Take Heart!
From Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)
Fat-Free Vegan ‘Cheese’ Sauce - Gluten-Free
OneGreenPlanet.org
Serves: 2 ˝ cups
Ingredients:
1 small zucchini, peeled and sliced (you will need about 1 cup sliced
zucchini)
5 small yukon gold potatoes (this type of potato is necessary)
1 cup water
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
3/4 teaspoon smoked paprika or regular if you don’t like smoked
2 teaspoons liquid aminos (or low-sodium soy sauce)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, or more to taste
Preparation:
- First prepare the zucchini by preheating an oven to 415 degrees and
line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Peel all the green skin off the
zucchini and slice into 1/4 inch slices and salt and pepper well. It’s
imperative to peel the zucchini, otherwise your sauce will be an ugly
green. Bake for about 15 minutes until tender.
- Meanwhile, cook your potatoes your preferred method. Since I wanted
a fast dinner, I just cooked them in the microwave for about 5 minutes
until very soft. However, feel free to cook them whatever way you like.
I left the skins on since I have a Vitamix, but if you are concerned
about getting the sauce smooth, peel them before cooking.
- After the potatoes are cooked, mash them with a fork and measure out
1 cup. If you followed the correct weight measurement, you should get
just about 1 lightly filled cup of mashed potatoes. If your potatoes are
large, you may need less. It’s important to measure the mashed potatoes
for accurate results. Add them to your high speed blender or a food
processor.
- Once the zucchini is done, add it along with all of the remaining
ingredients to your blender and blend until smooth. You will need to
stop and scrape a couple of times during. Do not be too eager to add
extra water until you’ve really blended it up a couple of minutes on
high to get it completely smooth. It will seem to thick at first, but it
will start to turn very smooth from all the water from the zucchini. If
necessary, add just a tiny amount of water just to blend it.
- Taste and add any extra lemon juice and/or salt/spices if necessary.
If you are using worcestershire sauce instead of soy sauce, you will
likely need to add more the salt. The soy sauce works amazing in this,
so only sub if you are allergic to soy. Add any desired toppings such as
red pepper flakes, chopped tomatoes, sliced jalapenos. I like a kick of
heat to my cheese so I added red pepper flakes but will totally blend up
some jalapenos next time in the sauce.
- To make it as a mac ‘n’ cheese, just simply boil your pasta and pour
as much (a lot!) cheese sauce over the pasta. You can either warm the
cheese by running it awhile in the blender or gently warming over the
stove. It gives such an incredible cheesy, thick and stick-to-pasta
result. It really reminded me of mac ‘n’ cheese growing up.
Considering this is totally fat-free and good for you, I’d say that’s
huge!