Toss your summer zucchini with a gingery avocado sauce, mango, edamame, and toasted almonds to make this light 30-minute dinner. Vegan and gluten free!
I was on a raw (well raw-ish) kick last week. Lately, I’ve been trying to eat lighter, and a bit healthier… less heavy starches, that sort of thing. I’ve been feeling really low-energy, so I’m trying to eat more veggie-focused meals and to incorporate healing foods like miso, hemp seed, and ginger.
I love zucchini noodles because they really trick the senses and make you feel like you’re eating more than a bowl full of raw vegetables. Don’t get me wrong – they’re not pasta, but they have a nice tender bite that I find to be reminiscent of an al dente noodle.
Because they’re on the lighter side, I prefer them with a with a really saucy sauce. They’d be great with a chunky tomato sauce or a light cream sauce, but I went for this cooling avocado miso sauce. I added ginger, cumin, and cayenne to add a flavor punch.
I paired all this healthy-ness with a nice chilled glass of rose.
Zucchini Noodles & Avocado-Miso Sauce
- 1 avocado
- ¼ cup hemp seeds
- 1 lime, zest and juice
- 1 small zucchini (about ½ cup or so)
- ½ tablespoon miso, more to taste
- 1 scallion, white and green parts, chopped
- 1 tablespoon minced ginger
- ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
- ¼ teaspoon ground cayenne
- 2 medium zucchinis, spiralized or peeled into long strips*
- ½ cup chopped mango
- ½ cup edamame, shelled and blanched
- ¼ cup toasted sliced almonds
- Lime wedges, to serve
- Sea salt
- Make the avocado miso sauce: In a blender, combine the avocado, hemp seeds, lime zest and juice, zucchini, miso, scallion, ginger, cumin, and cayenne and blend until smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings.
- Toss the zucchini noodles with as much or little sauce as you like. Taste and adjust seasonings (the sauce will become more diluted as you toss it with the noodles, so you’ll likely have to add some salt and pepper).
- Top the noodles with the mango, edamame, and almonds, and serve immediately with lime wedges and extra sauce on the side.
- This recipe made a good amount of extra sauce (I also had a pretty large avocado), and because avocados brown quickly, it only lasted an extra day in the fridge. I used my leftover sauce on a kale salad the following afternoon.
Now that’s something I can have, looks great, thank you!
Is there something one can substitute for avocado? As much as I’d like to eat it, I’m terribly allergic and this recipe sounds wonderful.
Hi Heidi, this sauce is really all about the avocado, maybe try this recipe for zucchini noodles instead: http://www.loveandlemons.com/2013/07/15/zucchini-coconut-noodles/
Yum! this looks so good! I’d never would’ve guessed those were not real noodles! Brilliant idea, I’m going to link this on my blog 🙂
looks soooo delicious 🙂
yum
hugs
Betty Bake
I am going to have to add yet another gadget to my Christmas Wish List. Your zucchini noodles are beautiful!!
Alright. You convinced me. I bought the friggin’ spiral vegetable slicer.
ha! I feel like this post (& comments) made me some sort of salesperson – i hope you find that you like it and won’t be mad at me when you have to store one more gadget 🙂
I love how well your noodles came out! I have the Joyce Chen spiralizer, and it worked with pretty poor results. It can really only make fetttuccini type noodles well. Got some good ideas here for a salad dressing for my kale!
aw, that’s too bad – this one that I have seems to work pretty well, I’ve only used twice, with good results both times.
This is exactly the kind of food that I’m craving at the moment, adore it.
Wonderful idea. I must buy a zucchini noodle maker. I have an abundance of zucchini right now and am surprisingly running out of ideas of what to make with it. Zucchini noodles sounds wonderful – especially when paired with such a delicious sounding sauce. Yum!
I stinkin’ love raw squash! I worked at a raw restaurant for a couple of months last summer and didn’t enjoy the experience, so I’m kind of “over” complicated raw food in general… this is a different story. Yum.
This is my first visit to your blog and it is absolutely gorgeous. Your photos are beautiful and I love all of the healthy food here!
Thanks Tiffany! welcome 🙂
Delicious, thankyou!
looks great! i love anything with miso and avocado. and of course, zucchini seem to be all over the place these days!
Do you put the avocado in the dressing or just tossed in with the noodles? I may be blind, but I didn’t see it in either section…
Maybe I typed it in a confusing way — this is the recipe: http://www.pure2raw.com/2011/08/avocado-miso-dressing/
(It’s not mine, so I linked it instead of re-typing it) and then I just added the other things that I listed (ginger, cumin, etc).
Great! Thanks for confirming. Can’t wait to make this! It looks delish!
This is so fun! I have been wanting to get a spiral slicer for recipes like this, but I just have too many kitchen gadgets already! I’ll have to stick with the julienne slicer.
I know the feeling I can get carried away with gadgets 🙂
I’m also trying to eat always healthier food and probably stop meat, this recipe seems delicious, I’ll be glad to try it !
I think that avocado sauce would be delicious slathered on a bike tire even. Yum. Probably better on zucchini noodles though 🙂
omg THANK YOU for posting a link to you noodle devices! i’ve been looking high & low for a good way to make veggie noodles & this is beyond perfect. thanks! 🙂
you’re welcome, I’m glad! Yes, both work out pretty well, but I do love that spiraler.
I reckon you eat really healthily already! But I do agree this noodle dish is particularly, extraordinarily healthy. 😉
Your noodles look so perfect! Have you already done a post explaining how you get them to look so nice? 🙂
oh thanks for pointing that out – I forgot to mention the actual noodle-making! I just added a little paragraph with some links in the instructions. I have a zucchini noodle maker and it makes pretty noodles every time – it’s foolproof.