VeganMoFo 2018 – Macaroni and Potato cheese

Have vegans gone too far? Cheese made from potatoes? It’s clearly mayhem over here you know.

Last night our son pulled a package of twirly pasta out of the cupboard and asked us to make something with it – so we did. I’ve been thinking about this cheesy sauce for a while so while we were talking about dinner ideas, I sent over this recipe from Veggie on a Penny to our family slack channel and voila, we had dinner in progress. (made by JC)

It’s pretty incredible what textures are possible with the help of the very humble potato, and the texture you don’t necessarily want in a soup, lends itself quite well to something like a cheese analogue. I wouldn’t say this is cheesy in a share with all the non-vegans and new-vegans you know immediately, but it’s a nutritional yeast based cheese, and our toddler was very enthusiastic about the flavour (and I really liked it too.)

It is easy to just throw the potatoes and carrots in a pressure cooker, if you have one, it will just take a bit more time, but it will still turn out great. You could also try this variation with sweet potatoes and cashews from Dr Pamela Fergusson, an RD that used to live in Toronto.

The one thing I would like to experiment with with this recipe in the future is adding some pureed white beans to the sauce to increase the protein and nutrients, ideally without changing the flavour, but that will have to happen some other day.