Skip to content

Pasta Mac and Cheese with Broccoli

Picture is coming soon How it should look like - Now do it better!

This is fabolous, and we were quite skeptical about it when we made it the first time. Because the concept of "Mac and Cheese" doesn't exist in Italy, and if you travel to other parts of Europe, it's always a bit of a wild card: you know there's going to be some sort of creamy cheese in whatever you're going to eat when you order it - but apart from that, I've never quite understood what "Mac and cheese". And also, it doesn't necessarely include "Maccheroni" pasta, which I thought what the reason for the word "Mac".

Anyway, regardless of what "Mac and cheese" really easy - this pasta is one of the many versions of it, and it's delicious and super easy to make!

Ingredients (for 2 people)#

  • Pasta: 19=80-200 gr
  • Cashew: 80 gr
  • Water: 200 gr
  • Oat (for porridge): 20 gr
  • Nutritional yeast: 20 gr
  • Tumeric powder: a bit less than 1 tsp
  • Lemon and salt to taste
  • Broccoli: 1 of medium size, but small or large is also ok

Method#

  1. Put the water into a pot with some sea salt and bring to boil - keep an eye on it whilst you do the rest.
  2. Wash the broccoli, cut the tops and also the stems into little pieces: stems are edible and it's a shame to through them away! Put it all into the pot even if the water is not boiling yet
  3. Once the water boils, put the pasta into it and leave it to cook
  4. In the meantime, put the cashews into a bowl with the water, and warm it up for 1.5 minutes in the microwave - this will soften the cashews
  5. Prepare the sauce by putting all ingredients in a blender: cashews with their hot water, oat, nutritional yeast and tumeric. Leave the lemon out as you will add it later
  6. Once you've blended everything together, taste it and add some lemon and salt to the right level according to your taste. I like it particualrly "lemony", so I usually put the juice of half lemon, but Andre puts less
  7. Once your sauce is ready, wait for the paste and broccoli to be ready too. Once you've drained the pasta and broccoli, add them back into the pan, add the sauce as well, stir, serve and enjoy!

Tips#

For the pasta, you can use any type of pasta you want, but we'd recommend avoiding spaghetti/ linguine because they don't amalgamate well with the broccoli and the rest of the sauce. Also, better not to use a whole grain pasta - it doesn't particularly suit the taste of the Mac and Cheese sauce that well.

You could also make this dish without the broccoli.