Vegan Mac and Cheese

It's the hit of the party!

This recipe came from the cookbook Vegan Home Cooking. The authors blog is linked in the sidebar, the vegan guneia pig. I altered it to my taste, but I'll email you all the original recipe if you like.

1 lb. Pasta (ronzini smart taste enriched noodles)

3 cups water

4 new potatoes, peeled

1 medium carrot, or 5 baby carrots

1 leek

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/3 cup cashews

1/3 cup macademia nuts

Juice from 2 lemons, or 2 1/2 - 3 tbsp lemon juice

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp. sea salt

1/4 tsp dry mustard

1/4 tsp cayanne pepper

1/2 tsp white pepper

Bread crumbs, panko

Chop potatoes, carrot and leek, add to pan with 3 cups water. Bring to boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer until tender (carrots can be cut with spatula). Meanwhile, cook noodles according to directions in seperate pot. Meanwhile, add to blender oil, nuts, garlic, lemon juice, pepper, cayanne, dry mustard. Blend until smooth (if your blender is not a super awesome blender, the cookbook says to use 2/3 cup cashews and oimt the mac nuts). Add vegetables and cooking water to blender and blend until smooth. Add noodles and cheese sauce to baking dish, cover with breadcrumbs, bake for 30 minutes at 350 or until cheese is bubbly and absorbs into breadcrumbs.

Notes from my many attempts:

- this sauce may have killed my regular blender after the third time I made it, I had to buy a new super awesome one. So you have been warned.

- put leftovers in serving size dishes. If you leave in one big dish, sauce will go to the sides and the middle part of dish will be bland.

- cook noodles al dente before adding to dish

- DO NOT use sweet potatoes.  The original recipe calls for 2 regular potatoes, so that could be a substitute, but new potatoes have been in my best results.

- original recipe calls for only 2.5 cups water.  I use more because I cook the veggies for a long time, until I can cut the carrots with a spatula, so it loses more water.  You could try 2.5 cups for a thicker sauce maybe.

- to reheat in individual serving size containers, heat for 2.5 minutes, the sauce will be nice and gooey.

- I just found out that this mac and cheese is good for at least a week in the fridge!

There you go! This is from memory... So sorry if I forgot anything!

- Please excuse my typos while I post from my iphone, using BlogPress of course.