Vegan Mac-No-Cheese | gf 

Stockholm has been grey for days now and since yesterday, the rain has been pouring down. I’m drinking a lot of tea and I try to add a lot of color to my meals to compensate for the grey weather. On rainy days like this, the darkness never really goes away. We only have a few hours of sunshine in Sweden this time of the year, and on rainy days you have to create your own sunshine, so to speak. I think that eating a lot of colorful foods really helps overcoming this darkness and during the first four days of the new year I’ve found myself in the kitchen a lot.

I think I’ve already created and photographed about eight recipes. It might have something to do with my new camera lens that Kalle gave me for Christmas. It’s a Nikon 35 mm F/1.8 G AF-S DX for those of you asking and I’m so happy with it. It’s perfect for food photography and the quality of the photos is amazing. So, this new toy could have something to do with this boost of inspiration that I got a few days ago.

Anyways, one of the dishes I’ve (finally) created is a vegan recipe for Mac-and-cheese, or Mac-no-cheese, as I prefer to call it. It has been on my to-do list for quite a long time, but I haven’t made it until now, and that’s a shame! It turned out to be SO good! And it’s so easy to make, you just have to soak the cashews for a few hours, but that’s it. I think this will be one of our favorite everyday dishes this year. I used chickpea pasta in order to increase the protein content of the dish, but you can, of course, use traditional pasta as well.

Mac-No-Cheese

serves 4 

320 g chickpea pasta
2 1/2 dl | 1 cup raw cashews
1 dl | 100 ml plant cream of your choice (I used oat cream)
1 dl | 100 ml water
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 small garlic clove, minced
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp paprika powder
1/4 tsp sea salt
Pinch of turmeric
Pinch of cayenne pepper or black pepper
100 g fresh green kale
Black pepper to taste

Directions

1. Soak the cashews in water for 4-6 hours, or overnight.

2. Remove the water and add the cashews to a blender. Mix until smooth.

3. Add plant cream, water, lemon juice, garlic, nutritional yeast and spices and mix until well combined. If you think the sauce is too thick, you can add a couple of tablespoons of water and blend again.

4. Cook the pasta according to the directions on the package.

5. Steam the kale and add black pepper to taste.

6. Drain the pasta and put it back in the saucepan.

7. Stir in the cashew sauce and make sure everything combines.

8. Serve with the green kale and enjoy!