Gluten-Free Creamy Avocado Pasta Recipe

 
This time I bring you not one, but two different entries in one post, all for your enjoyment.
 
Firstly, a delicious gluten-free creamy avocado pasta recipe to indulge your tummy and your senses, from Spring to Autumn (to be honest, anytime you fancy a creamy avocado).
 
Secondly, a review of the gluten-free pasta brand Gallo.

I came up with this recipe one of those heart-warming lazy late Summer – early Autumn afternoons, when the temperatures are still warm, but the evenings are getting softly chill and you fancy to eat some more soul-warming food. (I’m saying this because, I don’t know about you, but for me hot, warm summer days call for light and fresh meals. The warmer it gets, the less I can digest * insert “I don’t know” emoticon *)
 
I had an avocado that seemed to be at the perfect ripen point, ready to be eaten. However, I was still not very sure what to do with it (perhaps a guacamole sauce to use as appetizer?) or even if to save it for later and do some pasta instead, which I was also craving. But this heart-healthy avocado was calling me, so I decided to do a little experiment and mix them both: an inspired guacamole sauce with some pasta.
 
Sometimes, the best recipes are the ones that come in on the spur of the moment, and this one turned to be a beautiful creation. Occasionally, they are a complete fail, but that’s the beauty of creating recipes, getting creative in the kitchen and see how to best combine flavours, textures and taste. I truly enjoy the cuisine and coming up with new delicious recipes, and of course, sharing them with you, my dear readers.
 
As expected, the avocado didn’t disappoint: its creaminess made a fantastic base for the pasta recipe and the taste was exquisite. The end result of this creamy avocado pasta dish: superb.

One thing that I am quite proud of is that the avocado sauce is naturally lactose-free. As coeliac disease has a high association with lactose intolerance, I find it dishearting when I see that many store-made sauces have milk (or other dairy derivatives) added to the recipe. Why to do that unless strictly necessary? On top of that, this recipe is gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan, soy-free, sugar-free and as just mentioned, lactose-free.
 
This recipe can be adapted throughout the seasons: it can be served as a warm dish (perfect for chilly weather) or a cold salad (perfect for those summery days)
 
I hope that you enjoy this fantastic creamy avocado pasta recipe as much as I did.

Enjoy it!

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Gluten-Free
Creamy Avocado Pasta Recipe

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Recipe (serves 1)
Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-Free, Lactose-free, Nut-free, Soy-free.

Ingredients

½ guacamole (it was a big one)
½ lime
 1 clove of black garlic * (don’t know what black garlic is? See notes below)
A dash of cilantro (to your taste)
Salt, pepper
Sesame seeds

Instructions

1. Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the salt when water is boiling and cook the pasta according to the instructions on the package.
2. While the pasta is cooking, is time to make the stunning avocado creamy sauce. Simply mix the avocado flesh with the lime zest, the black garlic clove and some cilantro in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper to your taste.
3. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and serve on a plate. Place on top the fantastic creamy avocado sauce you have just created. (Alternatively, you can also bring it together, but for picture purposes and aesthetics, I went for the first option).
4. Top with some sesame seeds and serve immediately.
   

 
Bon appetite!

The special light captured in the photos belong to sunset time. I took my pasta to the outdoors to have some picnic time al fresco. It was a very nice experience and a feast for the senses. While I savoured this delicious creamy avocado sauce, I indulged my eyes and sight by observing the sun slowly disappear over the horizon, and how it bathed the nearby mountains in golden, pink and ochre rays of light, before fading to a midnight blue sky scattered with stars.

Glutenacious notes:

• As avocados oxidize very quickly once sliced, this sauce is best served immediately. If you would like to cook in batches, make more quantity of the pasta, save the leftovers pasta portions and then make the avocado sauce the moment you’d like to eat it. As you can see, it’s very quick and easy and you can do it under 5 minutes, it doesn’t require too much work.

 

• If you’d like to turn this recipe grain-free, you can always substitute the spaghetti pasta with zoodles (spiralized zucchini) or whatever your preference is —for example, spaghetti squash.
  

 

• For this recipe, I used spaghetti, but you could use any other pasta of your preference.

 

• I don’t complicate things too much and I make the creamy lactose-free avocado sauce by simply mixing the ingredients together with a fork (also less cleaning afterwards ;) ), but if you want to, you can also use a food processor to do the sauce ingredients blending. Black garlic cloves are very soft, so are easily mashed with a fork —more of black garlic coming below.

 

• You can top the dish with some more lime zest, if you wish to, and even change the seeds to your preference. For example, I think that some flaxseeds would match the taste as well.

BLACK GARLIC INFO

About Black Garlic

If you haven’t heard about black garlic, you might be wandering what on earth black garlic is and whether it’s safe to eat. Black garlic is, simply put, fermented garlic. It’s during this time of fermentation that the color turns into black —hence the name of black garlic— and the taste and consistency are transformed: the once strong flavor is now gone, and the consistency is kind of like jelly. If you have never tried black garlic, you will be surprised, because it’s so different to the regular garlic you are used to. Black garlic has a rather sweet and delicate taste and its consistency is very chewy —I sometimes eat it as a healthy sweet / chewing gum—. It definitely adds a very interesting flavor to the dishes. It is also perfect for people who don’t like garlic aftertaste, just substitute the regular garlic from your recipes with black garlic (taking into account the subtly change of flavors that black garlic will introduce).

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Pastas Gallo Review

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​As mentioned earlier, I thought that the best way to talk about some gluten-free pasta is to make a recipe with it — otherwise, it would be a bit boring, wouldn’t it?
 
Pastas Gallo is a very famous Spanish brand specialized in pasta, with a long history behind and that recently has launched a line of gluten-free pasta that is made in a dedicated factory. You can easily spot them at the stores due to their distinctive blue colour.
 
I have been using these pasta brand for a while and I like it. Cooks well, taking into account the difficulty of mastering the art of cooking gluten-free pasta. One of the things I like the most is that there is essential information put in a very clear way in the package, such as the following:

• Cooking time —even giving two options for the desire point of pasta cooking (in this specific package of spaghetti: 8 minutes for “al punto”—which I guess is what in Italy is called al dente— and 10 minutes for soft.

 

• Visual pasta measurement aid to know how much pasta should be used per person. Again, in this specific package of spaghetti, it’s a white circle that measures for 100g of pasta. In other packages (for example, macaroni, the guideline is a line on the package, as it’s been divided in blocks of 100g.

 
 

A visual aid to measure how much quantity of spaghetti you should use and cooking instructions

• Cooking guidelines for properly cooking pasta — which I am very happy to see, as it is how it is done in Italy. I have myself made blogpost about it. Check my guide for how to cook pasta like in Italy— Basically, it’s 1 litre of water per 100g of pasta (per person), 10g of salt.

 

• A clear identification of the gluten-free label that guarantees that the product is effectively gluten-free. In this case, they showed label is the one accredited by the Spanish Coeliac Association that states that the product has under 10ppm of gluten.

Official Gluten-free label by the Spanish Coeliac Association

The funny note, (and throwing here a bit of language learning) is that gallo (the chosen name of the brand) means cock (US: rooster) in Spanish; that’s why you see the figure of this animal in the packaging.
 

Pastas Gallo Gluten-free options

 Photo: Pastas Gallo

They have quite a good variety of gluten-free pasta, such as macaroni, spaghetti, pipe rigatte, fusilli (with tomato and spinach), tagliatelle, noodles and even lasagne and cannelloni sheets. But that’s not all, besides the “dry pasta” they also offer gluten-free fresh pasta options (to be found in the cold storage area at supermarkets) such as gluten-free tortellini filled with spinaches and ricotta cheese and gluten-free ravioli with meat and veggies.
 
On top of gluten-free pasta, they also offer gluten-free breadcrumbs and special gluten-free bakery mix (for making pizza, bread, cakes...etc).

A quick overview of Pastas Gallo History

 Pastas Gallo was founded in 1946 by José Espona. He acquired a flour factory in Barcelona. At that time, the most used wheat flour was soft wheat flour and José Espona decided to work with durum wheat flour (hard wheat), which is more appropriate for elaborating pasta.
 
Moving forward, during this 21st century they added more products to their traditional pasta line, such as fresh pasta and sauces. For the coeliac community, probably the most important key action is that on 2015 they decided to turn a factory in Barcelona (Esparraguera) into a dedicated gluten-free pasta facility, being the first one of its type in Spain. According to the company, the 1.3% of the total sales in 2015 was for the gluten-free line.

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additional info: hard wheat vs soft wheat

Wheat flour: What’s the difference between hard wheat and soft wheat?

While talking about the origins of the Pastas Gallo brand, I mentioned durum (hard) wheat and soft wheat. I didn’t know much about different types of wheat flour depending on their seeds, so I did a little research to explain it to you, as I imagine you might also be wondering about this. 
 
As you might already know, wheat is one of the most popular cereal grains in the world. It was domesticated in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago and has spread all over the world since them. (Unfortunately for the coeliac community, I dare say). Wheat is the most important cereal for making bread and pasta. But not all wheat is the same, and thus, depending on the type of wheat, it will result in a different flour with different properties, colour, protein value, particle size (granulometry) and level of water absorption. In regards the particle size, the bigger the particle is, the most suited it is for making pasta. The smaller the particle, the better for bread and products made with yeast. 
 
Even though there are many varieties of wheat grains, they are classified in two main categories: hard wheat and soft wheat. Let’s see more details about these two categories. 
 
1)  Hard Wheat

It receives its name because this grain is difficult to break apart. Hard wheat has a high protein content and a good gluten quality, so it can develop a strong and elastic dough (these are basically the qualities of gluten protein and why is it difficult to make gluten-free bread). It’s the best type of wheat to elaborate bread and (dry) pasta. An example of hard wheat variety is Durum wheat and durum semolina. To sum up, below are the main characteristics and qualities of hard wheat:
 

• Difficult to break apart
• Requires more milling
• High protein content
• Good gluten quality
• Lower glycemic index
• Absorbs more water
• More crushed starch granules
• Less extendable
• Stronger and elastic dough
• Products made from this flour keep longer

 

2)  Soft Wheat
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As opposed to hard wheat, the grain breaks easily —hence its name of soft wheat— and has a powdery quality. The dough made with this type of wheat contains less protein and is highly extendable. For this reason, soft wheat is more suitable for making cakes, biscuits, pastries, fresh pasta and egg pasta. Below are the main characteristics and properties of soft wheat: 
 

• Easy to break apart
• Low protein content
• Small granules with rounded edges
• Lower gluten content
• Higher glycemic index
• Absorbs less water
• Highly extendable
• Relatively tough

 

I think it is important to state that, even if soft flour has a lower content in gluten, it does not make it gluten-free nor safe for coeliacs. Please be mindful of this piece of information and for your health and best interests, only buy certified gluten-free flour. This also goes to flours made from naturally gluten-free ingredients such as corn, buckwheat —which in spite of its name, it’s not wheat nor related to it— quinoa, chickpeas, etc. Just because a flour is made from a naturally gluten-free product, doesn’t mean that it’s safe. There are more things that come to play, such as where have they been milled. For example, if the corn was milled in a mill that also mills wheat, that corn flour cannot be consider gluten-free nor safe to coeliacs, as it has been exposed to cross-contamination or cross-contact. 
 
 
Source: Sciencing; goodheart; iitaly; Wikipedia; Grupo Borau

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Overall

Regarding the recipe, I don’t have much to say other that I really enjoyed coming up with this delicious creation and that I hope that you like it as much as I do. I come back to it anytime I’m hungry and need to cook something quickly.
 
In regards the brand review, I have to say that this was a fun exercise for me, as I didn’t know much about the history behind pastas Gallo. For me, it was one of those lifelong brands that has always been there. I really appreciate that they thought about the coeliac community and decided, not only to launch a gluten-free line, but the fact that is made in a dedicated factory. Cross-contamination is an important issue when elaborating gluten-free food and some brands don’t take it seriously. Luckily, Pastas Gallo is not one of them. The fact that they are certified by the Spanish Coeliac Association and that they elaborate the gluten-free pasta in a dedicated factory used only for gluten-free products, speaks volumes.