Fast, Cheap and Good: Vegan Cauliflower Cheese

Friday 29 June 2018

Vegan Cauliflower Cheese

During the winter you just have to have those warming, nourishing comfort foods that keeps your soul together. I wanted to re-create my comfort favourite cauliflower cheese; but how to make the all important cheese sauce when you are vegan - well Isa Chandra Moskowitz and her great book Isa Does It really helps. What I do is take her recipes for Sunflower Mac and Mac and Cheese and smooch them together to make my cashew nut cheese sauce.

Serves 3-4

1 whole cauliflower chopped into florets

3/4 cup of drained cashews, soaked for at least 2 hours

1/2 cup of roughly chopped carrots

1 small onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

3 cups of vegetable stock

1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes

2 tbsp of cornstarch

2 tbsp of tomato paste

Oil to fry (I use olive oil but you can use rapeseed oil or vegetable oil)

Seasoning

1. Pre-heat your oven to around 275C.

2. Boil your cauliflower until just cooked... if you can easily slide a knife through a floret then it is done.

3. In the meantime, preheat a large saucepan over a medium heat and add the oil.

4. Saute the onions and carrots for about 10 minutes and then add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Remove from the heat.

5. Place this onion and carrot mixture in the blender or food processor. Add the vegetable stock, cornstarch, nutritional yeast, tomato paste, cashew nuts and seasoning. Blend until very smooth.

6. Transfer back to the saucepan and cook on a medium heat stirring, until thickened. This should take about 15 to 20 minutes. Season to taste.

7. Drain the cauliflower and place in a over-proof dish. Pour the cashew nut cheese sauce over the cauliflower.

8. Place in the pre-heated oven and just warm through.

9. Serve with a baked potato and enjoy.