Another vegetarian pasta - with tomato sauce


First, the future of meat - Congratulations scientists

Two days ago, the first lab-grown meat (beef)burger was eaten. Congratulations Dr Mark Post. Indeed, it may one day be a great help for people who want to reduce the suffering of animals but find it nearly impossible to eat a meal without meat. And although at this moment animals are still needed to get muscle stem cells before we can grow them to large numbers as indeed muscle stem cells have a limited lifetime and thus need replacement after a few months (although the animal doesn't need to be killed because a biopsy is sufficient to get the muscle cells while much less cows are needed to have a very large number of burgers) while blood of unborn cows (FCS = Foetal Calf Serum or FBS = Foetal Bovine Serum with some other factors) is needed to grow them, I am convinced that in future we will find ways of growing the stem cells indefinitely and thus without having to hurt an animal to get the muscle stem cells while we will be able to make the media in laboratories and thus no animals need to be killed. Then muscle cell types from other animal species (such as chicken) will also be used while the taste and structure can be improved so most people will use this meat. Maybe one day we may even eat home-grown meat when the method becomes easier and cheaper and we all have a small incubator in our kitchen (kind of growing our own herbs).

Still, I think one can eat very good using only vegetables as I will demonstrate below.

Recipient

First we need ingredients: asparagus, aubergine, courgette, carrots, mushrooms, red peppers (others also allowed), fresh soybean sprouts, garlic and tomato sauce while also fresh basil and parsley leaves to add colours at the end. Of course, herbs, oil (I used olive oil with hot pepper seeds), Tabasco and pasta.

Firstly, as I don't really like cooked aubergine, I fried some pieces in the hot spicy olive oil. Here it should be noted that aubergines can absorb large amounts of oil and thus I may try other ways of frying the aubergines, maybe under a grill.

After a short period, I added pieces of red peppers, courgette and asparagus to the aubergine and continued baking them together (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Pieces of courgette, aubergine, asparagus and red pepper, all together in the frying pan.
In the meantime, I cooked some pieces of carrots so they became a little soft but not overcooked. After the carrots were cooked a short time, I added them with the other vegetables (Fig. 2). I also added some herbs such as dried basil, salt and pepper.
 
Fig. 2: Carrots are cooked and added to the other vegetables. The pot with hot water contains some vitamins and pepper and will be used to cook the pasta.

Then I added the soybean sprouts so they could soften a little while the larger pieces could continue to get ready (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Addition of the soy and some herbs.
In the meanwhile, I boiled pasta (spaghetti broken into small pieces as I don't like the long ones very much because they are difficult to handle) in the water of the carrots. I also fried mushrooms before adding them to the other vegetables as well as small pieces of garlic. Garlic should be added close to the end to prevent it burning too much. I also added spicy tomato sauce, containing some onion pieces (Fig. 4). Finally, I added some Tabasco as I fancied a spicy meal.

Fig. 4: Torti' Dips, salsa hot sauce and baked pieces of mushroom were added while the pasta is cooking in boiling water.
After everything was ready to eat, I mixed the sauce with the pasta. On top I added so pieces of fresh basil and parsley leaves; this also results in a colourful contrast between the red sauce and green leaves (Fig. 5). Cheese can also be added, preferably Parmesan although I didn't use it this time because I think cheese should not be used each time one eats pasta as it can overwhelm.

Fig. 5: Pasta and vegetables are mixed while some fresh basil and parsley leaves are the finishing tough.
Enjoy your meal. And as usual, use your fantasy to make some changes. E.g. add nuts or celery or indeed some cheese.

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