I had no ideas for dinner. The family all suggested pasta, but I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for our usual pasta sauces. Then Vegan MOFO saved the day… I opened up my Feedly RSS feed and the first post to pop up was Veganopoulous’s post on Lentil-a-roni from Isa Does It. Bingo!
That was last week, and it was such a success I’ve already made it again, tonight.
The sauce is thick and delicious and creamy, but it’s surprisingly easy to make.
It’s really just a simple sauce of onion, garlic, herbs, tomato and tinned lentils, but the best part – what makes it different and special – is the cashew cream mixed through at the end. It gives the pasta a thick, kind of grainy, almost cheesy texture.
I made this quickly – only soaking the cashews for about 15 minutes while I was chopping the onion and garlic and putting the pasta water on to boil. As Isa says, it doesn’t really matter that the cashews aren’t soaked, and don’t whizz up really smooth. In fact it makes it better, because it just gives the sauce more body and makes it seem more cheesy.
I served this with a green salad to make sure it wasn’t stodgy.
This one’s a winner, and is already a favourite at our house.
The Lentil Institution 
that’s exactly the kind of recipe I had hoped my whole family would eat but noooooo. It’s delicious, next time I won’t use a stack of pasta so I can have lots of soupy kind of sauce!
Yeah, that’s probably a healthier way to eat it – and it’s how it looks in the picture in the book – so it’s probably what I should do too. I just love those carbs though!
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Now I’ve seen this twice, I will confess it may appear on our dinner list soon too! It looks like your version turned out beautifully – what a great dish.
Hope you like it as much as we do!
I have a project in mind to write down a list of recipes from Isa Does It and this is definitely going to be on the list – esp now that I have got a new blender – had some success with pasta and cashew sauce with sylvia so might try this too
I’m thinking I need to start making a lot more of the recipes from that book. I’d just been going back to a few favourites. I made two new ones tonight, but I’m just too tired to write tonight…falling asleep on the couch. zzzzzzz
ooh yum, inspires me to get a decent blender over here
I don’t suppose you were able to take all your appliances over with you. Happily you don’t need a REALLY decent blender for this one, because the cashew cream doesn’t have to be very smooth.
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