Pasta with Cauliflower Pesto

We all love a warm bowl of creamy pasta. Well, this pasta recipe is here to indulge your senses with an incredibly delicious cauliflower pesto sauce. Think of the vegan version of carbonara with a touch of pesto. You are drooling already? I sure am! 

I love this cauliflower pesto sauce for a number of reasons. First of all, the sauce is really creamy and flavourful and the only thing you need to do is put all the ingredients in a blender. There are no complicated steps and your sauce will be ready in less than 10 minutes. 

As much as I love a good creamy sauce, a lot of times these can be a bit heavy. Especially when we opt for store-bought plant-based creams that have a handful of ingredients we can't even pronounce. 

We can recreate the creamy consistency in a few different ways. I love using nuts, especially cashews, and what we are using for this recipe, pine nuts. Also, veggies like cauliflower are amazing for this and the perfect way to sneak in some veggies into your meals. 

My son is usually pretty good at eating all sorts of different fruits and veggies, but way back when we went through a phase that all he wanted to eat was noodles and pasta. He could barely hold his fork but somehow he was able to pick out every single vegetable I added to his plate. 

I didn't want him to feed just on pasta so I had to get a bit creative while we made our way back to loving veggies. This is how this delicious cauliflower recipe came about. He loved the messy creamy noodles and there was no way of getting around eating this incredibly healthy vegetable. 

The things you have to do as a mom! But they will never know and you can use this little trick with a few different veggies. For example, I would also mix spinach into a traditional pesto sauce. And, again, he loved it! 

For this recipe, I took inspiration from two of my favourite pasta sauces, carbonara, and vegan pesto. I call it cauliflower pesto, it tastes a bit like pesto since it's made with similar ingredients but it looks more like a carbonara to me.

For the creamy sauce, I simply put in the blender cauliflower, almond milk, and pine seeds. This is where the consistency of this vegan pesto is achieved. Then, to season it, I just added black pepper, salt, garlic powder, and ground nutmeg. 

Lastly, I like adding a bit of lemon juice to give it a bit of a zesty touch. I also like to throw in two tablespoons of nutritional yeast to add a bit of a nutty cheesy taste to the overall flavour of this yummy dish. 

Cook your pasta al dente and mix in this creamy cauliflower pesto while both are still hot and steamy. You and your family are going to love this delicious heartwarming recipe!