Cashew zucchini sauce/spread/dip
My beloved omni mother made vegan creamed zucchini for yesterday's family Thanksgiving. Her recipe was something like: shred 15 zucchinis (with the shredding blade on the food processor unless you want to really kill your arm), spread the shreds on a baking sheet, sprinkle with salt to leach out the water, bake at 250F until very soft, mash up with a lot of Earth Balance. This made enough creamed zucchini to fill two foil loaf pans. It was delicious but SO SALTY because Earth Balance only comes pre-salted and my mother's used to cooking with unsalted butter, so no one ate very much of it and there was about one loaf pan's worth left over.
The flavor reminded me of a pasta dish I had with zucchini cream sauce back when I was still eating dairy. Aha, I thought, I will add cashew cream and that will balance out the salt and make a perfect pasta sauce. So I dumped about 2.5 cups of raw cashews and half a cup of blanched slivered almonds in the blender with four cups of water, blended on high for a few minutes, mixed the resulting cream with the zucchini and a bit of freshly grated nutmeg and black pepper, and heated it over a low flame until it was warmed through. Success! It was delicious on pasta--my omni-with-some-exceptions partners gobbled it up--and after generously saucing a full box of elbow macaroni, we still had two cups of sauce left over that I think we'll have cold as a spread on French bread, or maybe use as a dip; it would go great with pita chips or carrot and celery sticks.
If I were going to make it from scratch rather than starting with leftovers, I'd use 2 or 3 zucchinis, 1 cup cashews, and ~2 cups water (more for a pasta sauce, less for a dip/spread), plus salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. Very simple and very tasty.
P.S. to mods: any chance you could correct the "hors d'ouvres" tag to "hors d'oeuvre"?
The flavor reminded me of a pasta dish I had with zucchini cream sauce back when I was still eating dairy. Aha, I thought, I will add cashew cream and that will balance out the salt and make a perfect pasta sauce. So I dumped about 2.5 cups of raw cashews and half a cup of blanched slivered almonds in the blender with four cups of water, blended on high for a few minutes, mixed the resulting cream with the zucchini and a bit of freshly grated nutmeg and black pepper, and heated it over a low flame until it was warmed through. Success! It was delicious on pasta--my omni-with-some-exceptions partners gobbled it up--and after generously saucing a full box of elbow macaroni, we still had two cups of sauce left over that I think we'll have cold as a spread on French bread, or maybe use as a dip; it would go great with pita chips or carrot and celery sticks.
If I were going to make it from scratch rather than starting with leftovers, I'd use 2 or 3 zucchinis, 1 cup cashews, and ~2 cups water (more for a pasta sauce, less for a dip/spread), plus salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. Very simple and very tasty.
P.S. to mods: any chance you could correct the "hors d'ouvres" tag to "hors d'oeuvre"?