Bethany's Vegan Kitchen

Hello, I’m back with new recipes for 2023, still really easy to make and delicThis creamy, tasty pasta dish is easy to make and a good source of plant based protein. I used firm tofu and plant milk to make the dairy free cream for this, it has much more protein than dairy cream does, and much less fat too



Yield; Four servings Cook time; 30 minutes

You’ll need;

1. 200g extra firm tofu, diced, I used Tofoo. Alternatively use 200g of pressed firm tofu
2. 200ml plant milk
3. Two tablespoons of nutritional yeast
4. One tablespoon of oil
5. One brown onion, diced
6. One trimmed leek, thinly sliced
7. Two cloves of garlic, minced
8. Herbs; half a teaspoon of each dried sage and dried chives
9. 320g mock chicken, I used No Meat No Chick Strips from Iceland
10. 300g (this is the dry, uncooked weight) conchiglie
    

Method;

• Start by blending the tofu, plant milk and nutritional yeast together until completely smooth, then set the cream aside
• Next, add the oil into a large frying pan over a medium heat. Once it’s warmed up, add in the onion and give it five minutes to soften
• Then add the leek and garlic, give them another 10 minutes to soften While that cooks, I microwaved the No Chick Strips for four minutes, and then thinly sliced the pieces. Some mock meats can be cooked in a microwave, however you may need to cook some mock chicken in the pan along with the vegetables. Once the mock chicken is cooked, slice it into strips
• Next, add the sliced mock chicken into the pan and stir it through the vegetables
• Then add the cream and herbs, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Pop a lid on to the frying pan and give the cream 10 minutes to heat through
• While the sauce heats through, cook the pasta as per the instructions on the packet
• Finally drain the water from the pasta, then stir it through the sauce and serve immediately

I really like making non-dairy cream like this, it’s much lower in fat and higher in protein than its dairy counterpart. Dairy cream usually contains around 50g fat and 1g-2g of protein per 100ml. Whereas this non-dairy cream has 11g protein and 4.8g fat for the same 100ml. You could also add this cream to curry sauce, soups and stews, add it to mashed potato, fried mushrooms or tofu scramble

If you skip the pasta, you can also use the creamy chicken and leek as a pasty or pie filling. Just make the filling ahead of time, then leave it to cool before assembling the pasty/pie