Time and again, my body would crave for food that is fresh and alive. In the summer, we try to have raw food as much as we can. In the winter, when warming food is most attractive to me and I have it constantly — after a long stretch, I get into raw food benders. I think it is my body’s way of balancing itself out.
So this week, I made Raw Fetzuchinni Alfredo.
This started out as raw “mac and cheese” from Matthew Kenney’s Everyday Raw cookbook but I was in hurry so I adapted the Garlic Cashew Aioli recipe from Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen to make my own “Alfredo” sauce. (I should really stop the “mock” names — it doesn’t taste like Alfredo, just looks like it — I think the trick to loving raw food is not expecting it to taste the same as the cooked variety but to appreciate its own unique and wonderful flavors. And this sauce is absolutely delicious!)
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Ingredients
For the noodles:
3 large zucchini (or this is really up to you because if you don’t have enough, you can use the sauce as a “dip”)
If you don’t have a spiralizer :) you can make fettucine noodles by peeling away with a peeler. Set it aside sprinkled with some salt to soften a bit.
Sauce:
Juice of 1 lemon (about 2 T)
2 cups cashews
3 stalks celery
about 2-3 T chopped onion
2 cloves garlic (I used WAY more than this, but I use way more garlic than most people)
1/2 cup water, as needed
salt to taste
Blend all in a food processor until smooth and creamy, adding water only as needed.
Mix with noodles.
You can top with finely chopped walnuts for crunch and/or we made some “cheese” by blending equal parts raw almonds with nutritional yeast in a food processor until it was finely ground (I know, “nutritional yeast” sounds like something from hell, but really it tastes like the stuff that’s in Pirate/Veggie Bootie)
It is also an amazing dip. I can imagine, adding some dried herbs would be yummy too.
This keeps three days in the fridge.
If you are not into raw food, you can heat this up a smidgen (otherwise the noodles will be soggy).
As you can see, my three year old daughter loved it.