Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Chipotle mac'n'cheese
with roasted Brussels sprouts

October 22, 2013


The one good thing about Melbourne's perpetual winter has been the chance to dip into a last few hearty recipes while the weather suits. Cindy's been stockpiling vegan mac 'n' cheese recipes for a while now, so we took advantage of a particularly dreary 'spring' day and took one of Isa Chandra's for a test drive.

It combines some unbeatable flavours: the creaminess of a good cashew/nooch sauce, the smoky bite of chipotle and adobo sauce, and the slight bitterness of roasted sprouts. If you're not keen on chilli you might want to go with two or three chipotles rather than four (even seeded), but otherwise I wouldn't change a thing about this. And the best part? The whole process takes barely half an hour - perfect for when you just want to stuff your face with delicious carbs and flop on the couch catching up on Parks and Rec.


Chipotle mac'n'cheese with roasted Brussels sprouts
(based on a recipe from Post Punk Kitchen)

500g Brussels sprouts, quartered
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper

250g macaroni

1 cup raw cashews
4 chipotles, seeded, plus a teaspoon of the adobo sauce they come in
1 cup Massel chicken-style stock
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons white miso


Soak the cashews in water for a couple of hours to soften them up.

Preheat the oven to 180°C and put a big pot of water on to boil.

Lay the sprouts out on a baking dish, drizzle with the oil and sprinkle over the salt and pepper. Pop them in the oven to bake for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the sauce: drain the cashews and blend them up as fine as you can. Add in the garlic, chipotles and adobo sauce, nutritional yeast, miso and stock, and blend some more - you should wind up with a nice smooth sauce.

Pop the pasta on to cook as per the instructions - ours took about 10 minutes. You should be able to time it so that the pasta is finished at the same time as the sprouts.

Drain the pasta and put it back in the big pot. Pour over the sauce, dump in the sprouts and stir everything together over a medium heat. Give the sauce a few minutes to thicken up a bit and serve.

10 comments:

  1. I'm going to pretend you didn't say that part about "perpetual winter" (we've already had snow here and winter doesn't technically start until the end of December.. plus the last time it snowed was the beginning of May, so....) and focus instead on how this dish hits so many of my favourite ingredients and flavours right on the head. Woot!

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    1. Hannah - indeed, winter is a relative concept! And I'll open its definition wide to maximise our opportunity for this mac'n'cheese.

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  2. it does feel like perpetual winter even with the sun out today it is still cool - perfect weather for mac and cheese - though I think 4 chipotle chillis would have me gasping

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    1. Johanna - my first bite had a surprising burn! You could definitely afford to tone down the chipotle.

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  3. This dish has me written all over it. I'm almost wishing for some more cold weather! I'm going for 2 chipotles. Call me a wimp.

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    1. I won't judge you for your modest chipotle usage, Rosalie. :-0

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  4. I've only discovered the wonderfulness of chipotle this year. Also, nutritional yeast. This looks great!

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    1. Hi leaf - this is a great way to use both! It needs a food processor for those cashews, though. :-/

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  5. Thanks for this! Made it last night. It was really great, except that I used red miso so I think that overpowered it a bit. Also added carrot, broccoli and mushrooms, which turned out really well!

    Can I ask where you get white miso? Normal supermarket?

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    1. Hey - nice one, James! And props for increasing the vegetable quotient. Most recently we just bought our white miso from the local supermarket so hopefully you'll find it pretty easily too.

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