How to make your own plant-based Italian food

Vegan ragu pasta (Full of Plants)

Everyone loves Italian food! From spaghetti bolognese to risotto to tiramisu. But it’s far better to make your own plant-based versions – animal-kind, tastier and healthier. And cheaper than eating out.

Here are tips on where to find plastic-free pasta and vegan Parmesan (the real stuff is not even vegetarian, as it’s made with calf rennet). Plus a couple of really good recipe books. Mangia!

• If making your own pasta, keep fresh dough away from children and pets. Read more on food safety for people and pets.
• Before recycling cans, rinse then remove lids (pop ring-pulls over holes). Then step on upper cans to ‘pinch’ inner rims together, to avoid wildlife getting trapped. 
• Unless you have a food waste bin, bin pepper and allium scraps (onion, leeks, garlic, shallots, chives) and citrus/tomato/rhubarb scraps, as acids could harm compost creatures. 

Homemade food is peaceful politics in action!

Learning to cook your own food is a really empowering way to make a difference. You can easily make Italian food on a budget (fresh veggies, lentils, pasta, rice). Once you’ve mastered a few recipes, you can enjoy tasty dinners every night, with no animal ingredients, bad ready-meals or plastic packaging.

One could argue that the reason why the big supermarkets have so much power, is often because people simply don’t know how to cook.

In Italy, there are of course supermarkets. But you find that they offer far different foods (fresh foods and dried staples, not aisles of expensive ready meals and sugary cereals).

Like the rest of mainland Europe, petrol stations sell petrol (not giant bags of crisps or chocolate bars). Why? Because people eat properly – three meals a day with fruit for dessert, and a treat at weekends. So they have no need to fill up on empty calorie junk, due often to nutritional deficiencies.

Switch to plastic-free pasta and rice

Whether you are cooking a bolognese or a risotto, there are a few brands in England that now sell pasta and rice in plastic-free packaging. Find them in indie shops or order online.

Unless you have a medical condition, cook pasta in boiling water seasoned with natural sea salt. Not salting water in Italy when cooking makes it ‘silly pasta’. You’ll notice the difference in taste.

The Yorkshire Pasta Co (also in giant sacks)

The Yorkshire Pasta Company offers paper bags with metal clips (and sacks for chefs or big families) of pasta made with British wheat. These use the bronze die method for uneven rough edges, to avoid ‘slimy pasta’ that doesn’t hold sauce.

This solar-powered brand is helping to support 169 local farms, and a local mill with over 130 years experience. Plus all the range is vegan-friendly (no eggs). The range includes:

• Fusilli
• Penne Rigati
• Conchiglie Rigate
• Tortglioni
• Mezze Maniche Rigate

Northern Pasta Co (spelt pasta in paper packs)

The Northern Pasta Co uses nutty spelt flour (not gluten-free but easier to digest than wheat) that’s grown on regenerative farms. Again it uses bronze dies for a rough surface.

It uses a local miller to offer:

• Radiatori
• Rigatoni
• Fusilli
• Gigli
• Casarecce
• Conchigilette

It also offers Hasta La Pasta seasoning, made with fennel seeds, herbs (parsley and chives), garlic powder, black and Aleppo pepper and flaked sea salt. Packed in an easy to recycle tin.

Biona (paper-packed organic pantry basics)

Biona is an organic food brand that offers many pantry basics in paper packaging, including rice and various pantry staples (pasta, millet, quinoa, bulgur, fonio, brown/green lentils and polenta).

If you eat a lot of these foods, earn loyalty points online, for big savings with regular purchases.

Vegan Parmesan (the real stuff is not even vegetarian)

This recipe for vegan Parmesan (Full of Plants) only has 5 ingredients. French chef Thomas has gone out of his way to make this recipe as simple as possible, so anyone can indulge! That’s because for now, the storebought versions are not that great, though in a pinch you can grate any vegan cheese over a dish. But this one has the authentic taste!

All you need are:

• Raw cashews
• Nutritional yeast (a cheesy tasting powder widely found in shops)
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder
• Find sea salt

It’s important to use a food processor to make this recipe, otherwise a blender could be too powerful and make ‘Parmesan butter!’

Once made, just store in a glass jar. Not just for pasta, vegan Parmesan is also good to sprinkle over soup, salad, risotto and roasted veggies.

Restaurants need to offer vegan alternatives

Vegan pesto, It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken

Parmesan cheese contains calf rennet. So it’s not vegetarian, yet many restaurants and hotels serve is as ‘the vegetarian option’ such as in a lasagne. Even some authors have had to pulp cookbooks, when readers told them they couldn’t cook the recipes.

Pesto contains Parmesan, so go for versions in the free-from aisle, if you don’t make your own. Gorgonzola and roquefort are also not vegetarian.

Cooking with Nonna (vegan Italian recipes)

Cooking with Nonna is a fun and unique book to make the best Italian home cooking. Giuseppe is a second-generation British Italian where food and family have always been intertwined.

So when Giuseppe went vegan, he needed to find a way to cook the flavours of his family. There was only one person who could help; his nonna! Together they learned how to make the authentic Italian and Sicilian dishes that Nonna grew up with, using all plants.

Recipes include:

• Classic Lasagne with Homemade Mince
• Arancini (croquettes) Della Nonna!
• The Perfect Tomato Sauce
• Pasta Aglio Olio & Peperconico
• Homemade Focaccia
• Tiramisu
• Coffee Granita
• Biscotti

Giuseppe Federici comes from a line of passionate foodies. Only at 15 did he realise that a roast dinner did not begin with a full plate of pasta!

He has a huge fanbase of 440K Instagram followers and 300K on TikTok, and has hosted supper clubs and been crowned Digital Creator of the Year at Fortnum & Mason food and drinks awards.

Vegan Italiana (recipes from a New York Italian chef)

Vegan Italiana is a super book by a New York chef who runs a successful Italian vegan restaurant in California (during the wildfires, she was giving free food to firefighters).

This is authentic food, with 100 recipes inspired by her family’s meals and fan favourites. Recipes include:

• Roasted garlic aioli
• Stuffed artichokes
• Minestrone soup
• Sicilian red lentil soup
• Roasted garlic creamy tomato soup
• Ravioli pomodoro (tomato)
• Cacio e Pepe
• Heartbeet risotto
• Lemon mint granita
• Panna cotta (cooked cream)
• Vegan tiramisu