Posts filed under 'fake cheese'
There are innumerable recipes for vegan mac and cheese on the internet. I’ve tried a lot of them. Some of them simply call for “slices of soy cheese” and some vegetable stock to be mixed over pasta. The majority, however, require nutritional yeast, and they usually also require making a roux. The recipe below is from my upcoming cookbook, and it’s one of my favorites. However, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, there are some things about vegan mac and cheeze I want to talk about.
Now, I’m the first to admit “Mac and Yeast” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. That’s why I tend to call it “Mac and Cheeze”. But I’m also the first to admit that these recipes, even the best of them, don’t really taste all that much like mac and cheese. Some get much closer than others, and a lot are downright tasty. But it’s not cheese. Your omnivore or veggie friend/spouse/child may love it as much as or even more than the real stuff (if you’re lucky), but they probably love it on its own merits, not because they really can’t tell the difference.
But you know what? It doesn’t have to taste exactly the same for me to love it.
A lot of people, myself included, are really interested in making vegan food that’s indistinguishable from the “real” thing. It’s a fun challenge, and oftentimes, a challenge where you can really and truly be successful. But there are many instances where you don’t create something identical, but what you do create is actually good. Different, but yummy. While vegan mac and cheese doesn’t taste exactly like non-vegan mac and cheese, it satisfies the same craving. It’s rich and creamy and salty and vaguely cheese-like. It’s a yummy, thick creamy sauce to top noodles with.
I think that sometimes it’s enough to satisfy your cravings with something similar, if you can’t find something identical. After three years of being vegan, I don’t even crave mac and cheese anymore; I crave mac and yeast.
I think expectation is important with food. If it looks like a grape, you expect it to taste like a grape. If I hand you a glass of sparkling wine and tell you it’s gingerale, you might be put off when you take a sip. You might even like wine, but you expected it to be, well, not wine. If I say, “here, try this mac and cheese” and give you mac and yeast, you might be disappointed when you tasted it. If you’ve never tried a mac and yeast recipe before, and you want to try this one, keep in mind that it doesn’t taste like cheese.
It just tastes like yummy. Well, it does to me and the vegans that tested the recipe for me!
Mac and Cheeze
Serves 2-3
1/3 Cup Earth Balance Margarine
1/4 Cup All Purpose Flour
2 1/2 Tbs Low Sodium Tamari or Soy Sauce
1 Tbs Lemon Juice, fresh
1 Tbs Sweet/White/Mellow Miso
1 Tbs Tahini
1 Tbs Tomato Paste (not sauce!)
1 1/4 Cup Soy Milk
1/3 Cup Nutritional Yeast
1 Pinch Salt
Black Pepper, to taste
Begin by heating a sauce pan and adding the earth balance. Once melted, add flour and whisk vigorously until a smooth paste forms, called a roux. Be careful not to add flour to a pan that is very hot, or your roux will be lumpy and you’ll need to start over. If you mix in the flour as soon as the margarine is melted and you should avoid any problems.
To this paste, add tamari, lemon, miso, tahini, and tomato paste and whisk until well incorporated. The mixture should still be paste-like. Then slowly pour in the soymilk, whisking constantly, until it is completely incorporated. Add the yeast and mix well. Cook the mixture until it thickens, whisking often. This should take approximately 5 minutes, but it’s flexible. Add salt and pepper to taste.
I like this the most baked. Cook 3 cups of dry, small pasta (like elbows or shells or rotini) and toss with the finished cheezy sauce. Add steamed broccoli (pictured) for a real treat. Top with fresh breadcrumbs and bake at 400º for 25 minutes, or until browned and bubbly.
I’ve spilled so much ink so far (well, pixels) telling you that vegan cheese doesn’t taste like cheese, so I figured I’d close the entry with this: vegan cheese that, to me, tastes like mother forkin’ cheese! It deserves an entire entry devoted to it, so I’ll just leave you with this until part two of my vegan cheese post:
October 17th, 2007
I’ve been thinking about creating a tomato cream sauce for a while. Actually, I wanted to make a vodka sauce, but I absolutely cannot stand vodka so we never have any in the house. We do, however, continually have a veritable mountain of tomatoes in the kitchen. Hello, Summer!
I’m beginning to get a huge crush on blender sauces. Toss everything into the blender, whiz it up, heat it up and you’re done. Between the blender sauce and the cappellini (aka angel hair) that cooks in 2-3 minutes, this is a lightning quick meal. It’s fast and tasty, but not exactly healthy. It’s a cream sauce! What do you want from me?!
The sauce makes enough to coat two reasonable portions of pasta. I say “reasonable” because when it comes to pasta, that’s not what I usually make. I tend to go for “ridiculous” which usually ends in my husband and I complaining that are stomachs are going to absolutelyexploderightthisminute for an hour after eating. If you make more than two lunch-sized pasta portions, you might want to make more sauce. However, you don’t want to drown your cappellini. This dish works best when it’s just lightly coated.
Cappellini in Fresh Tomato Cream Sauce
Serves Two
4 Small Tomatoes, quartered (about 2 Cups)
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Italian Herbs of your choice
3 Tbs Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese
1 Tbs Earth Balance
1 Tbs Nutritional Yeast
2-4 Cloves Garlic, optional
Heat well-salted water for you pasta.
While heating, whiz your tomatoes around in your blender until it becomes as smooth as it’s going to get. You should now have 1 cup of pink tomato sludge. Add remaining ingredients and blend again until well combined. Add mixture to a skillet over medium heat. Once you start to see it bubble, you’re going to have to stir it fairly constantly so it doesn’t burn. Use one of those fun rubber spatulas for this, I think it does the job best.
The sauce will be a light pink color when you start, but by the time it’s done it’ll be a rich, creamy orange. You basically want to cook it until the tomatoes lose their raw taste, which shouldn’t take too long, about 10 minutes.
Just before the sauce is done, add your pasta (broken in half for easier mixing with the sauce) to the water. Check for doneness after 2 minutes. Strain and add pasta directly to the sauce, right in the skillet there on the stove. Mix well and serve immediately topped with lots of freshly cracked black pepper.
If this dish sits after the sauce is added, it’ll clump up a bit. It’ll still be tasty, but the noodles will stick together. It’s best if you time it so you can serve it immediately. That should be pretty easy to do since the pasta cooks so quickly–just have it be the last part of your meal that you prepare.
August 9th, 2007
It’s really a shame about summer being so hot. All of this wonderful produce available–my refrigerator is bursting at the bolts with our CSA veggies–and no desire to cook! The thought of turning a gas burner on makes me wince, and I’d rather just pretend I don’t own an oven.
We’ve been getting particularly beautiful tomatoes from Red Fire Farm. I have a confession, though. I’m not a huge fan of raw tomatoes. I tend to eat around them. They get picked out of sandwiches halfway through and blatantly ignored in salads. I discovered that cooking them, even just slightly, makes a world of difference.
I LOVE slightly cooked tomatoes! They are the perfect sandwich filler.
And slightly cooked anything is good in this heat. This is a light, summery sandwich I made for lunch. It’s quick, easy, tasty, and takes advantage of the enormous amounts of summer tomatoes and basil we have at our disposal. I’ve spread the sourdough with Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, which is really one of the best vegan cheese products out there.
Tomato Basil Sandwiches
Makes 1 Sammich
2-3 Roma Tomatoes, sliced lengthwise 1/4″ thick
1 Generous Pinch Salt
1 Tbs Olive Oil
1-2 Pinches Dried Italian Herbs
1 Splash Balsamic Vinegar
2 Slices Sourdough
Tofutti Cream Cheese
4-5 Basil Leaves
Black Pepper
Heat a skillet over medium heat with oil and herbs. Once hot, add tomatoes in one layer. Give the pan a little shake and flip the tomatoes about. Add salt. Once they are beginning to soften, but not falling apart, add a splash of balsamic vinegar while shaking the pan. Turn off heat. This process should only take a few minutes.
Spread your bread with tofutti, add chopped basil and pepper. Place tomatoes on top of that. Grill sandwich with a weight on top. If you’re not grilling, simply toast the bread first, then add tofutti and tomatoes. Enjoy! I’m going to go clean out my freezer so I can crawl inside it.
PS - I’m incredibly flattered to have been nominated in the 2007 VegNews Veggie Awards!! If you’re feeling so inclined, pop over and vote for me in the food blog category. Thanks!!
August 3rd, 2007
I’ve been running around trying to get a bank of recipes together for my cookbook project. I made these today, and they would have been so good had they not melted my mouth. Apparently jalapenos range from 2,500 to 10,000 scovilles, and I guess the peppers I picked up were closer to the latter. I took one bite and had to fly into the kitchen to rip a chunk of bread off the nice loaf that Stewart bought earlier today.
I ended up eating the breading off, and scooping the filling out with my fingers. Not very good table manners, but I wanted to eat them! Next time I make these I should test the heat of the peppers before I begin filling them.
I’m saving the recipe for the book/zine/whatever, but I can give you some tips on how to fill them:
Use the tip of a sharp paring knife to cut a little door out of the side of the pepper. Some recipes say to cut the entire pepper in half, but those recipes have sticky cheese in the middle to help the pepper glue itself back together.
Again, with the tip of your knife, try to remove as much of the seeds and membranes as possible. They sort of hang down in the pepper in a cone, so if you cut the top and slide your knife down the sides, it should come out without too much fussing. Remove any membranes from the little door, too, since you’ll be using that piece.
Oh, and leave the stems on!
If you have a pastry bag, use that to fill the peppers. If not, a ziplock with the corner cut off will work just as well. You want to put enough filling in so that the door sticks to the pepper when you put it back in place. If a little of the filling squishes out, just wipe it off and eat it, as long as no one is watching.
They should hold up well enough while you’re covering them in batter, and once they’re fried they’ll be sealed shut. I need to go find some peppers that don’t want to kill me so I can make this again.
April 21st, 2007
This recipe has a few surprises. My requirements for dinner included using an eggplant, a red pepper, a stalk of broccoli, and some leftover tofu. This turned out to be really fun and easy, despite the copious amounts of dishes it seemed to leave me with. I’m sure I could have made it in a more organized fashion had I not been making it up as I went along.
The sauce you see is not tomato, it’s simply a single red bell pepper, pureed raw, with a pinch of salt. I need to remind myself every once in a while that it’s not necessary to cook every single vegetable I want to eat. It added a nice sweetness to balance out the salty roasted eggplant and sun-dried tomatoes in the couscous. Yup! That’s couscous in there, too!
Can you guess what the green bit on the top is? Pureed, steamed broccoli! This was such a fun way to eat broccoli, I want to buy more immediately so I can blend it up again and use it in odd places. Forgive my enthusiasm, but there’s something about this light, bright green broccoli fluff that makes be a bit giddy.
Eggplant Napoleon
Serves four
Roasted Eggplant
1 Eggplant, sliced into 3/8″ thick rounds
1/2 Cup Olive oil (I know! It’s a lot! Use less if you want!)
1 tsp Salt
Sun-dried Tomato Couscous
1/2 cup Couscous (french - the very tiny kind thats roughly shaped)
1/4 Cup Sun-Dried Tomatoes, sliced in strips
1 Cup Water, boiling
Sauce
1 Red Bell Pepper, seeded and veined
1 pinch to 1/4 tsp salt
Broccoli Fluff
2 Cups Broccoli, rough chopped, steamed
Pepper to taste
1/2 Recipe Tofu Ricotta
1/2 Cup Toasted Pine Nuts
Preheat oven to 425º F.
Rub eggplant slices in salt and oil, place in one layer on a cookie sheet, and bake for 20 minutes. Flip, bake for 10 more minutes, remove from oven.
Meanwhile, place couscous and tomatoes in a small pot with a dribble of vegetable oil. Toast over medium heat until fragrant, add boiling water, cover, reduce heat to low. After 10 minutes, turn off heat. Puree your pepper in a food processor until very smooth. Add salt to taste, set aside. Steam broccoli, puree, add pepper to taste, set aside. Toast pine nuts in a dry skillet. Mix together tofu ricotta, heat in mircowave until hot, set aside.
To assemble
Place a bit of the pepper sauce in the middle of the plate. Add a slice of eggplant on top of that. Add a layer of tofu ricotta and a layer of broccoli fluff. Add another slice of eggplant. Add couscous and broccoli. Add the last slice of eggplant and top with tofu and broccoli. Garnish with toasted pine nuts.
April 12th, 2007
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