Cheese and pepper pasta. How can you go wrong with that? You can’t. We have been vegan for years, and have made many different types of pasta, but nothing like a Cacio e Pepe.
On Christmas, we got a few different cookbooks that we are going to cook from going forward, and Craving Vegan by Sam Turnbill was one of them. I didn’t get her previous two cookbooks; although, my friend did and really seemed to enjoy them.
I have used a lot of recipes from her website, It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken, but this year her new cookbook caught my attention and I wanted it. I don’t know if it was the name or the pictures, but I had to have it.
When I was skimming through it on Christmas, I saw a walnut pasta that she called Walnut Cacio e Pepe, and I instantly wanted to make it.
The Vegan Cacio e Pepe Recipe Is Ridiculously Easy And Delicious
This is the kind of recipe you can throw together in minutes after work. Even if you were really busy and you are tired.
Or, if someone decides to pop in for supper, and you want to impress them, but don’t have a lot of time, this is the recipe.
It only took me 10 minutes to make.
There are no cashews in this vegan Cacio e Pepe, which was suspiring to me because almost all vegan sauces have cashews! But this still has a nut – a walnut.
All you got to do is put the pasta in the water, make the sauce, and then combine.
The pasta sauce has water, walnuts, miso, nutritional yeast, salt, and black pepper in it. These are all ingredients we always have on hand. And wow, for something so simple, it was it delicious!
Note: I don’t want to give away measurements because this is part of her cookbook, not just a public recipe, so if you want to know measurements, buy the book and turn to page 86 in the ‘cheesy’ section.
You could serve this vegan Cacio e Pepe at a restaurant and charge $14 or more a plate. It’s something I would crave and come back to order again and again.
Things I Did Differently From The Recipe
It’s not a huge recipe, so there’s not a lot to change. But, as with all recipes, I managed to change a few things.
The recipe was supposed to be enough for 4-6 people. I used enough spaghetti for 2 people, but I made the sauce with the same amount of main ingredients, such as walnuts and water. So I’m assuming if you cook enough pasta for 4-6 people (1 pound according to her recipe), your pasta will be less saucy than ours came out.
That said, after having it, if I was cooking for more than two, I would probably double the sauce.
I did double a few of the ingredients in the recipe, like the miso and nutritional yeast. I love both of those things, so why not put more of what I love in? I tried to take a video of that. I set up the camera, put all the ingredients together, and then realized that I had not hit record.
I do that often.
Also, the recipe says to combine the sauce with the pasta, but I combined the pasta with the sauce by pouring the pasta sauce into a hot frying pan first and then adding the pasta to that. Is that wrong? I don’t think so! It came out great. I thought heating the frying pan up before putting the sauce in would help thicken it up, but I just ended up with sauce splattering around for a few seconds because it was so hot.
The sauce didn’t thicken at all, and it was perfect.
The sauce itself was creamy and salty, just like a pecorino sauce would taste. My husband was the one to note this. And if I haven’t mentioned it, he’s Italian and grew up in Italy. At first, he said it was very reminiscent of a pecorino sauce, and then the more he ate it, the more surprised he was at how similar it tasted.
We found that when you combine the sauce with the pasta, some of the salty taste dies down. The recipe had said salt to taste. I barely put any in there because I know the miso can give off quite a salty taste in sauces, and I figured you can always add salt later.
That was a smart idea I had.
I suggest you do the same.
Eat Good Food In Good Bowls
We also got new ramen soup bowls for Christmas, and we couldn’t help but have our vegan Cacio e Pepe in there. These bowls are so pretty. We may eat everything in these new bowls.
Sam Turnbull Nailed This Vegan Walnut Cacio E Pepe
Sam Turnbull nailed this recipe in her Craving Vegan cookbook. It’s easy and delicious.
We didn’t even add our cashew parmesan to the pasta, and we add that stuff to all pasta!
The only thing I did add was some fresh garlic to my bowl. I was craving fresh garlic as much as I was craving vegan Cacio e Pepe.
So far so good, Sam.
