No- Cheese Mac 'n' Cheese with Vegetables- vegan, gluten free

You won't believe this isn't cheese!

We had just taken delivery of our thrice-yearly bulk order from Suma Wholefoods. Eagerly, I opened the boxes in our hallway and peeped inside: soba noodles, wholemeal pasta, mung beans, cold pressed sunflower oil, cashews, almonds, chia seeds, raw cacao powder, brown rice and many, many more ingredients to play with. Suddenly, cooking dinner no longer felt like a chore! As I dug amongst the packages I found the Dove's Farm gluten free fusilli tricolore and the Engevita yeast flakes, and  headed for the kitchen...

... And came up with this lighter, vegan twist on mac 'n; cheese. The sauce came out surprisingly cheesey- tasting, and actually fooled one of the kids! This is not a recipe, but with any luck, should you want to reproduce this dish, these notes/ instructions should be enough. I made about 8 servings.

• I boiled 500g gluten free fusilli in 2 litres of soya milk, then drained and rinsed the pasta when it was done, catching the soya milk in a bowl and setting it aside for making the sauce later.
• Meanwhile, I had prepared some veggies (sweetcorn, cauliflower and broccoli), which I steamed until soft. I put the pasta and veg into a large, deep roasting dish. There was nearly as much veg as pasta.
• The sauce was made by whisking generous amounts of salt, lemon juice and yeast flakes to a bout 2/3cup of tahini, then thinning it gradually with the still-warm soya milk. I kept adjusting the ingredients until I got a nice cheesey flavour.
• I then poured the sauce over the pasta and veg in the dish and finished off by topping it with sliced tomatoes and a sprinkle of yeast flakes.
• The dish was then baked at 200C for about 15 minutes.

PS: This is our 500th post!