Meatless “Meat” Sauce with Chickpeas and Mushrooms

I got this recipe from Cook's Illustrated.  It looked worth a try.  I was going to use my Trader Joe's brown rice quinoa fusilli pasta for this.  I started dinner really late this evening as I was watching the "Survivor" finale on t.v., and my son worked late so wasn't home anyway...The finale was 3 hours long, so I did my mise en place during commercials.  It worked well actually.  I had everything ready to go when I was ready to cook.

I followed all the directions above exactly except I tore the basil and used more than the recipe called for.  Oh, and I used more red pepper flakes, about a teaspoon.  It was hard to take any pictures once I started cooking because of all the steam in the pot while making the sauce.  The mushrooms took me over 10 minutes though to cook to what the recipe said, probably almost 15 minutes.

When I added the onion (a Vidalia!), that took about another 10 minutes.  I started the pasta water at this time.

It was at this time I realized I had NO TOMATO PASTE in the house!  WHAT?  I always have it, but none to be found in the cupboards, fridge or freezer.  So I had to move on and just go on with the rest of the recipe, skipping that step.

When the pasta was done, I poured it into the sauce and mixed it all together.

I added more fresh torn basil.  It really did taste like "meat" sauce.  I did keep thinking about the missing tomato paste though but I guess that's better than missing the meat.  😊

All that being said, with some grated cheese (Romano), it was a very good dish.  Very tasty.  Glad I made it and it goes into my rotation of regular dishes. (P.S. I know my pictures aren't very good tonight - I wasn't in the mood...AND, I did find my tomato paste after - it was in the freezer, measured out in nice little quarter cup, cups - UGH!)