Creamy Peppery Pasta with Mushrooms and Roasted Grape Tomatoes

This is fantastic. I found the original dish at minimalistbaker.com and made it immediately and it’s the closest thing to a vegan Alfredo without trouble of soaking cashews that I have found. (Don’t get me wrong, I love a good cashew Alfredo, but sometimes I don’t have the forethought to soak the nuts and I want to make this for supper in about 30 minutes). This was my second pass at it for supper tonight and I had to add it to the blog because it just needs to be shared. My version is close to the original but may have a bit more snappy flavour due to adding nutritional yeast and red pepper flakes. So here we go…

Ingredients:

• 3 cups grape tomatoes, halved
• olive oil
• 10 oz pasta of your choice
• 8 large cloves garlic, chopped or minced
• 1/2 a medium spanish onion
• 8 oz cremini mushrooms, sliced
• 2-3 Tbsp cornstarch
• 5 Tbsp nutritional yeast
• pinch of red pepper flakes
• salt and pepper

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400.
• Boil your pasta, drain and set aside (I rinse my pasta in cold water because I don’t like the sticky factor, but this will work whether you rinse it or not. I also find rinsing helps the leftovers when you’re reheating them, if you’re into leftovers).
• While the pasta is boiling, halve your grape tomatoes, toss in a bit of olive oil and salt and lay them cut side up on a tinfoil lined baking sheet. Bake these babies for about 20 minutes. When they are done set them aside on the pan for later.
• While your tomatoes are roasting, prepare your garlic, onion, and mushrooms and begin to sauté over medium heat in about 2 Tbsp of olive oil, a dash of salt and pepper, and a hit of red pepper flakes until the mushrooms are nice and soft. Once soft, pick them out with tongs and set aside (I picked them out and just put them on top of the cooked pasta).
• Add in almond milk, cornstarch mixed in a little water, nutritional yeast and another good dash of salt and pepper and turn up the heat a little. Whisk this as it heats up and thickens. Depending on how thick you want the sauce to be, you might want to start with less cornstarch, heat it up, and then add in more until it reaches the consistency you like. Remember, it thickens as it heats so don’t add too much at the beginning thinking it’s too watery – wait until it reaches high heat with a few boil bubbles starting to surface.
• Once you are happy with the thickness and taste of the sauce add it to a large sauce pan with the pasta, mushrooms, and tomatoes and stir it all up. 
• We ate ours with garlic bread (I made the garlic butter by adding chopped fresh garlic and Italiano to some Earth Balance Butter) and because I doubled the recipe we will have leftovers in the fridge for tomorrow while we are working on the tiny house (you can see the tiny house blog here).
• For reheating, since the sauce will thicken quite a bit in the fridge over night, add a bit of almond milk to the pan and a bit of salt and pepper just to wake it back up (you could also add a bit of shredded mozza daiya..mmmm). We don’t have a microwave but if you do, just add those things to your bowl before you zap it and it will work the same.

I hope you enjoy this dish! Let me know if you try it!