This post is loosely inspired by my friend Ahran’s Kimchi-Bacon Cream Pasta recipe, which sounded absolutely delicious. Pasta, a creamy sauce with umami and heat, and pork product, there’s a lot of good things going on conceptually there, and I wanted to dig right in myself when I heard the description of that recipe. In this case, since I am not a plagiarizer, I wanted to make a variation off of Ahran’s recipe, with more of a focus on a tomato-y sauce with togarashi spice running through it. The idea of noodles swimming in this spicy, creamy red sauce is so classic, but there is a lot of room for creativity there. Back when I was a kid, we would go to Musha Izakaya in Torrance(RIP) a lot, and I would order their angel hair pasta with togarashi. These thing noodles that were simply cooked with olive oil, salt, and finished with that Japanese chili mix, it was delicious, and surprisingly child-friendly. I hated spicy food as a kid, but the togarashi did not affect me at all. Against the olive oil, it worked surprisingly well. Which is why I feel like in a tomato sauce, it would only add a pleasant and welcomed heat to the whole thing. The third inspiration for this recipe was from the Netflix JDrama First Love, where the main characters talked about their love of Napolitan pasta. Napolitan pasta is a spaghetti-based dish with a tomato sauce which can be spicy, Vienna sausages, and canned mushrooms. So I kind of wanted to combine those three ideas together into a single dish, which is what you are seeing in this recipe.

The sauce itself is made using onions, garlic, togarashi, tomato paste, oregano, paprika, and it is eventually finished with some almond milk, which will give it that creamy finish. It is kind of like a tomato bisque, but more cooked down, and with the spices and pork product to break up the monotony of the tomato flavor. I have had tomato bisques in the past where they were just a touch too acidic, and that made the drinking experience of them unpleasant. However, the other ingredients, and the ratio of tomato to aromatics and almond milk, really help to make this a much more pleasant and less overtly tomato-y experience. I also finished the sauce with some kale, green onions, and topped it with roasted oyster mushrooms and some Berkshire sausage. The oyster mushrooms and Berkshire sausage are my nods to the usual Napolitan accompaniments. Just to be silly, I actually cut the sausages to resemble little octopuses, kind of like the ones you would find in Japanese bento boxes. I found that they added a little more motion that way, and they were cute The pasta was made with all-purpose flour, semolina flour, olive oil, water, turmeric, nutritional yeast, and salt. I was experimenting with a vegan pasta dough, so that’s what I went with here. You can totally use a more traditional pasta recipe, or even just dried pasta if you would like! All in all, this recipe came together, pasta-included, in less than an hour, so it is a quick meal that you can prepare during the week!

Makes 2 portions:
For the garnishes:
4oz oyster mushrooms
6 Berkshire sausages
1/2 cup chiffonaded kale
2 tbsp rice wine or cider vinegar
extra virgin olive oil
salt

Place the mushrooms in a cold pan with olive oil and salt. Bring the pan up to heat over a medium-high flame, allowing the mushrooms to slowly render out any water and caramelize on one side. Flip the mushrooms and allow them to sear on the other side so that both sides of the mushrooms are golden-brown. Place the mushrooms in a bowl, and reserve the oil for the sausages and kale.

With the sausages, you will want to score them halfway along the length with a knife. Rotate them 90 degrees and score them again. You essentially want to make an x-shaped cut along half of the sausage. Boil the sausages in salted water(reserving that water to boil your pasta with!), until the scored side begins to unfold and fan out. Then sear the sausages in the pan you cooked your mushrooms in, on medium heat, rotating them so that each side sears for no more than 1 minute.

With the kale, saute that in the same pan as the mushrooms and sausage, with the vinegar and salt, until wilted down, but still bright green, then take off heat.

For the sauce:
4 cloves of garlic, minced
the white portions of 4 green onions, minced(reserve the minced green portions to finish)
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
a pinch of salt
1/4 tsp togarashi powder
1/4 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp oregano
3 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 cup almond milk
reserved seared oyster mushrooms
reserved cooked kale

In a pan, cook out the garlic, white portions of the green onions, olive oil, salt, togarashi, paprika, and oregano on medium heat. Once the onions are translucent, stir in the tomato paste first, then add in the almond milk. Stir on low heat until everything is combined. At this point, add in the mushrooms, allowing them to stew in the sauce as well. Right before adding in the cooked pasta, stir in the green portions of the green onions and the kale.

For the pasta dough:
1/4 cup semolina flour
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
a pinch of salt
3 tbsp water

In a bowl, mix everything together into a dough. Continue to knead the dough until smooth, then rest the dough for 10 minutes at room temperature. Using a pasta roller, roll out the dough to the thinnest setting, dusting it with flour between rolls to guarantee that it will not stick. Cut the dough into noodles. Boil the pasta in heavily salted water for just 30 seconds, and finish in the sauce.

To plate:
Place down the pasta first, and garnish the top with your octopus wieners. If there is not enough of it in the noodles already, garnish the top of the noodles with more kale and mushrooms to finish.