Lentil-A-Roni

Another recipe from Isa Does It: Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week. This is Lentil-A-Roni (p. 134), Isa's vegan version of her childhood favourite, Beefaroni, which was also a favourite of mine! I wasn't expecting it to really taste like Chef Boyardee, it just looked like a filling vegetarian pasta dish made with lentils - which I usually have in the cupboard and only cook in one or two different ways. I also wanted to try the vegan version of adding cream - cashews. She uses it a lot her cookbook so I wanted to see how it worked.

First of all: this recipe makes a lot! The first step is cooking 1 lb of pasta (I used tri-coloured fusilli), which was pretty much an entire box. Get ready for leftovers. Set the pasta aside. In a large pan, heat some oil. I used a flavoured oil I got for Christmas - sundried tomato, parmesan and garlic. It smelled good but I'm not sure how much flavour it imparted to the dish. Anyway, cook 1 diced onion for about 3 minutes, then add 3 minced garlic cloves, 2 tsp dried thyme and some salt and pepper. After about 30 seconds, add 1 1/2 cups cooked brown lentils (I used green, which I assume are similar) then spend a minute mashing roughly with a fork, keeping some chunks.

Add 1 can crushed tomatoes, cover and cook 5 minutes. At this point you mix in the cashew cream. How do you make cashew cream? First you need to soak cashews in water - I soaked 1/2 cup cashews for about 3 hours, but you can definitely leave them overnight. Then I blended them with 1 cup vegetable stock for about 1 minute - it made a foamy, thin, white liquid that mostly tasted like stock still. I added it to the pan and it was like adding milk - it made a nice rose colour. Let it thicken for about 3 minutes, watching out for splatters.

Mix the pasta with the sauce and voila - a filling, rich pasta dish. I mixed in baby spinach to add some veggies and topped with pepper. Did it taste like beefaroni? Well, not really. But it was still good. I'm not sure if the cashew cream was needed - I suppose it helped it to thicken, which it did quite a bit once it had sat out for awhile. My next post will cover a recipe that tasted so much like Chef Boyardee it was a little creepy - but it included sausage so that may be why. Stay tuned!