First Try: Winter Squash Sauce

by Sherri Koehler on November 5, 2010

For some time now I’ve really love the pureed squash sauce used by Hot Lips Pizza on some of their pies. I’ve also seen mention the use of squash as the base for a rich sauce. I’d occasionally blended squash into stews to add flavor as well as thicken things a bit and we liked that a lot, but I’d yet to try making a sauce.

Last week we’d received a small Butternut squash in our box from Organics to You. I’d roasted it, but we found it kind of bland and didn’t eat much. I’d put the leftover squash into the fridge and figured I’d throw it in a soup or something. Since it is VeganMoFo I was feeling pretty inspired to try out some new things.

I put some waxy potatoes into the over in a cast iron skillet. I sauteed some shallot with tempeh and broccoli. While all that was cooking I blended the squash into an awesome sauce that required no starches to thicken to a smooth, creamy consistency.  I’ll have to play around with this again to get the exact measurements down, but here’s a rough outline.

In a blender add 1/3 raw cashews and just cover with boiling water. Let cashews soak at least 10 minutes before adding 2-3 cups roasted squash; begin processing. Slowly add in about 2 cups of rice milk. While processing add 2/3 cup fine flake nutritional yeast, slowly. You may need to add some of the nutritional yeast and then add a little more of the rice milk (our blender is a little under powered). While still processing add in sweet, smoked paprika, dry mustard, granulated garlic, freshly ground pepper and some prepared, whole grain mustard. When thoroughly blended transfer sauce into a saucepan bring slowly up to heat.

This makes enough that we had some drizzled over the roasted potatoes, grilled tempeh & broccoli and we have a generous amount leftover that I’m going to make into scalloped potatoes this weekend. It is rich, creamy sauce, faintly sweet and I can’t wait to use it in more dishes!

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