Spaghetti Yeti

Add some pizazz to any pasta dish: use tofu and spaghetti to make this (vegetarian*) spaghetti yeti!

Graaargh!

Suitable occasions for making it:

• Halloween
• Pastafarian Holiday (a.k.a. Pastover or Ramendan)
• Any meal for fussy kids who wouldn't normally eat pasta
• An extremely formal dinner party full of guests who take themselves too seriously

*Also vegan, if you use egg-free pasta.

To make the spaghetti yeti, the only ingredients you'll need are:

• A brick of super firm tofu
• Spaghetti
• Water

You'll probably also want to serve it with some sort of sauce, but I'll leave that up to you. The spaghetti yeti is abominably bland, so goes well in any pasta dish,

Your yeti is going to be made by skewering a tofu body with dozens of strands of raw spaghetti, then boiling the whole lot together.

The first step is to carve your yeti's body. Try to carve it all out of a single brick of tofu, being careful not to make it too thin and flimsy at any point. There's no need for fine detail here; just go for the main features. Be sure to give it a wide, sturdy base so that it can stand up. That is to say, give it bigfeet.

As you can see, nearly all the structure of my yeti's body was concealed by its hair later on. I also decided that my yeti was too short, so added a separate head.

Carefully push a strand of raw spaghetti all the way through your yeti, then break it off at the desired hair length.

Repeat in varying directions and lengths until the tofu body is riddled with spaghetti spikes. At this point it should look more like a sea urchin than a yeti.

Find a pot big enough to contain your startled-looking raw yeti. Be careful not to break any of the brittle spaghetti while you're handling your monster.

Boil your yeti until the spaghetti and the tofu are both cooked through. Try to do this at a gentle simmer, as a hard boil will send your yeti tumbling dangerously. I know that yetis are rugged enough to survive most avalanches, but they're naturally found in cold climates; at higher temperatures they become much more fragile.

If your yeti's hair is sticking out of the water, you may need to cover it with an upturned pot so that the steam will cook the dry spaghetti enough for it to turn limp and flop into the water.

Once your yeti is cooked, carefully remove it from the water and drain it in a sieve.

You may decided that you want to make and cook the head separately. This was my yeti's uncooked head, made from leftover pieces of its tofu body.

Use a pair of scissors to give your yeti a haircut, if necessary. How shaggy you choose to leave your yeti will depend upon how formal an event it will be attending.

Try to choose appropriately sized scissors that won't shear your yeti in half.

Give your yeti a final going-over before you serve it up. I just added a pair of peppercorns as eyes, but I'm sure you'll be able to think of other ways to customise your own creation.

Pour pasta sauce, soup or whatever else you'd normally serve with spaghetti around your yeti and serve it up to some unsuspecting diners.

Be sure to upload pictures of your own spaghetti yetis to the comments!