Creamy Pasta Sauces

So lately we've been trying different ways to make creamy pasta sauces without using tomatoes, since Danielle is more into alfredo-y stuff than marinara-y stuff. The first try was a complete success thanks to the Post Punk Kitchen's amazing Cream Red Chard Linguine recipe, where the creaminess is cashew-based and alfredo-like. I used fettuccine noodles instead of linguine, and sherry instead of red wine. Oh man... it was delicious.

Then we tried using the Pesto Soup recipe to make a sauce to put over Rising Moon Organics Spinach Florentine Ravioli and that was delicious too. There the creaminess was cauliflower based.

Feeling encouraged, yesterday when my original plans for lunch (lentil sloppy joes) fell through, I decided to use some of the sweet meat squash to try and make a creamy squash-based pasta sauce. I figured if I found a couple of recipes and then used the basic idea of the pesto soup sauce recipe, it should work.

Here's what the finished product looked like. I feel like it needs something more to it, flavor-wise, but the consistency was really good.

So I took a look at this recipe and this one too. And then here's basically what I did:

Chopped half a very large onion, about equivalent to one large onion... then 3 cloves of garlic. Peeled about a pound or two of the squash and chopped it into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces, chopped 2 carrots into small pieces, and chopped up a bit of fresh rosemary too.

In a big pot, sauteed the onion in olive oil until translucent, then added garlic until fragrant, then added a cup of broth (made with Better than Bouillon's No Chicken Base), 1 1/2 tablespoons of dried basil, a pinch of thyme, and the rosemary. Put in the squash, stirred it around, and it looked like there wasn't enough liquid so I poured in a little bit of almond milk, then covered it and let it simmer until the squash and carrots were soft. While this was going on, I chopped up two leaves of kale and mixed together a little over half of another cup of broth with about half a tablespoon of cornstarch. I also started cooking my pasta (I used penne). When hte squash and carrots were soft I stirred in the cornstarchy broth and then let it boil uncovered for a while until it was slightly thickened. Then I poured it by halves into a blender (be careful to let the steam out) to make it all smooth and creamy, and poured it back into the pot with the kale to let it wilt and soften the leaves. Drained the pasta and stirred it in with the sauce. Added garlic salt as needed, and when Danielle got home she put in a little cube of frozen basil to add more flavor. I also put a little bit of nutritional yeast on mine, but it didn't make much difference with the taste actually...

So, a cooking experiment which was a semi-success but leaves a lot of room for improvement. If anyone tries this and comes up with a way to make it taste more like BAM THAT WAS GOOD let me know xD