Who Cares: It’s just an award winning mac and ‘cheese’ recipe

You saw it here first, everyone.
Unless you saw it on chow.com first, in which case I guess we can’t really say that.

WHO CARES VEGAN MAC AND CHEESE
This rich mac and cheese is great with steamed broccoli or some bbq tofu and dark sautéed greens. This is not really your everyday weeknight mac. I more imagine this dish at a potluck or a dinner party or when you just wanna impress the pants off someone.

Oh, it can totally be made a day ahead! Just combine sauces with the pasta and refrigerate (covered, of course). When you’re ready to eat, follow heating directions and sprinkle with bread crumbs before you serve!

Serves six.

INGREDIENTS

16 oz box of pasta, we use Cellentani
dash of paprika (to sprinkle on top)

CASHEW SAUCE


1 ⅓cup chopped Yukon gold potatoes, about one large potato
¼ cup chopped carrot, about one medium carrot
1 cup water
⅓ cup raw cashews
¼ cup raw pine nuts
⅓ cup margarine (we use Earth Balance brand)
½ cup nutritional yeast
2 ½ Tbs miso
2 Tbs tahini
2 Tbs lemon juice, about one juicy lemon
1 tsp salt
½ tsp Dijon mustard

CREAMY SAUCE


½ cup margarine
5 Tb flour
2 cups soymilk
½ cup nutritional yeast
¼ tsp turmeric
½ tsp salt

BREAD CRUMB TOPPING


Use a stale baguette if possible. You can also store any unseasoned breadcrumbs in the freezer in a sealed container. A food processor is best, but if (like us) you don’t have one, a blender will work.

½ sweet baguette
2 Tb margarine
½ cup nutritional yeast
¼ tsp onion powder

METHOD


1. Start a large pot of salted water boiling and preheat oven to 325 F.

2. Peel and finely chop potato and carrot. Combine with 1 cup of water in a small saucepan. Cover and cook potato and carrots on medium-high heat until quite soft, about 10-12 minutes
3. Prepare your breadcrumbs by ripping ½ baguette into 1 inch chunks. Combine a handful of chunks with the margarine and pulse until crumbs are small.
4. Add the remaining bread chunks. Stir and blend until breadcrumbs are small. Add nutritional yeast and onion powder and pulse until combined. Set aside and rinse blender.
5. In blender combine the cashew and pine nuts. Pulse until the nuts are in small pieces but have not formed a paste.
6. Add the remaining cashew sauce ingredients to the blender, including the softened potato and carrots with the water they were cooked in. Mix with a spoon and then blend away until sauce is smooth and creamy.
7. Taste and adjust seasonings. At this point the sauce should be pretty intensely flavored, since it is going to be combined with the mellow, creamy sauce.
8. Set aside in blender.
9. Start toasting breadcrumbs in a thin layer on baking sheet covered in parchment or foil for 10-15 min. or until crisp and light gold. You may want to stir them a couple times to ensure even toasting. Set aside to sprinkle over baked mac and cheese.
10. While breadcrumbs are toasting start on the creamy sauce.
11. Melt the margarine in a saucepan on medium heat, and whisk in the flour
to make a roux.
12. Once the flour and margarine are thoroughly combined and not lumpy,
whisk in the nutritional yeast, salt and turmeric.
13. Slowly add the soymilk, stirring constantly and scraping the edges and
bottom of the pan to combine.
14. Continue to cook over low-medium heat for several minutes, continually
stirring, until the sauce thickens to a creamy consistency.
15. Combine sauces in blender and blend for 15-20 seconds.
16. Pour over pasta in baking dish and stir to evenly coat. Cover with foil and
bake for 25-30 min.
17. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and a dash paprika and black pepper once everything is out of the oven.
18. Enjoy with several of your closest friends!

Also, if you’re interested in this sort of thing, here are links to a few other posts about the event (so you can see all the crazy shit people made! truly intense):

Get ready to Eat Real!

It’s hard to believe that after the crazy week we’ve had we’re gearing up for another– even bigger– event right now! How big, you ask? Well, even the New York Times has an article about it!

Of course I’m talking about Oakland’s own Eat Real Festival. We’ve announced before that we’ll be there, but now we’ve got details!

We’ll be walking around with these guys:

(those are big fat vanilla cupcakes with lemony buttercream and fresh blueberries, and lil’ mini chocolate cupcakes with raspberry glaze and fresh raspberry buttercream)

…in these guys:
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(I’m talking about the trays)

From 2:00 to 6:00 pm, both Saturday and Sunday. That’s right, we’ll be roaming, so you’ll have to work for your cupcakes! The thrill of the chase and the sweetness of success will be yours!

Be there or be sorry come say hi, it’ll be fun!

WOW! What a fun weekend!



Whew! We had a super busy weekend, what with the
San Francisco Zine Fest and making award winning mac and cheese and all.


Seriously, Zine Fest was great. Zines, books, and crafts of every kind were laid out as far as the eye could see. Not only did we get to debut some of our new cupcakes but we also got to hang out with some rad people and read some zines.

Here is our spread, complete with vanilla cupcakes with lemon frosting and fresh blueberries, mini chocolate cupcakes with raspberry frosting, and of course our own Ashley’s zine(!!) Barefoot and in the Kitchen.
I really just have to take a moment here: look how darn cute those mini cupcakes are?



What could have possibly made our day any better? Fate, or actually I think it was a request form, landed us next to the lovely AK Press.


And we got to share our table with Rad Dad which was was pretty much a dream come true.


Some people are really into zines …

Ashley and I got to spend all day sitting on our tuchuses oscillating between either slinging cupcakes and zines or eating cupcakes and reading zines. Pretty good, right? The highlights of the day where, as mentioned in the last post, the ridiculously awesome folks from vegansaurus stopping by (we heart them), and winning one of the raffle prizes!

I guess this is how I look when I am delighted!

I am now the proud owner of Do It Yourself Screenprinting by John Isaacson, I am eff-ing stoked! I can maybe put the Fat Bottom logo, or really anything, on some t-shirts. Get ready.

We would have been happy as anything if that was all the excitement for the weekend. But we are ambitious. On Sunday we set out to the SF Food Wars Mac Battle Royal with Cheese. There were over over 100 tasters and a panel of judges, who obviously have great palettes:
Tamara Palmer of SFoodie/ SF weekly, Allan Hough of Mission Mission, and Beatrice Gomberg, executive chef at The Corner .

Oh and all the proceeds of this event are going right to the SF Food Bank.




It was a mad house. There were a totally of 20 competitors offering a wide array totally un-vegan, bacon-spiked, truffle infused creations.

Totally crowded!


In the midst of this dairy madness we introduced our own dish titled “Who Cares”. Our recipe is a serendipitous marrying of mine and Ashley’s own seperate recipes. Don’t worry, the recipe is soon to be online, right here on our blog and also on chow.com





Here is the sign we made. Notice the macaroni frame? Get it?



We weren’t the only vegans representing! We had an ally in the Non-Dairy King’s own brand of vegan mac. I was thrilled to be able to eat someone else’s dish and I was not disappointed!

After a few hours of dishing out mac and cheese we waited to hear the results and were surprised and delighted to get 2nd place! We got medals and everything. In our prize pack we got a generous, if not appropriate, gift card to Cowgirl Creamery- an artisan cheese store….

Here we are posing next to our name!



So, after our glorious victory it was obvious how we should celebrate: Sundaes at Maggie Mudd! (notice our medal!)


Anyway, great. Come visit us at Eat Real Fest next weekend!

Winning Hearts and Awards

Just a very quick note to make sure you all see that our new (and favorite!) friends over at Vegansaurus posted a very special post, all about us!

Now, we’ve got a longer weekend wrap-up post soon to come, and I hope this doesn’t ruin any surprises, but eff-yeah we won second place in the SF Food Wars Mac and Cheese battle! Against crazy omnivores! With our vegan recipe!

Also, the SF Zine Fest was pretty rad too. One lovely lady we met there went so far as to say (via Twitter) “The true winner of SFZineFest was Fat Bottom Bakery. Daamn those ladies can make a mean cupcake.”

Stay tuned, we’ve got all kinds of pictures and news for you.

And we’re in love (yeah, it’s mutual now!) with Vegansaurus.

P.S. Also, note that you can now follow us on Twitter! Yeah, we’re on that shit. All for your convenience of course.

Eat Real Fest Oakland

Add another rad event to our list of scheduled appearances for this month! We’ll have more details as soon as we get them about exactly where and when we’ll be there, but in the meantime, mark the Eat Real Festival on your calendar and don’t make any other plans for the weekend of August 28th-30th.

This was going to be a great event regardless of Fat Bottom’s presence (like, we were planning on going anyway), but we got lucky enough to be squeezed into the lineup of local food vendors at the last minute. No telling how much of the food will be vegan, but we’re assured that just about every vendor will have at least a vegetarian option, in addition to everything being locally-produced and cheap! I’m not kidding– cheap is actually a requirement.

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Food Trucks and carts!

Local microbrews!
Curbside cinema!
Foodie bike tours?!

We dare you to check that shit out and not show up.