roast tomato and thyme macaroni 'cheese"

This comes from mydarlinglemonthyme.com here

It's cooling off here, and warm casserole dishes are starting to sound wonderful again. Fall is sneaking around the corner, and this sounds like the perfect comfort food as the weather changes.  I will use hemp milk instead of the almond milk personally. It even includes how to make your own almond milk, (if you can tolerate it). 

serves 4

• 250g punnet of cherry tomatoes
• 2 teaspoons chopped thyme leaves
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 1 cup nutritional yeast
• 2 tablespoons fine brown rice flour
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 2 cups unsweetened almond milk (homemade is perfect!)
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard (check it's gluten-free)

• 250g packet gluten-free macaroni pasta
• 2-3 tablespoons almond milk, extra
• 2 spring onions, finely sliced
• extra thyme leaves, optional

Preheat oven to 200 C/ 395F. Place tomatoes into a oven-proof dish that's large enough to hold the finished macaroni and cheese. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over tomatoes, scatter with thyme leaves and season well with sea salt and black pepper. Roast for 20 minutes or until the skins burst. Remove from the oven and set aside until required.

Meanwhile put a large pot of salted water on to boil while you prepare the 'cheese' sauce. Combine the nutritional yeast, brown rice flour, garlic, sea salt and almond milk in a medium pan and whisk until smooth. Bring to the boil over medium heat, then turn down to a simmer and cook, stirring often for 2-3 minutes until thickened slightly. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Once the water is boiling cook the pasta until just al dente, cooked but still firm to the bite. You want to make sure you don't over cook the pasta at this stage as it still has to have a second cooking in the oven. Drain the pasta, then stir through 'cheese' sauce, adding an extra 2-3 tablespoons of almond milk to thin the sauce down, you want it to be on the runny side now, as the pasta will absorb a lot of the sauce when cooking in the oven. Add spring onion and gently fold through the roasted tomatoes. Taste and season with sea salt and black pepper if needed. Transfer the mixture back into the dish the tomatoes were roasting in, pop in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes or until the top is lovely and golden.