Simply Pasta is a monthly recipe column in which Best of Vegan contributor Teri-Ann Carty delves into her 20-year experience in fine dining and shares her best practices and recipes for making amazing pasta. In the new installment of Simply Pasta, she shares her recipe for a Vegan Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese – the autumn essence in a dish.
Now that October is here and the sun is sinking quicker I can finally lean into all things fall. October is the month of Thanksgiving, cozy sweaters, floppy hats, and pumpkin spice everything.
The mister and I have been making apple picking a yearly endeavor. We head an hour out of Toronto with the rest of the city to pick apples, squash, and pumpkins, and since we missed last year (ahem, covid) I made sure this year we made it a priority.
Picking apples is fun, but I think the real reason I like to go is to marvel at the massive squash patch. I feel like one of the Peanuts characters in Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving. The field is literally covered in big bright orange pumpkins and formidable butternut squashes. I already knew what I was going to create for this month’s Simply Pasta and just needed the perfect squash to get the job done.
Butternut squash is perfect for this dish but I have used sweet potato, pumpkin, and cauliflower to make the cheese sauce. The squash is best roasted before transforming it into the sauce but if you’re pressed for time, don’t worry, you could boil it too. The squash also helps with the color of the sauce mimicking the color of cheddar.
This dish is the very essence of Autumn. It would be a perfect accompaniment to any festive table or an easy midweek main.
ENJOY!
Ingredients
- 3 cups roasted cubed butternut squash - divided
- ½ yellow onion - diced
- 2 cloves garlic - minced
- ½ tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tsp curry powder
- ½ cup raw cashews - soaked overnight
- Pinch salt and cracked pepper
- 1 heaping tsp Dijon mustard
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 cup cashew milk
- 1-1 ½ cup pasta water
- 1 bag farfalle noodle
- 10 sage leaves
Instructions
- Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to the package instructions.
- Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté garlic and onion. Remove from heat.
- In a high speed blender place cooked garlic, onion, 2 cups roasted squash, turmeric, curry powder, nutritional yeast, cashews, Dijon, cashew milk, salt and pepper. Blend until smooth.
- Start adding in hot pasta water until the sauce reaches desired consistency. Place cooked pasta back into the pot and pour sauce over pasta.
- Add 1 cup roasted butternut squash. Gently toss to combine. If the sauce is too thick, add more hot pasta water.
- In a small pan, heat oil over medium heat, fry sage for 1-2 minutes, flip, and fry for 30 more seconds. Place a paper towel to soak up excess oil.
- Season with chilli flakes, Maldon salt, cracked pepper and fried sage.
Notes
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Recipe, text, and photography by Teri-Ann Carty.
