Pasta with Vegan Zucchini Basil Cream Sauce

That’s right, it’s time for our first every RECIPE!!

A few things before we get started… First, I only have the camera on my phone, so my pictures aren’t going to be all that fancy. I’m not a food blogger so I don’t have all that nice equipment. I have like 60 followers, so I don’t even think you guys care, but I’m just telling you now my pictures aren’t great. Sorry.

Also, I’m not a professional chef. I make things and they usually taste good. Sometimes they don’t, but I’ll never share a recipe that I didn’t think was absolutely bomb.

And finally, I’m ironically not a recipe person. Usually, I’ll think of an idea, like making a sauce with a zucchini, then I’ll look online at how other people have done it, then I’ll kind of follow them as a rough guide and wing the rest of it.

This recipe DOES have an inspiration from Spoon University, which you can find here. I did make some changes, so this is a bit of an adaptation.

Usually, food bloggers tell a story, so here’s mine. I had a bit of pasta left over and more homegrown zucchini than I can eat, so I googled zucchini and pasta. Most of what I got was pasta primavera with zucchini pieces or zoodles (zucchini noodles), but then I happened across this one and thought Holy guacamole, that’s genius, I’m going to try it. So I did and it tasted good. Here we go!

Vegan Zucchini Basil Cream Sauce

This recipe makes about a cup and a smidge of sauce.

What you need:

1 medium zucchini, cubed

About 1/4 cup of chopped onion, or maybe a bit less if you don’t like onions much

2 garlic cloves, diced, or more if you love garlic. I used 2 big ones

1/4 cup of unsweetened, plain almond or soy milk, I used almond

2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast

5-6 large basil leaves

A drizzling of oil or a bit of water to cook the aromatics

Salt and pepper to taste

Pasta or whatever else you want to put it on. Salads, potatoes, and other grains would work well I think.

Heat a medium pot on your stove. If using oil, drizzle it in there and let it heat up a bit, then add your onions. If you’re using water, add the onions first then let them cook a bit before adding a splash of water to cook them more.

While your onions are cooking, cube up your zucchini and dice your garlic. Once your onions are nice and translucent, throw in your garlic and zucchini. Let that cook for about 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, add your almond milk. Give the mixture a stir, then add your nutritional yeast and half of your basil leaves. Don’t worry about cutting them up, everything is getting blended up in a second.

Cook for another 5 minutes, letting everything thicken up a bit. Go ahead and season it with your salt and pepper to taste, then take everything off the stove and let it cool for a minute. This is a good time to prep your noodles or whatever else you’re sticking this on. I heated my leftover pasta in another little pot while the sauce chilled out a bit.

Once it’s cooled a bit, you’re going to stick it in a blender with the remaining basil leaves. I have a little cup blender which is extremely handy and high powered, but everything in this sauce is soft so any blender will do. Blend it until smooth, then give it a taste for seasoning. You can add more basil, nooch, salt or pepper or whatever else suits you here. If it’s too thick you can add a splash of almond milk, then reblend, and repeat until its the consistancy you fancy.

Then pour as much as you need onto your pasta, and you’re ready to eat! I made this for lunch during a work day and it took about 15 minutes from start to finish.

Let me know what you think! I topped mine with a bit of vegan parm and some red pepper flakes.