Sunday, May 19 Pasta with Veggies and Cashew Cream Sauce Rating: 4.5

When Seth was in Vegas back in April, he had a cashew Alfredo with white wine that he loved. We’ve made a similar sauce a few times before and it’s delicious. That recipe has you reduce the wine before adding the cashew cream. I used the basic recipe for that, but reduced the amount of black pepper that’s in it. Also, now that we have our beloved Vitamix, there’s no need to strain the solids out after blending (as directed in the recipe) since there aren’t any. Which, actually now that I’ve made this sauce in it, I realize I need to up the amount of water or use fewer nuts because my cream was really thick. Thankfully, the sauce Seth had used a fair amount of wine, added at the end of cooking, so it thinned the sauce a bit. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty darn good. In case you missed the post in April, my mom got me a really cool attachment for my KitchenAid (which she also got for me about 15 years ago – thanks mom!) that makes fresh pasta. All of the recipes for the dough that come with it call for eggs, so I use the recipe in The Artful Vegan. (It’s one of the Millennium Restaurant food porn cookbooks – there are a total of 3 recipes I use with any regularity, the rest are just way too involved.  Which is why you pay Millennium to cook them for you if you happen to be in SF.) Anyway, it’s a really simple & basic recipe that makes a lot of pasta. 

The first time we made pasta with the new toy, we made the fusilli shape – some of the pieces came out looking really pretty, but not all of them. I felt kinda disappointed in my pasta making skills, but it tasted so good (Seth said it was the best pasta he’d ever had) that I quickly forgot about that. Plus, even the photo on the box isn’t all that corkscrew-y shaped, so clearly it’s not just me. This time, we went with rigatoni. This shape was much easier to work with and they all came out nice and pretty. Yay! Pretty pasta! I’ve fallen more than a little bit in love with pasta and veggies, so we added a bunch of broccoli, spinach and bell pepper to the pasta, sauce and wine and mixed it all up. We also had one of Seth’s famous salads (with red romaine lettuce from our first CSA box!) and his 8^th Deadly Sin Garlic Bread. The salad dressing was nice and healthy though – Balsamic Vinaigrette from Appetite for Reduction. It also uses cashews and comes out amazingly smooth in the Vitamix. Even my old cheapo blender did a good job – better than my food processor did, so give that a try if you have the recipe and it’s too grainy. Oh, and it’s OK to swap red onion for shallots in it in a pinch – I did and it only changes the flavor a wee little bit.