Orecchiette with roasted Brussels Sprouts and vegan Sauce Alfredo
My Tasty Enemy: Welcome to “My Tasty Enemy,“ where we face our biggest culinary enemies in the kitchen. Julia isn’t fond of pineapple, Brussels sprouts and endives, Isa dislikes kohlrabi, mango, and radishes. Will we still find recipes that somehow make us like these ingredients?
It's time for another episode of "My Tasty Enemy". In this series, we face ingredients we don't like. What we try to do is combining or preparing them differently as long as it takes to get them tasty (for us, obviously). If we succeed, we can wipe them off our enemy list. After trying out hot dogs with grilled pineapple (unfortunately no success), today I face brussels sprouts. All my childhood memories of them are... quite bad, which is probably the reason I didn't tried to eat them again so far. I remember them as overcooked, bitter, small green balls. But some of my friends recommended to roast them, so let's do this today. And besides... combining anything with pasta - this cannot go wrong, right?
Orecchiette with Roasted Brussels Sprouts and vegan Sauce Alfredo
Ingredients
- 500 g (18 oz) orecchiette pasta
- 500 g (18 oz) brussels sprouts (deep-frozen or fresh, when it's in season)
- 1 handful walnuts
- 1 pomegranate
- 2 - 3 cloves of garlic
- olive oil
- vegan Parmesan (recipe on the blog)
FOR SAUCE ALFREDO
- 250 g (9 oz) cashews (soaked in warm water for at least 30 minutes)
- 400 g (14 oz) silken tofu
- 4 tbsp vegan butter
- 3 tbsp flour
- 1 lemon
- 3 - 4 tbsp nutritional yeast
- salt&pepper
- paprika powder
- ground nutmeg
Instructions
Preperation
- Clean and blanch brussels sprouts in hot water for 2 - 3 minutes and quench afterwards.
- Cut Brussels sprouts in half and rub in 2 - 3 tbsp of olive oil.
- Peel and finely chop 2 garlic cloves and add to Brussels sprouts.
- Season with salt and pepper. If you marinated everything well, put sprouts halves on a baking sheet and let them roast in the oven at 180°C / 350°F.
- In the meantime, remove seeds from pomegranate carefully and save seeds in a bowl. Roughly chop waltnuts and roast them in a pan without any oil. Be carful, because they burn fast.
- Cook pasta according to instructions.
Vegan Sauce Alfredo
- Purée soaked cashews and silken tofu.
- Take out a large pot and melt vegan butter in it, until you can see small bubbles. As soon as this happens, stir in flour carefully and keep stirring your roux to avoid any clumps.
- Add silken-tofu-cashew-mix, but remember to keep stirring.
- Season generous, because at this point, your sauce will taste neutral.
- Add the juice of a lemon, about 3-4 tbsp nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, paprika and nutmeg.
Serving
- If you are satisfied with your Sauce Alfredo, add pasta to the pot (this is why we needed a large one here) and mix everything together.
- Serve pasta and sauce with roasted brussels sprouts and finish with pomegranate seeds and roasted walnuts, vegan parmesan and some olive oil.
