I’m the type of person who tends to become overwhelmed by “choice.” Too long of a beer list, Spotify, cable television, my local Strack & Van Til, what to do at any given moment in this great city of Chicago…you get the picture. So of course this extends to internet recipe searches. Hence why it’s taken me almost a year to attempt vegan mac & “cheese.” It seemed like too much of a commitment to make just ONE.

So many versions of “cheese” - what will work and what won’t? Do I really need to drop that much green on raw cashews? Do I really need to prep this cashew cheese two days in advance? Eff that. I’m on a budget and I’m goddamn hungry. Two days prep is two days too many. So I took the plunge tonight, using this recipe, bookmarked many moons ago. And it turned out fabulous.

Here’s how it went down…

Ingredients

• one box medium shells (whole wheat)
• 1-1/2 cups nutritional yeast
• 1/2 pkg of extra firm tofu, “lightly” pressed
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup tamari (or soy sauce)
• 1-1/2 cups unsweetened soymilk
• 1/2 Tbsp sea salt
• 1 Tbsp paprika
• 1 Tbsp garlic powder
• yellow mustard to taste
• 2 Tbsp Earth Balance
• 1 cup plain panko bread crumbs

Directions

1. Pre-heat your oven to 350.
2. While a large pot of salted water is reaching a boil, prepare the “cheese” in your food processor. I pressed the tofu by hand (over the sink) and tossed chunks of the tofu into the bowl. Add the oil, water, tamari, soy milk. Blend. Add the nutritional yeast and blend some more. Next comes the salt, paprika and garlic powder. I finally added the yellow mustard while the food processor was, uh, processing (?) on Low.
3. Go back to that pot of boiling, salted water & cook your pasta al dente (about 7 minutes).
4. Melt the Earth Balance in a saute pan and toss the bread crumbs to coat.
5. Drain the pasta as best you can and transfer to a 8x11 casserole dish (or the equivalent). Pour on the “cheese” and distribute the bread cumbs evenly across the top.
6. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes. I then turned on the broiler for a couple minutes to brown the bread crumbs.
7. EAT! This paired nicely with 1) a bottle of cab and 2) Sriracha.

Reheated some today for lunch and it was still tasty. Looks like we have a winner!