Easy Vegan Cheese Sauce Pasta

I decided to go on a short vegan path starting on 19 November. It was for no reason. I just felt like doing. When I first approached veganism, I didn't totally reject the idea. In the past when I was a teenager, maybe yes, I'll say eww but as an adult now, somehow my thinking changed. I am not that anti towards veganism, nor I agree very much to it.

High Carb Hannah is the first person who introduced this new diet through her videos. Undoubtedly, I am amazed with her amazing results. Then, I thought of trying but again, it didn't last very long.

This time, I am not sure how long it will go but let's just see.. I can only say that I am pretty comfortable with this diet lifestyle, just that sometimes it gets difficult when I need to dine outside or eat family cooked food. Being too selected will limit my food choice.

So, I have been wondering what nutritional yeast really is. I Googled and found out that this is available in Malaysia. In fact, I can get it easily from Melaka Raya's Zen Xin organic shop. It doesn't cost too much either, acceptable price of RM11.50 for 100g.

I took a packet and excitedly started venturing the vegan cheese recipe that I watched from Youtube last night.

So, I tried out one of her vegan cheese recipes that I find easy to be done straight away without much preparation: 

Easy Vegan Cheese Sauce Pasta

1 tablespoon oil (I used olive oil)

1 tablespoon flour (I used wheat flour) 

1 cup plant milk - non/lite - soy, cashew... (I blended 1/3 cup of quick oats + 1 cup of water; then extract instant oat milk) 

2 teaspoon nutritional yeast (Gah! I only realized now that I put in 2 tbspns instead of tspn!) 

Dash of garlic salt, cayenne (I used 1 clove of garlic + paprika + salt) 

STEPS

1. Heat oil and flour. Mix until it forms a kind of glue paste stuff. 
2. Add in milk, nutritional yeast and seasonings. Mix well till everything thickens. 
3. I added water to mine, most probably because I added in 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast instead of 2 teaspoons. Gah! I hope nothing will go wrong to me tonight for having so much yeast in my guts. The cheese sauce gets really so so thick that I have to add water before it turns cement ;P 
4. I added dry rosemary, parsley and 2 packets of Mc Donald's black pepper into half of this cheese sauce recipe for the meal tonight.

I need to try this another round using the correct measurements to give a final judgment of what I really think about this vegan cheese sauce. 

As for now, it tastes not bad actually.. A little yeast-taste too strong, I don't know - Maybe the taste of oat from the oat milk is a little too strong for me. I added pasta into the sauce, together with enoki and broccoli. 

I think this cheese sauce is meant for 2 servings of pasta.

Self-made vegan cheese really requires a good amount of salt. Taste while cooking to ensure that you get the exact saltiness that you like. 

Let's just do a quick mathematics on the two different types of sauces; vegan and dairy to see their approximate calories difference.

REGULAR DAIRY CHEESE SAUCE

2 tablespoons of heavy whipping cream 16kcal

1 1/2 teaspoon butter 40kcal 

1 tablespoon parmesan cheese powder 22kcal 

1 slice mozarella cheese 78kcal 

TOTAL: 156kcal 

VEGAN CHEESE SAUCE

1/2 tablespoon oil 50kcal 

1/2 tablespoon flour 13kcal 

1/2 cup oat milk 48kcal 

1 teaspoon nutritional yeast 12kcal

TOTAL: 123kcal