Love makes people do crazy things… things as crazy as preparing an entirely vegan meal (if you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time you know that eggs, cheeses, and meats have quite the presence in my posts).

My long lost friend Amanda is my valentine this year. She has been living the eat, pray, love dream for the past year and a half (feel free to check out her blog, she is hysterical), starting in New Zealand and continuing all over the world, literally. At some point along the way she decided to try out veganism, SO for the sake of experimentation, I prepared a delicious and entirely vegan Valentine’s Day dinner for her. Spoiler alert, Amanda! We’re having VEGAN mushroom ravioli with romesco sauce!

For about 50 ravioli you will need:

FILLING
1lb fresh mushrooms — I used oyster mushrooms from my csa!
1 shallot
2 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
S+P

Toss the mushrooms, shallot & garlic into a food processor, pulse until everything is in very tiny bits, almost rough pate consistency.

Heat up about 1 tbsp olive oil in a non stick pan, add the mushroom mixture and saute until slightly browned and fragrant, season to taste and set aside.

DOUGH — Mario Batali’s recipe
2 cups AP flour
2 cups semolina flour
1 – 1 1/4 warm water

You can either use a stand mixer or mix this dough together by hand. If you choose to mix it together by hand, mound the flour and create a well in the middle, add the water little by little and mix until a rough ball is formed. Knead until it is workable then set aside for 10 minutes.

I opted to use my stand mixer with the dough hook. Put the two flours into the bowl, with the mixer on low slowly add the water, little by little, until it forms a nice dough ball. Set aside.

Now to put everything together.

Cut the pasta dough into 8 pieces. Run each through a pasta maker, not to the thinnest setting, make sure it is thick enough to not break apart when the filling goes in. About 1/16″ works well.

Set aside each layer of dough, placing wax paper or parchment paper between them.

When all of them are done, use a cookie cutter or overturned glass to mark where you are going to cut each of the ravioli, use this as a guide for where you place the filling.

Place about 1 tsp of filling in each marked area, then cover the entire sheet with another sheet of dough. Use your fingers to press the two together, then cut out the raviolis (I used a heart shaped cutter, so festive). Set them aside on wax paper sprinkled with a bit of semolina flour.

Continue until all of the raviolis are made, re-running the excess dough through the pasta machine until all of the filling is used up.

Don’t they look adorable??

Next for the sauce! This is adapted from a New York Times recipe. 

For a good 3 cups you will need:

80 almonds
2 cups stale bread cubes
2 small sweet peppers, diced
6 cloves of garlic, diced
1/2 cup jarred piquillo peppers, diced
1 cup canned tomatoes — whole tomatoes in puree, diced tomatoes in puree whatever you can find
1 1/4 cup dry white wine
2 tbsp sherry vinegar
1 tsp smoked paprika
Salt, to taste

In a large skillet, saute the almonds and bread cubes in 2 tbsp olive oil until fragrant — about 5 minutes.

Add the garlic, sweet peppers, and piquillo peppers, and saute until the garlic is lightly browned.

Transfer the contents of the pan to your food processor (which I’m sure you’ve already washed after making the mushroom filling…)

Add the tomatoes, and process until very smooth.

With the motor running, add the wine, vinegar and paprika.

Remove to a large bowl or container and season with salt to taste.

This sauce is very interesting — traditionally used on grilled green onions or scallions, also lovely with some sliced steak and arugula on crusty bread… but why not use it on pasta!

So there you have it, a vegan Valentine’s day meal, all ready to go.

Sorry, Amanda, I just HAD to sneak a taste!

Happy Valentine’s day!