The month of November began with the #WorldVeganDay and we at Pasta Antonio Amato thought of a 100% vegan recipe with only foods of vegetable origin.

What is the better fall season to prepare a vegan dish? There are many vegetables that nature gives us in this period like fennel, pumpkin, spinach and radicchio, shallots, onions, leek and chives. Fresh, tasty and nutritious guarantee what we should find every day at the table.

Particularly inspired and creative, our choice for this dish is pumpkin and beetroot. After having combined them in a tasty pureed, we added fragrance and crunchiness with a hazelnut crumble and created a pleasant contrast with chives.

No doubt about the pasta shapes: Vermicelli Antonio Amato!

Red beetroot: sweetness and versatility

Intense color and sweet taste make the beetroot the perfect tuber to enhance the taste and beauty of the dishes. Furthermore, fibers and mineral salts make it perfect also for the children.

Excellent cooked and raw, we love to use beetroot for salads and creamy velvets.

Beetroot is also perfect boiled to prepare tasty risottos or to prepare crunchy chips, cutting them into thin slices to fry.

Beetroot also suitable for pasta. For a 100% vegan dish you can season it with a clove of garlic and boil it with salt and a drizzle of oil. For a first vegetarian, instead, it will be enough to add an element that serves to amalgamate the flavors, such as smoked scamorza cheese.

The queen of autumn: the pumpkin

The pumpkin, like the beetroot, has unmistakable sweet notes, is rich in nutrients and very versatile, in fact it can be used both in sweet and savory recipes.

Let's review some simple tips to choose and prepare it: the best pumpkins have peel free of cuts and dents; if you don't find it already cut, give the zest a few taps to check the level of ripeness, otherwise you can rely on the more or less intense color of the pulp; before being cooked, the pumpkin must be thoroughly washed and cleaned, eliminating filaments and seeds.

Don't throw away the waste! The seeds are delicious toasted with a pinch of salt.

One last trick: remember that the whole pumpkin is kept at room temperature for 2-3 months, but the pieces should be consumed within 3-4 days and stored in the fridge.

Now that we too have become hungry, let's move on to the preparation of the dish!

INGREDIENTS FOR 4 SERVINGS

320 g Antonio Amato Vermicelli

600 g pumpkin

1 clove garlic

1 red beetroot

chives to taste

crumble of hazelnuts to taste

salt to taste

Antonio Amato extra virgin olive oil EVO to taste

DIRECTIONS

For the preparation of this vegan dish start with the pumpkin: cut it into pieces, remove the seeds, the internal filaments and the peel to obtain coarse pieces.

Meanwhile, in a pan, brown a clove of garlic with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Add the pumpkin cubes and stir, adding hot water and cook for 20/30 minutes.

When the pumpkin is cooked, check that its flesh is soft and add the red beetroot that you have previously sliced. Cook for another 10 minutes.

Remove the garlic clove, transfer the ingredients to a mixer and operate it until you obtain a cream.

In a smaller pan, toast the hazelnuts until they turn brown.

Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling water, drain and sauté in a pan with the pumpkin and beetroot cream, adding a little chopped chives.

Now that the dish is ready, serve with the tufts of chives and a nice sprinkling of chopped hazelnuts.