The beauty about vongole are the shells in the pasta, but that’s really a no go if you’re vegan. So you can see this recipe as a spaghetti alle vongole without the shells, deshelled vongole in other words. To mimic these deshelled vongole I used king oyster mushrooms cut into half moons. They are bit chewier than vongole but still delicious as I find this mushroom to have a slight fishy taste.
If you’re Italian, don’t come at me: “these are not vongole”. Yes I know, my dad will not approve either but in this case see of this recipe as a simple aglio e olio with mushrooms. 😉