I gave up dairy over two years ago but I still crave two things: pizza and mac and cheese. Pizza is easy to remedy with pizza dough, vegan pesto, tomato sauce, mushrooms, and chicken sausage. Mac and cheese is a little harder to come by. I’m not a huge fan of Daiya and other vegan cheeses, so when I came across this recipe on one of my favorite sites, Gluten Free Goddess, I got super excited! It was creamy, salty, and delicious! I used brown rice pasta to make it gluten-free as well.

Ingredients:
-12 ounces gluten-free brown rice penne pasta
-2 tablespoons olive oil
-1 zucchini, cut into small pieces
-1 garlic clove, minced
-Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
-2 tablespoons butter
-4 tablespoons all purpose flour (or brown rice flour for gluten-free option)
-2 1/2 cups organic soy milk (or regular milk if you’re not dairy-free like me)
-1/4 cup nutritional yeast
-1 teaspoon garlic powder
-1 teaspoon sea salt
-1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
-1 teaspoon mild rice vinegar
-Chopped fresh chives (which I forgot!)

Directions:
-Preheat the oven to 350F
-Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and partially cook the brown rice penne (so it’s still super al dente. It will continue to cook in the oven
-Heat a splash of olive oil in a skillet over medium heat
-Add the zucchini and minced garlic, season with sea salt, ground pepper
-Stir to coat, and quickly stir-fry, just until the zucchini is tender-crisp. Set aside.

Sauce:
– Start making the pasta sauce by heating the olive in a medium saucepan and add butter
-When butter melts, add in flour and stir with a whisk to make a paste- stir for 1 minute
-Slowly add in the soy milk (or your milk of choice) and whisk the milk with the paste to combine
-Add in the nutritional yeast, garlic powder, sea salt, nutmeg, rice vinegar
-Stir the sauce until it thickens and turn down the heat

-When the pasta is done, drain it well, and drizzle it with a touch of good olive oil
-Pour the cooked penne into a casserole dish
-Add in the zucchini
-Pour the sauce in and gently combine the penne, zucchini, and sauce until the penne is coated. Sprinkle the top with chopped fresh chives.
-Cover the dish with foil. Bake the penne in the center of oven for 20 minutes