recipe of the week: WALNUT BOLOGNESE

Each week during Veggie Vebruary, we’re spotlighting a simple, high-protein, meatless recipe for you to try.

Classic Italian dishes are pure comfort food for a lot of us. Picture a bowl filled heaped with wound spaghetti, topped with a steaming bolognese sauce, the meaty crumbles coated in tangy tomato flavor.

The beauty of the bolognese pasta recipe from the “Veggies Save The Day” blog is that you can get those comforting flavors and textures without any meat. Using walnuts as your protein—instead of beef, lamb, pork, or poultry—in this recipe is a step you can take to fight climate change, because animal agriculture contributes more than crop agriculture to the pollution that is overheating our planet.

As with all of Meat Me In The Middle’s Veggie Vebruary recipes, this one has plenty of protein (17 grams per serving, per Edamam), it’s easy and quick to make, and we’ve personally tested it. My husband described it as “delicious and complete,” and he complimented both the flavor and the texture.

The instructions call for a food processor, but if you don’t have one, just heap the walnuts on a cutting board and chop them finely, then mix them together with the spices and tamari (or soy sauce) in a bowl and proceed.

Avoid overprocessing by aiming for your mix to resemble the photo on the recipe webpage

The recipe warns against overprocessing the walnut mix in the food processor. I was guilty of that the first time I made it. The sauce still tasted good, but it was a little mushy. The texture was better the second time I made it, when I left the walnuts slightly chunkier.

Maplewood’s Good Bottle Refill Shop is offering a 20% discount from Mon. Feb. 16 through Sun. Feb. 22 on the ingredients that the store carries for this recipe: walnuts, pasta, and smoked paprika. Visit the store in person for this discount. You’ll also be making a bonus move in favor of the environment, by avoiding wasteful packaging.

This recipe is dairy-free, egg-free, and—if you use gluten-free pasta—also wheat-free. If you’re allergic to walnuts, needless to say, it won’t work for you, but check out two nut-free Veggie Vebruary recipe recommendations:

• Chickpea “tuna” salad
• Soy protein tacos (link coming Feb. 22)

The walnut crumbles in the recipe do not precisely mimic meat. But this dish tastes good enough that I bet you WON’T be thinking, as you eat it, about how you wish you were eating meat. You’ll just enjoy your meal! Give it a try.

If you want to post about making this recipe on social media, tag @mmitm_project (Instagram) or @mmitm.project (Facebook) and let us know how it went! #VeggieVebruary

And visit the Veggie Vebruary page for all our Recipes of the Week.