Green Vegan Mac and Cheese (gluten-free)

I don't really celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Maybe when Hugo's bigger it'll be a more exciting event, but for now, it's just a good opportunity to eat green food.

Naturally green, that is. As in vegetables. Like this green vegan mac and cheese!

The green comes from pesto, romanesco broccoli, and baby spinach. No green food coloring here.

Many vegan mac and cheese recipes call for potatoes to add to the creamy texture, but I didn't want to coat starchy pasta with a starchy sauce.

Then I remembered making cauliflower cream pasta from the Thug Kitchen cookbook (highly recommended!) and decided to add romanesco broccoli in the sauce!

Have you tried romanesco? I promise, it only looks like space food and it's actually quite delicious. Think of it as a cross between a cauliflower and broccoli. It's one of Hugo's favorite vegetables, too!

I roasted it in the oven along with an entire head of garlic before puréeing it in the blender for the "cheese". It doesn't really add to the color but makes it creamy without it being too heavy.

We don't have pasta as often as we used to, which is probably a good thing. It's just hard to come by good gluten-free pasta in Japan!

So far I've tried corn pasta from the local store and kale pasta from Costco but both were mealy and not even close to the real deal.

But the organic brown rice pasta from Jovial Foods is the bomb dot com (do people still say that?). Elbow pasta is classic for mac and cheese, but it was out of stock so I'm using penne. Still delicious!

I love this green vegan mac and cheese because it's SO easy! The sauce comes together in a blender, you can boil the snap peas with the pasta (or any veg of choice), and I don't feel sluggish because it's dairy and gluten-free!

As a non-vegan, I won't pretend it tastes like real mac and cheese. I like to think of all vegan mac and cheeses as its own dish separate from the original stuff.

But as homemade vegan mac and cheeses go, this is pretty damn good.

So what do you think? Would your kids be fooled into eating this vegan mac and cheese this St. Patrick's Day?

Tristan's not the biggest fan of romanesco, which is boohockey (I'm practicing my mom curse words) since he loves it when I add it to any dish. But he loved this green vegan mac and cheese so much that he's already asking when we're having it next!

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