Sunday dinner. Pot roast. Steak. Oven-roasted chicken. Slow-cooked beef stew. Wait, no, there are plenty of better things to have for dinner. It is true that a Sunday dinner is the perfect time for something hearty and delicious, for putting some extra love into your meal. But rather than being about a big piece of meat, I feel Sunday dinners are about cozying up together with some simply delicious food. This time of year makes me want to huddle up inside with homey, filling dishes. So therefore I hereby present you with what I think would make a great, cozy Sunday dinner. Mac and cheese, vegan-style!
You can probably find loads of similar recipes if you just spend some time googling around the internet. But this is my version, and I thing it turned out pretty yummy. The creaminess of the sauce comes from silken tofu (which also gives you some high-quality protein!), the heartiness and color from a winter squash and the amazing cheesiness from nutritional yeast. You can either bake you mac and cheese (or without cheese I should say) or have it creamy, right off the stovetop. This determines the amount of water you add. If you want to you could add some vegetables to the mix, such as cauliflower or kale. If you do, I'd recommend cooking or sautéing them ever so slightly before so they're nice and tender.
When using a beautiful winter squash I always have hard time wasting the seeds inside since I know that if I only put in the effort to pick them out they can be roasted into delicious snacks. This time I let tamari sauce and smoked paprika work their magic on the seeds turning them into small crunchy "bacon" pieces to sprinkle over my macaroni. Pure magic. This is of course optional, but pretty worth it.
It's important that you use silken tofu and not firm for this recipe, since this is was makes the sauce nice and creamy. I recommend organic varieties when it comes to soy products, I'll tell you why in a later post
Serves about 2-3, depending on how hungry you are
250 g peeled winter squash, cut into cubes
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 spring of rosemary, stalk removed
Oil
200 g silken tofu
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tbsp vinegar
½ tsp chili flakes
Some grated nutmeg
2-3 dl pasta water (depending on if you're baking it of not
300 g pasta
1 dl good-quality bread crumbs (if you're baking it)
For the seeds:
Salt
Smoked paprika
Tamari sauce
Turn the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Put the squash pieces, the garlic and rosemary in an oven-proof dish. If you're baking your mac and cheese, it saves dishes to use a dish that you can later put the pasta in. Drizzle with olive oil and pop in the oven to roast until tender, about 30 minutes.
If you're roasting your seeds this is the time to get that started. Carefully pick out the seeds and place in a bowl of water to clean them off. Place them on a baking sheet, drizzle with oil and a bit of tamari sauce and sprinkle with salt and smoked paprika. Put them in the oven together with the squash and roast until they're dry and start popping.
Start the water for the pasta. Once it is boiling, cook the pasta until it's slightly harder than tender. Drain the pot, but reserve some of the pasta water for the sauce. Drizzle with oil to prevent the pasta from sticking together.
The squash should be tender by now, so take it out and put in a blender together with the tofu, nutritional yeast, salt, mustard, vinegar, spices and about 1 dl of the reserved water. Blend until smooth. Add the rest of the water, 1 dl if you're cooking it on the stove, 2 if you're baking it. Mix the sauce with the pasta in the pot.
To make it on the stove: cook the pasta in the sauce for a bit until the pasta is tender and it's all creamy and delicious. Serve with some nutritional yeast and the seeds sprinkled on top.
To make it in the oven: pour the pasta and sauce back in the oven-proof dish. Sprinkle with the bread crumbs, some nutritional yeast and black pepper. Return to the oven, lower the heat to 150 degrees and bake for 20-25 minutes. Serve with seeds on top.
No comments:
Post a Comment