Two Creamy Pasta Recipes Made Fully Raw!!!

So for this post, I've decided to share a couple raw pasta recipes that I have found to be awesome!  I'm including the link to the sites that inspired my cooking, but with each of these, I made a few minor modifications.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Creamy Alfredo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJzK4P8N5U

I am super excited about this recipe for so many reasons! First of all this is so light and fresh and yet still tangy and creamy. This is definitely going to be a recipe to keep for many future uses.  When I was looking for a good raw Alfredo sauce recipe, I was getting disappointed that they all contained a large volume of cashews.  I LOVE cashews, but I was really hoping to find one that wasn't so heavy on the fat.  Thank you Kristina and Fully Raw for coming to my rescue!!! 

One of the recipes I found online used butternut squash noodles, instead of the zucchini noodles I've been using.  I had a little butternut squash sitting on my counter that I have been trying to figure out how to use raw, so I decided that this was the dish.


To make the squash noodles, I used a hand held peeler.  These will be very wide noodles, which is great with Alfredo sauce. :)  The recipe with the butternut squash noodles suggested to soak them in olive oil to soften them.  Again, I am trying to stay away from high fat, so I soaked them in water.  They were very al dente, but very tasty. 

Before I made the sauce, I made the cauliflower "cheese" topping. This is very simple.  I put a couple small cauliflower florets into the food processor and let it go until it had the consistency of grated Parmesan cheese. Then I set it aside until I needed it.  I also sliced my cherry tomatoes.

 The sauce was very simple: 3 whole zucchinis, 1/4 cup pine nuts, 1 clove of garlic, and the juice from one lemon.  The original recipe called for some fresh herbs that I didn't have on hand, and it worked out just as well.  I ended up adding more ingredients to the sauce after I took the picture.  The clove of garlic was a little big and my zucchinis were pretty small.  The lemon just tied it all together.  Make sure and taste your sauce and modify for your taste buds.

I put all these beautiful ingredients in the blender and pureed until it was a sauce consistency.  I did have to scrape the sides down a few times.  Also, when it first started blending, I was afraid that it was looking too dry.  Just let it go, when the zucchinis break down they make the sauce nice and moist.

At this point the dish is ready for assembly.  Pour your sauce over the noodles.  If you would rather, the original recipe calls for zucchini noodles.  They are awesome as well.  I tried to mix the sauce with a spoon, but my fingers worked much nicer for this task.

Once you have your noodles coated in the sauce, its time to add your toppings.  I added a nice heaping pile of cauliflower cheese and lots of yummy fresh tomatoes.  For a little color I topped it off with some fresh thyme and parsley from my garden.  Right now, for me, this is a two serving recipe.

Using the butternut squash as noodles, this entire recipe comes out to only 548 calories!  If you only eat half as a meal, like I did, then that is only 248.  Not bad!!!  If you use zucchini instead of the butternut squash for noodles then the total comes to 461 calories for the single recipe.  (I calculated based on 5 large zucchini instead of the butternut squash and 3 small zucchini I used.)

Creamy Avocado Pasta

http://ohsheglows.com/2011/01/31/15-minute-creamy-avocado-pasta/


This recipe was super easy to make raw, as the only modification I had to make was in substituting the pasta and the olive oil.  Now the olive oil is really a preference thing, getting cold pressed olive oil is still technically raw, but I am striving to have fully unprocessed ingredients in my raw cooking.

I used my mandolin to slice my noodles from a zucchini and a squash.  I don't have a spiralizer yet, but if I continue to choose this lifestyle, I might be getting one soon in my future. :)  For now my mandolin does the trick.

For the sauce, I put all the ingredients into my food processor and blended away.  Now I substituted pine nuts for the olive oil.  My sauce was a little thick, so I added a few teaspoons of water to help it blend smooth and creamy.  If you choose to use the oil, then don't worry about the water.  I would advise against any milk, even non-dairy, as the lemon would not mix well with it.

To finish this dish, toss your noodles with your sauce.  I had to use my hands to get the noodles well coated.  This recipe is HUGE and not many calories.  My version was only 376 calories.  If you change any other ingredients, the calories may also change.