Macaroni and “cheese” Bonfire Style.

This recipe was created pretty much serendipitously.

On Friday evening I put some cashews to soak as I was going to make cashew milk on Saturday. Turns out Saturday had other plans for me and I completely forgot about the cashews until Sunday…dinnertime.

Sunday I was busy meal prepping for the week, as I know how much time and stress it will save me to have a few staples ready. You know the usual suspects: quinoa batch, sweet potatoes batch, greens washed and chopped, mushrooms diced, and I was also making a big batch of vegetable soup.

As I was cooking the broccoli, spinach and onions as the base of my soup, I kept on thinking I want to do something else with this…. And then I saw the cashews…. And then I thought? What about if I try to make a green cashew sauce? I got really excited. Little-girl-with-a-new –toy type of excited.

I quickly collected some of the broccoli, spinach and onion mix and put them in my blender. Then I added the cashews. Then I said, well lets add nutritional yeast, and the other ingredients and see what happens…

I blended the whole thing for about 40 seconds until a soft, velvety texture started to appear. I wanted to taste this so badly. When I stopped the blender I grabbed a spoon and without permission I just went for it. And it tasted really good. Like a “cheesy” cashew sauce, but with extra flavour. Really comforting and appealing to the eye, too.

I knew I needed pasta for this sauce. But not just any pasta. It had to be macaroni. Ten minutes later my quinoa macaroni was ready and I poured the sauce into it. I stirred the two ingredients together slowly, to give them time to know each other, to exchange phone numbers, but they skipped all of that and went straight to macaroni’s place. Things happened there….

Then as a garnish, and since I have cherry tomatoes coming out of my ears, I added the roasted cherry tomatoes I had already baked – for winter purposes- and topped the dish with these. It goes without saying that this was a threesome I will never forget. And I will repeat again. Very, very soon.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups of uncooked spinach. (This should yield one cup of cooked spinach)
• 1 cup of cooked broccoli (I steamed mine)
• ½ white onion
• 1 cup soaked cashews (minimum 4 hrs.)
• 2 tsp. Dijon Mustard
• 2 tsp. Apple cider vinegar
• 3 tbsp. Nutritional Yeast
• 1 tbsp. Basil Pesto
• Salt to taste.

Method:

• Sauté onion until clear. Add spinach until wilted.
• Add sea salt to taste.
• Add pesto.
• Add cooked broccoli and stir together. Simmer for about 3 minutes.
• Put mixture in a blender with the remaining ingredients and blend on high for about 40 seconds or until you have a very soft, clump-free sauce.
• Add sauce to cooked macaroni, or pasta of your choice.
• Garnish with baked cherry tomatoes or sautéed mushrooms. Want to elevate this dish, garnish with butter-sautéed Oyster mushrooms.

Enjoy!!