Cheesy Pasta Bake
This is comfort food at it’s very finest. A creamy, cheesy, hearty vegan pasta bake, packed full of wholesome, nutritious goodness - like a great big warm hug for the body, mind and soul.
It’s ridiculously easy to make, a great cheap staple dish that’s packed to the brim with veggies and high in fibre and plant protein, to make it satisfying and satiating.
Despite being dismissed as by many as a nutrient-dense food because of it’s plain white colour, cauliflower is a real powerhouse when it comes to nutrients! In fact, just 1 cup of cauliflower contains 77% of your recommended daily intake of vitamin C, as well as being incredibly high in antioxidants (especially ones called glucosinolates and isothiocyanates), shown to protect us from lung, colon, breast and prostate cancer.
And who would have thought that the humble cauliflower makes the perfect plant based alternative to use as a base for creamy pasta sauces? Definitely not me! I’ll be the first to admit that I was very skeptical when I first heard of people making ‘cauliflower alfredo’ or ‘cauliflower Mac and cheese’ and the like…and it didn’t turn out great the first time I tried either. Being stuck in a very bad mindset with food at the time, my ‘creamy sauce’ didn’t have any kind of salt or nut butters or anything to lend extra flavour and creaminess…just cauliflower and a bit of garlic powder. Safe to say it tasted more like pasta drowned in cauliflower soup than Mac and cheese…
Fast forward a couple of years and a whole lot of healing my dysfunctional relationship with food, and NOW I know what everyone has raving on about with those cauliflower pasta sauces. Add a bit of salt, a bit of nutritional yeast, a bit of cashew butter, and you have yourself a most heavenly, creamy sauce that really is perfect for pasta dishes that everyone will love, even those skeptics!
I hope you love this simple recipe as much as I do, and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram if you try it out, so I can repost your delicious creations!
Ingredients:
500g cauliflower
1/4 cup cashew butter
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp onion powder
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard
Pinch of cayenne pepper
2 heaped tbsp nutritional yeast
Black pepper and sea salt, to taste
2 medium carrots
150g frozen peas
250g dry pasta of your choice (I used Pulse pasta)
Method:
Steam cauliflower until soft, then blend together with spices, nutritional yeast, dijon mustard, lemon juice and cashew butter until smooth and creamy.
Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions, chop carrot and preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Once cooked and drained, combine pasta with cauliflower sauce, chopped carrot and peas, then spoon into a glass casserole dish and sprinkle with some extra nutritional yeast.
Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until golden on top. Serve!
Notes:
This recipe serves approximately 2 people!
Instead of cashew butter, you could instead use tahini or 1/3 cup cashew nuts.
