It’s World Pasta Day and I have just the perfect pasta for this special day (or any day 😉 )- vegan black bean mole pasta. This is probably far from the original mole, which I tasted many years ago while studying in Mexico, but it has one ingredient which justifies the name mole… It’s the ingredient I’m using as “parmesan”: chocolate!! Dark chocolate gives an amazing unique rich flavor to pasta sauce and I love how it tastes with soft black beans.
Click here to read this post in Finnish.
I didn’t add any chili to the sauce which is also why this is far from the original mole. Instead of chili I added fresh ginger and fresh turmeric root (ground turmeric works well too) as the warming spices. This is definitely a lazy cooks version of black bean mole, as it takes about 20 minutes to make. Here are my short cuts:
- ready to use black beans
- canned tomatoes
- vegetable stock cube
Because it’s such an easy pasta, I make this quite often, at least twice a month. My kids are crazy about this, mostly because they love chocolate so much and it’s fun to have chocolate for dinner. The chocolate I’m using is 85% dark chocolate, so it’s not a super sweet one but sweet enough to give the sauce a beautiful rich chocolatey flavor to balance the other flavors (but I promise this doesn’t taste like chocolate pasta 🙂 ).
Hope you like this fun & comforting pasta too ♥
Love,
Tiina
- ½ tbsp olive oil (or cooking oil of choice, or just water)
- 1 onion (red or yellow)
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 0,3 oz / 8 g (a spoonful) of ginger
- 0,2 oz / 5 g of turmeric root (or 1 tsp ground turmeric)
- 2 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp Ceylon cinnamon
- 1 tsp paprika
- 17 oz / 500 g canned tomatoes
- 1 cup of water
- 1 vegetable stock cube (or vegetable stock powder)
- 7 oz / 200 g cooked black beans (from a can)
- 0,5 oz / 15 g dark chocolate (I use 85%)
- To serve:
- Pasta for four
- Optional: A few pieces of dark chocolate to grate on top of pasta and fresh oregano
- Chop onions and garlic. Grate ginger and turmeric.
- Heat oil in a pan and add chopped onions and garlic. Let them soften for about 3 minutes in medium heat.
- Add grated ginger and turmeric and cook them for a minute or two.
- Add other spices and warm them up stirring for about a minute.
- Add canned tomatoes, water and vegetable stock cube. Mix well and let simmer in medium heat for 5 minutes until the sauce thickens.
- Add black beans and chocolate and let simmer in low heat for about 10 minutes under a lid.
- The longer you let it simmer, the more flavorful the sauce will be.
- Cook pasta while sauce is simmering.
- Garnish pasta dish with grated chocolate & fresh oregano and enjoy this flavorful meal.
Â
[…] love the idea of a mole pasta, and this particular one looks so cozy and filling. Bonus points for plant protein from black […]