I had never had vegetable noodles until a couple of years ago and was a little suspicious of them. Then I had the chance to try some spiralizing when staying with a friend, and things snowballed from there. I now have my own spiralizer (thanks to my mother-in-law!) and use it for all sorts of things. I am not vegetarian, gluten-free or vegan (a glance at my other recipes should confirm that for anyone), but I do like playing around with things, and tweaking traditional takes to find my own. I love veg and try to insert it into meals left, right and centre, and do find some traditional meals a little heavy. Replacing pasta with veg - carrots, beets, zucchini, squash - suits me to a T and opens up so many possibilities. This one is dead simple ( we pulled it together in 10 minutes) but fresh and tasty, hitting all the right notes and all five tastes. I did use some sausage in this but it can easily be skipped to make the recipe vegetarian or vegan.
Ingredients: ,
1 giant zucchini or two smaller ones - spiralized on the medium setting (Zoodles!)
3 tbsp oil - we used peanut this time, but olive oil works too
1 tbsp honey
juice of two lemons
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp nigella seeds
1 tsp dried orange peel strips
Optional: 2 small merguez sausages, sliced
salt and pepper to taste
1) Gently heat oil, balsamic, honey and juice in a deep frying pan or a saucepan. Add orange peel, nigella seeds and sausage slices. Cook gently for about 5 minutes until these have melded to form a smooth dressing. Taste test.
2) Add zoodles to the pan and toss to coat. Cook for a further 3-4 minutes in the sauce and serve. I cooked them until they were just done but still crunchy, but do cook to your own desired taste.
Served up with crusty bread, this needed nothing else to complete our lunch. Absolutely beauteous.