Vegan Brown Butter Walnut and Tarragon Farfalle

When I first dreamt up this pasta the intention was to create it with sage. Let me set the stage.  It’s a rainy, blustery Sunday evening in Toronto.  The mister is on the couch chatting with his son over FaceTime and I am prepping away.  The rain is intense but we are cozy and dry, perfect night for a pasta feed.  I go upstairs to my terrace to pick some sage leaves and that’s when I realize they are past all hope and not usable for my recipe.  I head back down the stairs and lament to the mister our sage is dead. He valiantly responds “I can go to the store”.  He takes off with son still on FaceTime and trudges to our local grocery store.  Upon his return I am sautéing brown butter and walnuts.  He is still on said FaceTime but drops what he thinks is sage on the counter.  I say THANK YOU and he disappears to finish his conversation. I take one look at the herbs and say THAT’S NOT SAGE, its TARRAGON! And this is how this insanely tasty pasta was born. 

Tarragon is an herb I don’t cook with often.  It has a slightly liquorice flavour and I found a lot in French cooking.  It is usually accompanied with white wine, butter, cream and quite often chicken or mussels.  Well I am very pleased to announce it is also gorgeous with vegan butter and walnuts so here we are.

Mistakes aren’t mistakes in the kitchen. I mean sure, you can have some unfortunate outcomes but I try to look at all botched recipes as learning experiences. Even the best of us can still have an off day, a missed ingredient, or in my case a totally different flavour profile but sometimes you get lucky and in this instance, I did. Sometimes I surprise myself when making a recipe. I know I am a good cook and even think of myself as a chef BUT THIS PASTA was a whole other level. Yes, that’s the sound of me tooting my own horn.