Running Mania

In search of a low-cal, creamy pasta sauce I came up with the following recipe. It's totally flexible.

Basic sauce:

1) Boil a bunch of cauliflower* (I cooked about 2+ cups worth) along with 2-3 cloves of garlic in well-salted water.
2) Once boiled to a really soft consistency, drain it and put it (along with the garlic) into the blender (mine is a Vitamix)
3) Add about 3/4 cup of liquid of choice (I used 2% Evaporated Milk, but you could use Cashew milk for a dairy-free alternative, or even some of the cooking liquid)
4) Salt & pepper to taste
5) Blend for 60-90 seconds until it's velvety smooth

Variation:

6) I added 5 triangles of Laughing Cow Light cheese (because I had it on hand), and
7) A handful of fresh herbs: rosemary, thyme and basil (which gave the sauce a very pale green colour)

This variation made 3.5 cups, and each 0.5-cup serving is only 50 calories.

*Use as much of the white stalks/stems as you can. It doesn't have to be all florets. I didn't use any of the green leaves/stalk, though. You could just as easily use frozen cauliflower for this if you don't have fresh on hand.

If you want a creamy tomato sauce, add some oven roasted or sundried tomatoes to the blender.
Adding a Tbsp of pesto to the mix would also be nice.
This sauce also works well as the base for Mac & Cheese. Just add whatever type(s) of cheese you like and bake with cooked macaroni as you would normally. You'd probably want to make the sauce a bit thinner if you are going to bake it, though.

Sounds great! I will try.

I would like to try this. I do wonder how nut milk would affect the taste of the sauce though.

You could add flour to the sauce to thicken it before adding the cheese. i actually made mac and cheese from scratch last night!

Great creativity! Although I respectfully disagree about adding pesto.

IronColl wrote:I would like to try this. I do wonder how nut milk would affect the taste of the sauce though.

You could add flour to the sauce to thicken it before adding the cheese. i actually made mac and cheese from scratch last night!

Great creativity! Although I respectfully disagree about adding pesto.

Cashew milk is quite mild tasting. Have you ever had cashew "cream?" It's really yummy and a nice sub for sour cream for those who can't have dairy. I've never tried using it to make Bechamel/Mornay, though (because I'm totally cool with dairy). I generally like traditional recipes and only look for subs when I'm trying to bring down calories (as opposed to making something dairy-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, egg-free, or vegan). My favourite sub for cream is evaporated milk.

The sauce was already super thick (hence the addition of liquid to the blender), so no need to add flour. My comment about adding more liquid if you're making mac & cheese is mostly because I find that when I bake it, the mac sucks up a lot of the liquid and it ends up dry if the sauce wasn't runny enough to start.