Butternut Mac + Cheese

Hey everyone! To add to my soul food series, I wanted to finish the dishes off with some vegan mac and cheese! I keep seeing mac and cheese recipes online but I've not seen any that are this simple and this tasty, so I'm combining butternut squash with the vegan cheeses you can get and whipping up a wonder. 

Ingredients

• Butternut Squash

• Macaroni

• Vegan Cheese (With Onion)

• Vegan Parmesan

• Sage

• Mustard Powder

• Smoked Paprika

• White flour

• Vegan Butter

• Vegan Milk (Or water)

• Prepared Golden Breadcrumbs

So start by chopping up the squash, these are notoriously hard to slice so I tend to cut the length up into four sections, leaving all the seeds in the base. Then cut the base left over in half, remove the skin and remove the seeds & you should have an easier prep time. 

I then started to boil the squash in water for about twenty minutes, this squash is really annoying as it takes longer than you'd think to break down the fibrous flesh. It's yummy though as it has a melon like scent and makes the end dish more creamy.

In a separate pan, I melted some butter. I put about two tbsp worth and melted. I then added the same amount of white flour and combined over a mid heat til it grabbed. This is the roux I've done several times in my recipes so this one is as basic as you can get. I then added a cup of almond milk and seasoning. Then I added about the same again, cooking until it thickens.

I then began to add about half a cube of vegan cheese, this is flavoured with onions. I then mixed the vegan parmesan last until it starts to break down. Do not leave it to burn, keep it stirring. Mash the squash when everything has broken down enough to resemble a clean, thickems sauce, and combine the two. Then add two tsp of mustard, I added 1 of nutritional yeast. 

Cooking out the macaroni, this is simple macaroni, it was really annoying me trying to photograph this as the steam coming from the pan kept obscuring the water and it looked like dirty dish washer and my OCD was not the one with this honey! But I kept it cooking out for ten minutes, drained and combined.

I filled a large dish with the mixture, added some smoked paprika and parmesan slices to the top, I also added a touch of sage leaves from my garden and cooked out for twenty minutes. You could probably cook out for about 30 but keep an eye on it as you don't want the creaminess to evaporate and you end up loosing that texture the squash gives. I also added breadcrumbs before I popped into the oven and it gave a crunchy toast texture that brought it completely together!

So here we are! Serve to your fam or the baron when he's not on on diet & enjoy.

Let me know if you try these out at home and how you think they taste!