Creamy Cashew Sauce

Today was an eventful day for two reasons.  One- I made this awesome cashew sauce, which was much more successful than I anticipated.  Two- I got pooped on by a squirrel.  I've only ever been pooped on by a seagull before, this one time when I was at the beach and one got me on the leg (I knew I hated seagulls).  While it was a unique and kind of hilarious experience, it is not one I would like to repeat.  I'll spare you the dirty details, but lesson learned- when lying in a hammock admiring squirrels in the trees above, beware.  But now back to the sauce.

I had seen a few cream-sauce-esque type of recipes on Post Punk Kitchen and had been wanting to try the cashew vegetable korma for a while.  I'd even been hoarding some cashews in my pantry in the hopes of finally getting around to making the recipe one day.  Well, so far I still haven't made that korma.  I did, however, steal the idea of the sauce to try out my own version of a cashew cream sauce.  I also glanced over the Mac n' Shews at PPK to get more of an idea of the whole turning-cashews-into-sauce thing.  The idea of a creamy sauce that isn't actually cream based intrigued me, since I really try to avoid cream.  I'm sure that the cashew version is healthier, although all nuts usually have a lot of fat in them so I wouldn't suggest eating tons and tons of this all the time.

Since I was just playing around and experimenting I didn't pay as close attention to the proportion of stuff as I should have, so forgive me for being so vague with the recipe.  I have a feeling that it's highly forgiving, though, so hopefully some variations won't have any detrimental effects.  I made two slightly different sauces, both with the same base, just to get the chance to try out some different flavors.  One was a plainer creamy sauce and the other was a mild curry cream sauce.  I made some whole wheat pasta and sauteed veggies to go with it.  Also, this only makes 1-2 servings, since I didn't want to make a giant amount of food in case it turned out badly.  Feel free to double or triple the recipe.

Cream sauce ingredients:

• About 1/2 cup raw cashews
• About 1/2 cup vegetable broth
•  1 Tbs ground flax seeds (optional)
• A pinch of salt
• 1 Tbs olive oil

Additional ingredients for curry cream sauce (all are approximate, add to taste):

• 2 tsp curry powder
• 1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp turmeric

Directions:

1. In a small pot, cover the cashews with water and boil for about an hour (PPK says to just soak the cashews for an hour or two, or overnight, but I felt like boiling them might speed up the process or more thoroughly soften them or something.  I need instant gratification.)
2. Drain the cashews and puree them either with an immersion blender or food processor, until there aren't any lumps.  It won't be completely smooth but sort of grainy instead, but just make sure you don't have giant clumps of cashews.
3. Add the flax (only if you want to- I don't know if it changes the consistency or not, but I just added it for the health benefits), the salt, olive oil, and about 1/4 cup of the broth.  Blend together.
4. Test the consistency- it should be.... sauce-like! Keep adding the veggie broth until it's nice and creamy, and however thick or thin you like your sauce to be.
5. At this point, you have your basic cashew cream sauce and can stop adding stuff if you just want the basic sauce.  If you're indecisive like me and need two different sauces to choose from, scoop out half the sauce and put it in a different bowl.
6. To one of the bowls, add all the other ingredients listed for the curry cream sauce.  Mix together thoroughly, adding more spices as needed.

Pasta and Veggies Ingredients and Directions:

1. Boil some water and cook about 1 cup of pasta- I used whole wheat spirals.
2. In a pan, cook some vegetables in olive oil- I chopped up some onion, carrot, garlic, broccoli, and asparagus, just because it was what I had lying around.  Sprinkle on a bit of salt for flavor.
3. Once everything is cooked, toss together the veggies and pasta, then top with the sauce.  Mix it all together so that the sauce coats everything (duh) and enjoy!  

Really, this was much more delicious than I expected it to be.  The cashews gave a nice delicate, nutty flavor to the sauce, which was surprisingly creamy considering that it was cashew-based.  I also feel like there could be a ton of variations on the basic cream sauce to make it compliment lots of different dishes and flavors, and will definitely play around with that.
Update: I had a bit of leftover pesto which I combined with the leftover plain cashew sauce to create a creamy pesto sauce. And ohmygosh.  It was soo good.  Like, ridiculously good.  So yeah, try it with pesto.

Oh, and one last thing- it's vegan! Success.