Name: Butternut Mac and Cheese
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 400 g butternut squash, peeled and cubed; 200 g floury potato, peeled and cubed; 1 onion, quartered; 4 garlic cloves, peeled; 600 ml water; 100 g cashews; 5 tbsp nutritional yeast; 2 tbsp lemon juice; 1 tbsp Dijon mustard; 1 tsp smoked paprika; 2 tsp fine sea salt; ½ tsp white pepper; ¼ tsp grated nutmeg; 3 tbsp olive oil; 450 g macaroni; 60 g panko breadcrumbs; 2 tbsp olive oil; 1 tbsp nutritional yeast; ½ tsp smoked paprika

Butternut Mac and Cheese

A sauce of butternut squash, cashews and potato, blended smooth with nutritional yeast and mustard. It is orange, it clings, and it is not pretending to be cheese so much as doing the same job.

55 min total Serves 6 servings Easy

The Method for Butternut Mac and Cheese

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Put the squash, potato, onion, garlic and cashews in a pan with the 600 ml of water. Bring to a boil and simmer 18 minutes, until everything is completely soft.
Tip the lot — vegetables and cooking water together — into a blender. Do not drain it; that water is full of starch.
Add the nutritional yeast, lemon juice, mustard, paprika, salt, white pepper, nutmeg and olive oil.
Blend for a full 90 seconds, until absolutely smooth and glossy. Under-blended cashews leave the sauce grainy.
Cook the macaroni to 2 minutes short of the packet time and drain.
Fold the pasta into the sauce — it will look too loose, and it will thicken in the oven.
Tip into a 23 x 33 cm dish. Toss the panko with the oil, nutritional yeast and paprika and scatter over.
Bake at 200°C / 400°F for 20 to 25 minutes, until bubbling at the edges and the crumb is deep golden.
Rest 10 minutes before serving.

Related guide: Pan and tin size.

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Things to Watch For

Blend the vegetables in their cooking water. Draining it costs you the starch that makes the sauce cling.
Ninety seconds in the blender. Cashews need longer than you think.
Leave it looser than looks right; the pasta drinks a surprising amount in the oven.

Changing the Recipe

Panko gives the crunchiest crust here, but ordinary dried breadcrumbs will still fry crisp if that's what's in the cupboard.
An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

A Little Background

Three ingredients each do one job that dairy would otherwise do. Boiled potato provides starch, which is what makes the sauce cling to pasta instead of sliding off; cashews provide fat and body; and squash provides colour and sweetness. Nutritional yeast and mustard supply the savoury tang. Blending the vegetables in their own cooking water rather than fresh water keeps the starch that leached out, which is a free thickener most recipes pour away.

On the Table Alongside

A sharp green salad · Hot sauce · Roasted broccoli

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Skillet Cornbread, Creamy Coleslaw, Philadelphia Soft Pretzels.

Keeping Butternut Mac and Cheese

Refrigerated for 4 days. Reheat covered with a splash of plant milk. Freezes for 2 months.