I certainly don’t, and neither do you! For more reasons than one. First of all Alfredo sauce is loaded with loads of butter, cream, milk and cheese. Yup, all in one recipe. That is a heck of a lot of work for your body to digest and for your heart to work. But the good news is that you don’t need Alfredo or a cream based sauce to have a delicious bowl of “creamy” noodles.
Once you make this recipe – you will never look a bowl of Alfredo or creamy pasta the same way. This recipe was created for my sea vegetables class – as a pseudo take on one of my favourite childhood meals “tuna casserole”. I used to love the stuff. Big white noodles loaded with tuna and cheesy sauce (kind of like an Alfredo). It was my absolute all time favourite. In fact anything with noodles and cheese made me very happy.
Being able to simulate that experience with amazing wholesome ingredients brings a smile to my face – gluten free brown rice noodles, a creamy sauce made from tahini along with some soaked, fresh torn wakame to give it that “salty” sea taste. The wakame is also adding a whole bunch of other nutrients and minerals into this dish as sea vegetables are super nutritious!
My cravings for this dish come every so often, and when they do– I can’t stop eating it. I can almost eat half of the amount I make each time because it just melts in your mouth.
It’s also that time of year when I actually feel really good about sitting down to a whole bowl full of noodles!
Okay, I will stop the teasing and get to the recipe – which doesn’t look all that exciting. But you just wait; you will not need Alfredo or cream based sauces ever again.
Enjoy this dish along side a bowl of steamed kale, a dark leafy green salad or some miso soup.
Happy eating!
Baked “Tuna” Casserole
What’s in it?
1 small onion, cut into thin slices
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 cup wakame, soaked in cold water for 5 minutes, removed and chopped
2 tablespoons tamari
1 package of brown rice noodles or quinoa spiral noodles (Tinkyada Brand)
¾ cup water
½ cup tahini
5 tablespoons tamari
1/2 cup wheat free/gluten free/brown rice bread crumbs
How it’s made!
- Preheat oven to 375 F
- Sauté onion in sesame oil until transparent. Place wakame on top of onions. Add tamari, and cook for about 10 minutes until the liquid is absorbed.
- In the meantime, cook noodles until done. Drain and set aside.
- Mix together tahini, tamari and ¾ cup water until smooth. If the sauce should curdle, continue mixing.
- Mix onion, wakame mixture, noodles and tahini sauce together. Cover with breadcrumbs.
- Bake for approximately 20 minutes.