Avocado Pasta ‒ Avokadopasta

Doesn't sound like a terribly Finnish dish, does it? The reason I decided to add this to my blog however, is that it's been somewhat a phenomena in Finland for a year or so now. People are asking their friends: "Have you tasted Avocado Pasta already?" Half of Finnish food bloggers seem to have repeated it. They even say at one point it was so popular it was difficult to find avocados in all Helsinki. And now that I realised several vegan versions of it exist too, I thought I'd had to try it that way as well. Frankly, didn't notice much difference.

Avocado Pasta was created ex tempore by a Helsinki-based chef Alexander Gullichsen for his wife-to-be Hanna when they first started dating. According to the story, she thought it so good she was close to crying. Later, the pasta turned out a success in Alexander's restaurant Rafla, so it was also included in the couple's fresh cook book Safkaa, from where it really started to have a life of its own.

And no wonder. It's really simple to prepare. Perhaps I wouldn't weep over it but it does combine some quality ingredients in a way that make it hard to fail. In the vegan version two imported cheeses, pecorino and parmesan, are replaced with nutritional yeast, which also makes it a fairly cheap dish. At least unless you want to buy some Finnish-style taxed wine to go with it, which this dish does somehow call for.

- 400‒500 g spaghetti
- 2 perfectly ripe avocados
- 1.25 dl nutritional yeast
- 1 lime
- 1 bunch of fresh basil
- 1 bunch of fresh leave persil (or coriander)
- 1 garlic clove
- 0.5 chili pepper without seeds (Unless you've neve tasted chili before or you're using Naga Jolokia I recommend upgrading this to whole fruit.)
- a dollop of olive oil (I used 0.5 dl)
- salt
- black pepper

Make the sauce straight to the serving bowl. Mince the garlic and chili. Squeeze the juice from the lime. Split the avocados, remove the seeds, dice them in their skin and help them too into the bowl with a spoon. Cut the herbs. Add the yeast, the salt, the pepper and the oil as well. Mix with a spoon a check you used enough of salt.

Cook the spaghetti al dente in well salted water. Strain the pasta, but don't flush. Save a small amount of the cooking water and pour in the sauce. Stir the spaghetti up with the sauce.

Finalize the portion with nutritional yeast and black pepper on top. Serve immediately.

Nutritional values / 938 g:
energy 2614 kcal
fat 100 g
protein 79 g
carbohydrates 342 g
fiber 38 g