How Do You Get The Vegan Spag Bol Sauce To Stick To The Spaghetti?

Our answer

Nigella's Vegan Spag Bol has a sauce made from tomatoes, lentils, carrots and aubergines (eggplants), with the umami element in the sauce boosted by adding dried porcini mushrooms. The sauce is simmered for around an hour until rich and thickened, in a similar way to a meat ragu.

In the recipe Nigella then follows a process that is known in Italian as "mantecare". You reserve a cupful of the pasta cooking water before you drain the spaghetti and then mix the sauce and pasta together over a low heat in a saucepan or deep-sided frying pan, adding splashes of the reserved pasta-cooking water as you mix the two together, until the sauce coats the pasta. The pasta cooking water contains starch from the spaghetti that helps to bring together the sauce and pasta and the extra liquid can help to prevent the dish from becoming too dry as the pasta will absorb a little extra liquid from the sauce as you carry out this step. Restaurants will usually follow this process and it will work for most pastas and sauces.