food to glow

Quick and easy Creamy Roasted Cauliflower Alfredo is rich, creamy and utterly delicious. Naturally vegan with whole food ingredients, this fiber-rich sauce and pasta recipe is perfect for a healthy weekday family meal.

The quickest weekday meals often centre around pasta. And why wouldn’t they? Pasta is hugely versatile, coming in so many types – wheat, bean, yam, etc – and so many shapes. It is easy to cook and goes with nearly everything we might eat at dinner, too. From the simplicity of a perfect cacio e pepe to pillowy homemade spinach and ricotta tortelli, pasta is always a winner. And now that gluten-free pastas are mainstream, anyone can enjoy it. Almost any non-meat recipe involving pasta can be adapted to special diets and individual tastes.Take Fettuccine Alfredo. At its most basic it is a ridiculously rich and creamy sauce made of double (heavy) cream, finely grated Parmesan cheese, butter and garlic. It is a true weekday pasta dish that many of us enjoy, with perhaps modification to sub non-vegetarian Parmesan cheese for one not made with animal rennet.

I personally find vegetarian hard cheeses universally awful and would rather have something else. Hence my quest to not only lighten up a popular family recipe but make it suitable for vegans and those, like me, who prefer to mostly eat nutritious vegan food.

Today’s recipe is an infinitely healthier riff on the traditional recipe, but in no way does it feel like a poor substitute. Creamy? Yep. Savoury? Uh huh. Garlicky? You betcha. Delicious? Hells yeah!

How to make and use the Alfredo sauce

Once made the sauce can be used not only on your pasta of choice, it can be mixed through any grains, or tossed with roasted, spiralized or steamed vegetables. It can even be used as a dip and sandwich spread. Personally I like just licking it straight off the spoon! I’ve also stir-fried some greens and mushrooms for breakfast and run a few tablespoons of Alfredo sauce through it – amazing!

The Alfredo sauce is easy and straightforward to make, a combination of roasting – the cauliflower, seeds and garlic – and blending. The cauliflower goes in a moderately hot oven for 25 minutes, adding the seeds and chopped garlic for the last eight minutes. Then it’s just a matter of blending it up with vegetable stock, lemon, seasoning and nutritional yeast (Marmite would make the sauce quite dark but you could go there if that’s all you have). It’s that easy! While the cauliflower is roasting, get your pasta on.

The one thing you’ll need is a blender. I use my super-powerful Optimum 9400 Froothie to get the sauce incredibly smooth and creamy, but any good blender will suffice. I’ve not tried it in a food processor, but this would probably be fine.

I would also advise that you make the sauce in two simple stages. Whizz up the sunflower seeds, first – not expensive cashews! – then add the rest of the ingredients. Sure you can bung in everything at once but you will have to do more tamping and side scraping of your blender, and I’m too impatient for that. Add the seeds (and garlic) to a separate baking tray for ease – unlike my image where it’s all together.

You may be wondering why I’ve added both seeds and cauliflower, and whether you need to roast the latter. The seeds alone with the other ingredients make a great sauce, but the cauliflower adds more depth of flavour, nutrition and fibre. Cauliflower alone just isn’t rich enough to hold attention here; boiled or steamed cauliflower even less so. But do skip the roasting if you need to, adding more nutritional yeast to try and make up for the lack of roasting veg flavour. If you steam/boil, saute the garlic and pan-toast the seeds before adding to the mix.

Customise your Alfredo sauce

I’ve added young flat leaf parsley, but I think that a small amount of chervil or even French tarragon (not Russian or Mexican – too strong) would go nicely with the parsley and sauce. Some folk like to add chilli flakes or powder, however I just like to sprinkle in more pepper if I want it to be a little spicier. Add 20g of pea protein powder to the whole dish for more satiety (or perhaps sauteed, garlicky shrimp if you aren’t keeping it completely plant-based). Perhaps swirl in spiralised courgette/zucchini, wilted spinach or other soft or softened greens; add sliced roasted baby carrots or steamed asparagus. Sides such as roasted peppers – pop them in the oven 10 minutes after the cauliflower – and a bowl of fresh, young raw or steamed greens go extremely well, too.

Weekday pasta meals can not only be nutritious and family pleasing, but quick and easy. Do you agree? Other than a homemade tomato sauce, what’s your favourite, nutritious go-to, straight-in-the-door pasta supper dish? Share any links from your own blog 🙂