Day 302 – Two Methods of Making a Healthier White Sauce

Image by TheGirlsNY via Flickr

Yes, I took a short hiatus from writing to enjoy the little bits of spring we were getting.  I’m also doing a lot of other projects now, which is a side effect of living a healthier lifestyle – you want to do more stuff.

Many people has requested my white sauce recipes for pasta.  If the people want white sauce, the people shall have it!

Over the course of the past three weeks, I’ve worked with a couple recipe ideas I found posted on the internet.  Basically, I wanted an alternate way to make a white pasta sauce without the cream and saturated fat you would find in, say, Alfredo sauce.  I researched and then worked up two methods:  The steam cauliflower method, and the tofu method.

First, we’ll talk about the steam cauliflower method.

Cauliflower is a very healthy vegetable to eat, but isn’t particularly flavorful.  Many people may not know this, but you can steam cauliflower and mash it into a puree.  Basically, I used this to make a white, creamy pasta sauce.  Here are the ingredients:

1 head of cauliflower

1/2 to 1 cup of almond milk

zest of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon of nutmeg (or more if you want)

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon of unsalted butter (lowfat if you want even less calories, or you could omit it altogether and use olive oil)

salt and pepper (to taste)

1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese

1 tablespoon olive oil

First, melt the butter in a pan with the chopped garlic.  Turn the heat off before the garlic browns.  This will bring out the sweetness in the garlic and take away a lot of the less desirable “bite” that raw garlic has.  Then, break the head of cauliflower into florets and steam them using whatever steaming apparatus you happen to have.  Once the cauliflower is fork tender (meaning you can stab it with a fork and pull out the fork without picking up the cauliflower), put it in a bowl with the garlic and butter, half the milk, and then mash it.  Keep mashing and adding milk until it is as fine a consistency as you can get.  Then, pour the cauliflower mash, along with the olive oil, nutmeg, Parmesan cheese, and lemon zest, into a blender (or food processor).  You may want to let it cool before blending (some blenders don’t do well with hot food).  Blend until the texture is smooth and creamy.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

For the tofu method you simply replace the steamed cauliflower with a block of silken soft tofu and omit the milk unless you want a thinner sauce.  That’s up to you.  Cook the garlic just like you would for the steamed cauliflower method, and blend all ingredients except the salt and pepper.  Then heat it in a sauce pan and add salt and pepper (and anything else you may want to add more of) to taste.

As you can imagine, these sauces have a light, delicate flavor, and way less unhealthy fat and calories than a traditional Alfredo sauce.  I like to serve this sauce with angel hair pasta and some sauteed or steamed peas, or red and yellow bell peppers.  As for you, be creative!