Vegan MoFo VI, Day 11 - Chocolate Pasta

When I left the house this morning, it was sunny and not that cold, so I wore my trainers.  When I left work, it was pouring rain.  I ended up walking home because I missed my bus, and by the time I got home, my feet were soaked.  I mention this because it's my excuse for not trying very hard today.

But I tried something new!

Some time last year, Mike decided on the spur of the moment that he was gonna go to some 24-hour gaming thing.  In fact, I think I'd planned dinner with friends and he suddenly decided to bugger off for a whole day for role-playing.  But it was for charity, so I couldn't really say anything.

Well, the next weekend, he brought home a gift for me - one of his friends bought me a bag of chocolate penne (durum wheat semolina and cocoa powder) from Hotel Chocolat as a thank-you for letting them steal him for, effectively, an entire weekend.  It was my compensation for being a gaming widow.

From Hotel Chocolat, who, btw, have a decent vegan selection

The thing is, I had no idea how to use chocolate pasta.  It didn't seem quite right to put tomato sauce on it, but I couldn't think of a cream sauce that wasn't super garlicky (and therefore would be weird with chocolate).  But then I made the pumpkin alfredo yesterday, and I realised that chocolate pasta would be the perfect vehicle for noochy, pumpkin-y cream sauce.

The chocolate pasta smelled great cooking.  And, as suspected, it worked really well with the pumpkin alfredo.  It wasn't sweet at all, but lent a nice earthiness to the pumpkin.  I don't know if I'd buy it myself as it's a bit expensive for pasta, but it was a nice gift that I really did appreciate even if I didn't figure out how to use it for over a year!