Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken, Asparagus and Cherry Tomatoes

Before you ask if that sauce really tasted like Alfredo sauce, let me tell you, it did not.  I don't know why I always expect these substitutions to taste like the real thing.  It's always a tinsy bit of a let down.  But this sauce wasn't all that bad.  

I had to add about 1/2 cup of soy cream cheese to the recipe to get it closer to my idea of alfredo.  And even after that it didn't really taste the same.  The website says to heat the sauce (because it is made in a blender with cold ingredients) with the noodles in the pan before eating, which may have been the secret.  But I could tell that Preston didn't really want to eat it, so I just popped my plate in the microwave for 45 seconds.  I definitely noticed a difference in the consistency of the sauce after it was heated, and once it was on the noodles and on my plate, it tasted more and more cheesy.  Preston tried it then and decided he liked it so added some to his plate as well.

Another thing about these substations that I seem to forget is that you can't drench your plate in sauce.  If you do, it becomes more obvious that what you are eating is not the real thing.  I remember when I first noticed this about soy cream cheese and margarine.  I used to load cream cheese and butter on toast and bagels, but the soy versions just do not have the same creaminess or taste to them.  When you load things up, you can tell that it's fake.  You have to use small amounts,  a thin layer of cream cheese on the bagel, just enough sauce to coat the noodles, so that the focus of your plate is not the cheese substitute.  It is merely an accent.  Tonight, on my plate, the alfredo sauce was an accent to the chicken, tomatoes and asparagus.  And it was good.  But when I went back and got a few more noodles with a little too much sauce, that is when it hit me again.  Never make the substitute the focus of the plate.

The Alfredo sauce is a VeganYumYum recipe; you can find it here.  Preston cooked the chicken breasts on the grill a few nights ago when he made burgers.  I just put some olive oil and shallots in the pan, cooked the asparagus until it was a bright green (probably should have cooked it a little longer, or cut it in half, because the bottoms were stringy).  Then I added cherry tomatoes, artichoke hearts, roasted red pepper and 2 sliced chicken breasts to the pan and heated until warm.  Towards the end I splashed in some sherry cooking wine for moisture.  All in all, this meal took about twenty minutes to put together.

Enjoy!