Sweet potato & gochujang pasta bake

February 28, 2022

   

Michael and I agreed that we wanted a pasta dinner last week, and I had the energy for trying something new. I initially mistook this Meera Sodha recipe as a vegan mac'n'cheese since it includes ingredients like cashews, nooch and starchy veges, which often pop up in such recipes. But Sodha makes no such claim and I think that's wise. This is a fun, tasty pasta bake that doesn't evoke cheesiness.

Instead it's mostly warmly spiced, starchy comfort. The macaroni's main co-star is sweet potato, which is chopped and simmered to softness with cashews and garlic, before being blended into a smooth sauce with nutritional yeast flakes. A big spoonful of gochujang adds heat, colour, and that distinct funk of fermentation. 

I aimed to neatly use up a whole 500g bag of macaroni so I roughly multiplied ingredients by 1.5 as I worked through the recipe, though I forgot in a couple of cases! (I've fixed that up in the version below.) Surprisingly, the smaller quantity of water didn't cause any problems with the sauce. The original weight of breadcrumbs was all I had on hand anyway, so there was nothing to be done about that. The few breadcrumbs I did have were perhaps my favourite part of the recipe! They came from the dried-out end of a sourdough loaf, crisped up beautifully, and tasted so good in this sprinkling mix with spring onions, garlic and salt.

The one draw-back of this recipe is that it make a lot of dirty dishes - a pasta saucepan, a colander, a sweet potato saucepan, a sieve, a food processor/blender, a frypan, a baking tray. On the other hand, it supplied food for days and days. We always ate it teamed with a simple salad of mixed green leaves, sugar snap peas (which are in season and really good around here at the moment!), and a leftover pomegranate molasses dressing.

Sweet potato & gochujang pasta bake

(slightly adapted from a Meera Sodha recipe in The Guardian)

500g macaroni

sunflower oil

1 large sweet potato

4-5 cloves garlic

150g cashews, roasted and unsalted

1 1/2 tablespoons gochujang

3 tablespoons plain flour

4 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes

3 spring onions

90g breadcrumbs

Fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to the boil. Add the macaroni and cook it for 2 minutes less than advised on the packet. Drain the pasta, then stir through a little sunflower oil to prevent it from sticking together.

While the pasta is cooking, peel the sweet potato and chop it into 1 cm cubes. Place it in a separate saucepan, adding 3 peeled cloves of garlic and the cashews. Add water to cover, bring it all to the boil, and then simmer the sweet potato mixture for 10 minutes.

Preheat an oven to 200°C. 

Drain the sweet potato mixture and place it in a blender or food processor. Add 3 cups water, the gochujang, flour, nooch and a teaspoon or two of salt. Blend the mixture until it's as smooth as possible. Pour the sauce into the larger of the saucepans and add the pasta back in, stirring to thoroughly combine. Turn the pasta mixture out into a large, high-walled baking tray.

Finely chop the spring onions and mince the remaining garlic. Set a frypan over high heat and add 2-3 tablespoons sunflower oil. Fry the spring onions for a minute, then add the garlic and fry for a further two minutes. Add the breadcrumbs and a generous pinch of salt, and fry until they start to turn golden.

Spoon the breadcrumb mixture across the top of the pasta and bake everything for 20 minutes, until very golden on top. Allow the bake to rest for 5 minutes before serving with a side of greens.