Vegan "alfredo"

When I visited my friend Ann last year, I nearly died laughing at this book:

and at the image you see above in particular.  I'm not really a grammar po-lice, honestly I don't understand the intricacies of English grammar well enough to join that force.  I do however get kind of stabby over abused quotation marks and their sadly misused cousins, the apostraphes.  I just thought I'd share that fun fact- since when I typed "alfredo" up above I started thinking about fresh brown "eggs" and giggling.  Because I am 5.

Anywhoo.  My stepmom An anonymous vegetarian emailed me some time ago a recipe (I really wanted to type "recipe") for a vegan alfredo based on cauliflower (look away, K-dog).  Caulis are cheap or seasonal or something here at the moment and I find myself with 4 in the fridge.  I like cauli, but 4?  It could be time for a Big Roast Up.  The recipe, as written originally would have been pretty bad, but heroically I managed to diddle it into something quite good.  It wasn't very photogenic, but I did take a pic of an empty bowl with about 6 green peas in the bottom.  That was all that was left after one of the dogs cleaned up a portion that I couldn't store.  I figure that if my hounds ate the pasta and sauce, and carefully licked the peas clean before spitting them out, it wasn't too bad.

Here I "present" for you- Pasta "Alfredo":

-1/2 cauliflower steamed until very soft (I threw mine in the slowcooker on HIGH with some boiling water- an inch or so while I went to kid-ballet for about a hour)

 
-an onion (I used one red onion and a few spring onions.  Don't think it matters.  Onion flakes would have been ok too)

1 stock cube (I used Massel "chicken" (see what I did there?)).

- garlic (to taste.  This was pretty bland so I ended up using about a teaspoon of the dried garlic stuff).

- parsley

- salt, pepper

- nutritional yeast

- flour

- pasta

brown onions, add stock, simmer

put cauli, onions and stock into blender (I used a stab blender because that's all I have) and blend it all up.  Taste it- add salt, pepper (lots) and about 1/2 cup of nutritional yeast.  I added some arrowroot flour to get rid of the slightly watery consistency, and simmered it while adjusting seasonings.  When it tastes the way you like it, add some frozen peas- it was so bland looking I had to and even though the dog wasn't impressed I think it was a good move.  The consistency when I served it was like a thick soup, and in fact it would not make a bad soup!

Served on pasta, and it was indeed good.  They way I remember Alfredo is a lot richer and this wouldn't fool anyone, especially cauli-haterz.  But if you like cauli this is a nice, very light pasta sauce.

"enjoy"!

Comments

[Carol]

Four caulis in your fridge? You must have a big fridge. This sounds pretty nice even though you said "bland" twice. I'm sure it didn't end up bland. Funny how dogs suck the gravy then spit out the peas. Our hounds always did that.
Hey, you could have said cauli's.