With all the talk about going plant based in the ether right now, I thought I would share a recipe I came up with a few months ago that takes a typically dairy based dish and transforms it into a vegan one. I looked through many vegan mac and cheese recipes on the internet and none of them looked all that appealing. Many seemed too one-dimensional with just cauliflower and carrots or too heavy with mostly cashews. Many of the recipes cheated and used copious amounts of nutritional yeast to add a cheesy flavor. I avoid nutritional yeast as it is high in tyramine which can cause headaches and is typically sprayed with synthetic vitamins such as B12 and folic acid to boost the nutrient content. Combining many of the different ingredients found in these online recipes and adding lots of garlic did the trick. This dish is rich and creamy with a smooth texture and mild cheesy flavor.

The first time I experimented with vegan mac and cheese, I was serving a house full of extended family for my daughter’s birthday celebration, so it had to be good. Unsure of how the concoction would turn out, I chose to include three preparations of garlic. My general motto is “the more garlic, the better,” especially in recipes that could fall flat. I figured that even if the dish was lacking, it would still taste like garlic which is redeeming enough to serve at least once. Well it worked! Everyone enjoyed the meal and one of my cousins made it for her own family only a few days later.

Now on to the nutritional benefits of this filling feast. This dish contains almost everything you need for a balanced meal; fat, protein, carbs, fiber and vegetables are all found in abundance. Plus its full of prebiotics from the garlic and onions, beta carotene from the squash, cancer fighting glucosinolates from the cauliflower and fiber from every ingredient! This pairs well with a lovely green salad to fill in the missing green gap.

Ingredients

2 cups soaked raw unsalted cashews

*2-3 cups kabocha squash from a whole roasted squash

1 small head of cauliflower, about 2-3 cups

*1 head roasted garlic

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 medium onion

4 cloves garlic, minced, divided

1 tablespoon organic bouillon paste

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon dried thyme

Water to thin it out

*2 pounds elbow pasta

Directions

Measure out the cashews into a bowl and cover with warm filtered water. Let soak for 1 hour. Place in blender.
Place a whole kabocha squash on a roasting pan or sheet tray and roast in a 400 degree oven for about an hour or until easily pierced with a knife.
When the squash has been in the oven for 45 minutes, place a sheet tray with the cauliflower on it into the oven. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove the squash and cauliflower from the oven.
Scoop out the seeds of the kabocha and discard. With a spoon, scoop out half of the kabocha flesh and put in a blender along with the cauliflower. Save the other half for squash soup or just put some butter on it and enjoy.
Remove the cloves from the roasted head of garlic and throw in the blender.
In a medium sauté pan, heat up the olive oil. Add the onions and 3 cloves garlic and sauté for 5-10 minutes or until translucent. Add this along with 1 additional raw clove of garlic to the blender.
Now that the squash, cashews, 3 preparations of garlic and cauliflower are in the blender, add the bouillon, thyme and lemon juice and blend until smooth. Water it down until it is the consistency of cheese sauce-somewhere in between soupy and stiff and hard to pour.
Cook the pasta according to the directions of the package. Leave slightly al dente as they will continue to cook in the oven.
Mix together the pasta and the sauce in a 9x13 pan.
Bake 10 minutes at 350 to warm through

*Notes

This recipe can be time consuming, but can be thrown together quickly if you plan ahead. I find its easiest to make if I have leftover squash and cauliflower in the fridge to use. Cook the kabocha squash the day before and making the extra half part of dinner works well. As for cauliflower, you could cook extra and have roasted florets the night before too.

Roasting garlic is easy, but takes time so start this step as soon as the squash is in the oven. A simple method is to remove the excess papery peel and cut about 1/4 inch of the hairy end of the garlic to expose the cloves. Rub the head with a little olive oil, put face down in an oven safe container and cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Any type of winter squash will do, but I prefer the meaty, rich flesh of the kabocha for this recipe.

For the pasta, I used Tinkyada brown rice pasta, but organic wheat noodles would work well too.