Chickpea Pasta with Almonds

This recipe is from Real Simple. It calls for Parmesan, but you can leave that out.

I would get raw slivered almonds instead of roasted, and toast them myself in a dry skillet until they're fragrant and start to brown. That would help make up for the missing flavor of the cheese.

Although toasted almonds don't taste anything like Parmesan, they make a nice topping for any pasta.

I think vegan recipes are better if I just let them be what they are. Fake meat, fake cheese, fake alfredo sauce, fake tuna salad--all those things are fine in their way (though if you get them pre-made they're always expensive--which, I think, is why many people worry it's expensive to be vegan). But of course they don't taste like the originals, and you'll always come away thinking the non-vegan versions are better--because that's what the food is supposed to to taste like. Cheese is supposed to taste like cheese, not like fake cheese!

But if I enjoy things for what they are, and accept that it's fine for them to be different, I'm free to notice whether they're actually good. So toasted almonds are not in any way fake Parmesan; they're toasted almonds. And they're delicious.

Chickpea Pasta with Almonds