Mornay-Style Cheeze Sauce

Mornay-Style Cheeze Sauce

I was in the mood for a cheezy style pasta dish, and settled on the Cheezy Tomato Macaroni (see review above), which required first making the "Mornay-Style Cheeze Sauce" (page 552).  Like many cheeze sauces, the predominant ingredient used here to give it the sort-of-close-to-dairy-cheese flavor is nutritional yeast.  Quite a lot, actually, a full ½ cup, so if you are one of those people who really aren't fond of nutritional yeast, you probably wouldn't care for this recipe.  I, however, am very fond of this flavor, and always have a goodly supply on hand for making rich vegan sauces, dressings, and spreads without adding fat or extra calories.

Besides the nutritional yeast, the other ingredients are sautéed onion, broth, lemon, soymilk, and a little mustard. The bright yellow color comes from turmeric, and the sauce is thickened with cornstarch.  For some reason, the sauce did not thicken up for me.  Actually, it did initially, but as I progressed through the recipe, the thickening disappeared.  Not sure what was going on there, but I ended up blending 2 tablespoons of flour into the sauce which did the trick.  It thickened back up and stayed there.

At this point, I tasted the sauce, and was quite pleased with the smooth, slightly tangy result, and put it aside to add to the Cheezy Tomato Macaroni.  I could imagine this poured over steamed vegetables, as the recipe notes suggested, and stirred into any cooked pasta.  I omitted the oil when sautéing the onions to keep it McDougall friendly.