zucchini noodles – Eat the Vegan Rainbow

Raw Zucchini Pasta with No-Cook Tomato Sauce, via Eat the Vegan Rainbow

Confession time: raw food is not really my thing. And I don’t mean salads or smoothies or just munching on fruit or veggie sticks or nuts. That doesn’t count and those I love. And I love different types of quick and easy breakfast ideas, like energy balls or muffins that you can just whip together.

What I mean here is taking something that you feel like should be cooked, for example a soup or maybe a stir-fry and making it raw, or as you may have learned from the recent cookbook review I wrote on “Raw Vegan”, without using temperatures above 150F.

And yet: couple of things I tried actually changed my mind on perhaps not all types of raw food recipes, but definitely on a handful of them. One of the raw foods I like is this quick and super easy and super raw take on spaghetti and marinara sauce.

For spaghetti I use spiralized zucchini noodles aka zoodles. I’ve been using zoodles for some time know and they are fantastic. Even when you do cook them they are done in no time and make a simple pasta-like dish, or stir-fry, or even as that classic – spaghetti and meatballs! They taste great in a salad, with no cooking required, too. So, I suppose it was a no-brainer that they would work with a no-cook tomato sauce.

Speaking of which, the no-cook sauce did need some development to make into something that does not taste like you are just chugging down some canned tomatoes. Adding canned beans (I suppose this may disqualify the recipe from being technically “raw food” but it’s as raw as this one will get) to boost the protein, flavor and creaminess, and adding nutritional yeast really made the flavors pop!

Try this sauce with other things as well, and you will not feel like you are missing anything. For this specific pasta dish, topping everything with some chopped olives (I recommend Kalamata here as they are a bit edgy) will make a great dish even better. Enjoy!

Raw Zucchini Pasta with No-Cook Tomato Marinara Sauce

What you’ll need:

4 large zucchini, spiralized
FOR SAUCE

1 28 oz (800 g) can crushed tomatoes
1 15.5 oz (440 g) can white canelini beans
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon umami spice mix or 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon paprika, 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper, 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano and 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
FOR SERVING
kalamata olives, sliced, for serving

What you’ll do:

Place all the sauce ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth, which should take about a minute.
Pour the sauce over the spiralized zucchini and toss well to combine.
Serve immediately topped with sliced olives and enjoy!!!