Spaghetti Pie

When I first saw this post come up, I knew I had to try it. It seemed like a nice change from regular old pasta. I had to find a way to make it dairy free, so aside from using tofu instead of ricotta, I omitted the cheeses, and adapted it with ingredients we had on hand. Her original recipe was meatless, but since Gary was already defrosting the ground turkey, I decided to add that in.

It turned out very well. A little runny because I didn’t have tomato paste. I started reading the recipe and saw that she mentioned marinara sauce, and I took out both the can of tomatoes and the marinara, not realizing she was making her own sauce. I ended up using the can of tomatoes minus the tomato paste. I will try using marinara sauce next time since I usually don’t have tomato paste on hand.

Dairy Free Spaghetti Pie
Loosely adapted from: REC(ession)IPES

Ingredients:
8 ounces thin spaghetti
salt
1/2 lb ground turkey
olive oil
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
1 28 oz can whole stewed tomatoes, broken up
1 tsp oregano
1 medium zucchini, shredded
1 package extra firm Mori-nu tofu
splash of lemon juice
salt and pepper
2 large eggs
1/4 cup nutritional yeast

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add salt to water, boil the pasta until al dente per package instructions. Lightly grease a 9x9 glass pan with olive oil or cooking spray and set aside.

Meanwhile, brown the ground turkey in a pan. Set aside. Dice onion and mince garlic. Cook in 1 tbsp olive oil until onions are just translucent, approx. 5-8 minutes. Add ground turkey back in, add tomatoes with their juice, along with oregano. Simmer on stovetop for 10 minutes.

Using the s-blade on your food processor, pulse the tofu and lemon juice a few times until the consistency of ricotta cheese. Swap out the blade for the shredding attachment, shred zucchini in a food processor (or use your grater). Place tofu mixture in bowl and mix thoroughly with salt and pepper to taste.

Drain the pasta and toss in large bowl with one tsp olive oil. Whisk eggs with a fork in a small bowl with nutritional yeast. Toss with spaghetti. Add spaghetti to prepared pan. Shape into crust shape by using fingers to flatten center and press up the sides of the plate.

Add tofu mixture to indentation in center. Top with tomato sauce and bake, uncovered, 25-30 minutes.

Remove from oven, let cool 10 minutes, then cut into 9 even squares and serve.

Gary loved this. He thought the tofu tasted a lot like cheese!