When is spaghetti not pasta?
Sometimes, you just don’t feel like having a heavy meal of pasta, but you’d like a plate of spaghetti.Spaghetti squash is a good alternative to pasta, potatoes, or rice. When cooked, the flesh of this unique gourd shreds into threads like thin spaghetti or vermicelli, hence its name.
This squash has a very mild flavor, thus it is usually served with a sauce of some sort. I prefer to eat it topped with some onions, mushrooms and tomatoes sautéed in a dribble of sesame oil and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. I know some people who like it topped with nothing more than a bit of butter and some salt.
The squash is a great diet alternative to spaghetti. You can’t beat the low cal option of this one –a four-ounce serving of spaghetti squash has only 37 calories.
The long strands will spin around your fork just like “real” spaghetti and you can dress it up the same as any pasta dish you’d regularly eat without any guilt. If you’re making this for non-vegetarian friends, you can even top it with a meat sauce.
Spaghetti Squash with Mushroom “Sauce”
1 spaghetti squash
1/4 onion, diced
5 button mushrooms, cut up
1 small tomato, diced
Salt and pepper to taste
A few drops of sesame oil
Parmesan cheese
• Prick the spaghetti squash all over with a skewer so it will not burst while baking
· Place whole squash in a shallow baking pan.
• Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 1 hour.
• When it’s cool enough to handle, cut the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise with a serrated knife.
• Scoop the seeds and the random large fibrous strings from the center of the cooked spaghetti squash.
• Gently scrape the tines of a kitchen fork around the edge of the spaghetti squash to
· Shred the pulp into spaghetti-like strands.
· In the meantime, sauté the onion, mushrooms and tomato in the sesame oil. Add salt and pepper if you like.
· Put the mushroom mixture atop the spaghetti squash shreds and dust with Parmesan cheese.
Vegan.
