the occasional pasta with a machine. However, there’s something weirdly nostalgic about making pasta by hand. When you make fresh pasta it’s interesting to see is how different it is from dried pasta. Firstly, it’s much lighter – which means you can eat more of it! Secondly, fresh pasta cooks differently to dried pasta. As it’s fresh, you’ll never be able to cook it to ‘al dente’, as you would with dried pasta. So, instead you have to cook it for about 1-2 minutes, at which point it should be soft but with some ‘bite.’
I paired my spinach tagliatelle with a deliciously light, zesty and fragrant lemon sauce. This sauce enhances the flavour of the spinach while helping to retain the enticing green colour. In addition to this, the vitamin C content of lemon juice allows for better iron absorption from the spinach! Don’t forget you can view our blog post for more information on the benefits of spinach (and white potatoes!) here.
If you’re looking for some more pasta-based or sauce inspiration, then check out our other recipes:
- Hey Pesto Pasta or Red Pepper Pesto
- Fresh Vegan Orecchiette
- Easy Potato Gnocchi
- Best Ever Tomato Sauce
If you’re in a bit of a hurry, our soups make for the perfect base for a quick and delicious pasta sauce too.
N.B. All our soups are vegan, gluten-free, no added sugar and with completely green nutritional traffic lights! Celebrating natural goodness the Soupologie way! Find us at Whole Foods, Waitrose, Planet Organic, Ocado and on our webstore www.soupologie.com
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn for more information on our soups!
If you’ve never made pasta before I hope to give you the courage to try this recipe! Even if it doesn’t work 100% the first time, we all have to start somewhere. So, let’s start at the very beginning – it’s a very good place to start!
Vegan Spinach Tagliatelle
Equipment
- Saucepan
- Measuring Jug
- Stick Blender or Food Processor
- Colander
- Fork
- Bench Scraper (optional)
- Clingfilm
- Rolling Pin
- Knife
Ingredients
- 600 g Semolina or Plain Flour
- 150 g Spinach Fresh or Frozen
- All-Purpose Flour For Dusting
Instructions
To make the pasta dough:
- To begin, boil the spinach. Drain the spinach over a measuring jug to retain the liquid.
- Place the spinach in a blender or saucepan and add back in some of the spinach water. Blend with a stick blender or similar. We’re aiming to achieve around 300-400ml of spinach puree.
- On a clean work surface, pour out the semolina. Using your fingertips, create a large well in the centre. Ensure that the walls of the well are high enough to hold the spinach puree and prevent any spillages over the sides. Leave a thin layer of semolina at the bottom of the well. You can head over to our Instagram stories for a tutorial.`
- Pour the spinach puree into the well.
- Using a fork, slowly swirl the edges of the semolina into the middle of the well until it reaches a consistency that resembles pancake batter.
- Now, using a bench scraper, or *clean* hands, slowly fold the outside edges of the dough into the centre of the well. Incorporate the two by chopping through the mixture with the bench scraper.
- Start to roughly combine the dough. If your dough is a bit dry, you can add some of the leftover spinach water or puree.
- Once you’ve achieved a crumbly dough, remove any excess semolina to create a clean work surface.
- Now knead the dough. To knead, use the heel of your dominant hand to roll the dough towards you, like creating the crest of a wave. Then, using the heel of that same hand, quickly push the dough away from you. Give the dough a ¼ turn then repeat this movement for 5 minutes. It can be quite tiring but stick with it!
- After the 5 minutes, the dough should be springy to the touch. Form it into a ball and wrap it in clingfilm. Set the dough aside to rest for 15 minutes.
- For the second knead, simply repeat the process as before, kneading for around 5-7 minutes.
- Form it into a ball shape and wrap the dough in clingfilm, giving it a further 2 hours to rest.
- Once the dough has rested, unwrap the clingfilm and cut off ¼ segment of the dough. Re-wrap the remaining dough to keep it fresh.
- Generously dust a clean work surface with all-purpose flour to prevent the pasta dough from sticking.
- Using a rolling pin, roll out the segment of dough as thinly as possible into a rectangular shape. You’re looking for about 1-2mm thin.
- From the short edge, lightly roll up the dough.
- Using a sharp knife, slice the rolled dough into strips. A wider strip will be more like pappardelle, a slightly thinner strip will be like tagliatelle, even thinner will be like linguine, and extremely thin slices will be like angel hair! Watch our step-by-step tutorial on Instagram for how this is done!
- Unfurl the strands of dough.
- Then, dry the tagliatelle. I like to do this step by hanging the tagliatelle on an oven rack through the slots. You can then place the rack in an oven – with the oven off! Dry it out for at least an hour or so.
To cook the tagliatelle:
- Bring a pot of lightly salted water to the boil. Then add the tagliatelle and cook for 1-2 minutes.
- Drain and combine the pasta with a sauce of your choice. Don’t forget we’ve got two pesto sauces to try, as well as an aglio e olio sauce and a great tomato sauce recipe!
- Serve and enjoy!
Notes
