Grand Rasta PastaJulie Van Rosendaal/The Globe and Mail
Though we might not commonly associate pasta with Jamaican cuisine, Rasta pasta – also known as jerk pasta – has been a much-loved dish since its inception in Negril in 1985.
The creamy pasta is named for its red, yellow and green bell peppers – a colourful representation of Rastafarians on the island – and is commonly credited to chef Lorraine Washington, who unwittingly created the original version at her restaurant using fettuccine, which customers noted resembled dreadlocks. Now most often made with penne, Rasta pasta is sauced with a heavy pour of cream and a spoonful of jerk marinade – an intensely flavourful blend of onions, chilies, garlic, ginger, citrus, thyme, cinnamon and allspice that’s a brilliant contrast to the cream and adds incredible flavour with subtle warmth and a bit of heat.
This version comes from the second cookbook of Montreal-based food writer Lloyd Rose, who has cultivated an audience of nearly a million on his plant-based social-media platform, Plantcrazii. After making the switch to a vegan diet, Rose set to recreating his favourite Caribbean dishes, such as Rasta pasta, in plant-based form. His pasta is bulked up with oily, umami-rich sun-dried tomatoes and sautéed mushrooms along with the peppers, which are browned first to add even more flavour to coconut milk, a staple of Jamaican cuisine, in place of the cream.
The Grand Rasta Pasta
Excerpted from Island Vegan: 75 Flavorful Recipes from the Caribbean: Jamaica, Trinidad, Haiti, Dominican Republic & More, by Lloyd Rose (Page Street Publishing)
“Think of this pasta as a creamy Alfredo with an island flair,” writes Rose. “The cream sauce consists mainly of coconut milk with Jamaican jerk! You can taste little notes of allspice berries all throughout this meal; they are nutty, sweet but also slightly peppery. The remaining pasta water can be used to revive the liquid in the pasta if it has dried out from being left on the stove for a while.”
- 410 g (14.5 oz) penne pasta
- 1 cup (235 ml) pasta water
- 2 tbsp. (30 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 3/4 cups (200 g) sliced white mushrooms
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1 cup (150 g) roughly chopped sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil
- 1 tbsp. (15 ml) oil from the jar of sun-dried tomatoes
- 1/2 cup (100 g) julienned yellow bell pepper
- 1/2 cup (100 g) julienned red bell pepper
- 1/2 cup (100 g) julienned green bell pepper
- 1/4 cup (60 ml) vegetable stock
- 2 tbsp. (30 ml) Jamaican jerk marinade (store-bought or homemade)
- 1 3/4 cups (415 ml) canned full-fat coconut milk
- 2 tbsp. (10 g) nutritional yeast
- 1 1/2 tsp. (1.5 g) fresh thyme leaves, removed from the stems
- Salt, to taste
- Black pepper, to taste
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the penne and cook it one minute less than the package instructions. Once ready, reserve 1 cup (240 ml) of the pasta water for later use. Drain the pasta and set it aside.
In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat. Sauté the garlic for two minutes or until fragrant. Bring the heat down to medium heat. Add the mushrooms and salt and sauté for five to 10 minutes, or until the mushrooms soften and turn light brown. Add the sun-dried tomatoes, the reserved oil from the sun-dried tomatoes and all of the bell peppers and sauté for five minutes, or until the peppers turn slightly tender but still have a bit of crunch to them.
Add the vegetable stock to the pan and mix in the Jamaican jerk marinade, then the coconut milk and nutritional yeast. While stirring regularly, bring the mixture to a light boil. Add the pasta along with a quarter of the reserved pasta water, and stir until all of the pasta is coated with the sauce. Turn off the heat, mix in the fresh thyme and season with salt and black pepper to taste. Serve hot! Serves four.
