Macaroni w/ Esme's Sauce and Roasted Veggies

If you haven't tried Esme's simple sauce, you must! It's equal parts tahini, miso, nutritional yeast (or mustard), soy sauce, lemon juice (or vinegar), olive oil and a little crushed garlic. Delicious on pasta as seen here. For best results, heat above ingredients in a saucepan and stir til thickened, adding a little water if too thick, then toss with pasta. (I use about 4 TB of each ingredient.)


I accidentally over-roasted my yellow squash, carrots and potatoes. Oops.


But it all tasted delicious anyway!

Food rundown.

Thursday night's dinner: macaroni with esme's special sauce (delicious!) with steamed carrots and kale. Haven't made this sauce in so long and so glad I thought of it. Husband approved!


Saturday's lunch: romaine salad with red cabbage, cucumber, homemade croutons and tahini dill dressing,


Saturday's dessert: parsnip-carrot cake with a mess of a cream "cheese" glaze (didn't set up at all!) Got the recipe for this cake in a bargain book I found at Borders called 'The Ultimate Book of Vegan Cooking'. I had problems with the batter because the recipe didn't call for enough liquid so I had to add some in increments. Good thing the cake turned out. It was wonderfully spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and very moist but the frosting recipe was a disaster. It didn't ruin the taste so I was happy enough.


Saturday's dinner: glorious quesadilla with Daiya cheese, roasted red peppers and caramelized onions. This is a vegan copycat of Giada's Italian quesadilla recipe. Amaaaazing.

Pasta with Spinach and Esme's Special Sauce.

Wow! This ridiculously simple pasta sauce is so delicious. Esme from the Post Punk Kitchen Forums came up with this recipe. It's rich and creamy with the smooth flavors of sesame paste, saltiness of soy sauce and miso and sweetness from rice vinegar. This recipe has been going around the vegan blogs and has been quite popular. I decided to give it a go tonight and I am happy. I will make this again very very soon (like this weekend). Serve this with crushed red pepper sprinkled over the top. It's fantastic.

Esme's recipe is basically this (my additions are noted with a *):

Equal parts of: (For a pound of pasta, I used 4 TB of each.)
-tahini
-miso paste (*I used mellow white miso.)
-soy sauce (you can cut this to 2TB if you like it less salty.)
-olive oil
-nutritional yeast or mustard (*dijon is good)
-lemon juice or vinegar (seasoned rice vinegar is good here.)
-and a few cloves of garlic, minced

Cook pasta according to package directions. *Before I drain the pasta, I like to save at least 1/4 cup of the pasta water to dilute the sauce a bit. Drain pasta and set aside. Pour above ingredients into the pasta pot on low heat. Stir to get it all combined and then add the pasta water and stir until smooth. Then pour hot pasta into the pot and toss to combine with sauce. At this point you can add some chopped spinach or other green and let it wilt from the heat. Add black pepper to taste.