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Friday, January 13, 2012

Viva la Vegan: A Cheese Sauce by Any Other Name

Eating vegan doesn't mean that I want to give up all of my recipes that once contained meat. I was craving chili, the kind that would be poured over top of a Fatboy from any number of local greasy spoon burger joints (Mrs. Mike's, Superboys, Daly). Unfortunately, this kind of chili is all meat. Likely beef (at least I always hoped). I decided to give the dried TVP (textured vegetable protein) from Bulk Barn a try. I scooped out about a cup of dried TVP and put it in about 2 cups of boiling water to reconstitute the "meat". I chopped an onion and sauteed it with the meat.
meat for the chili
 I didn't have any peppers or red kidney beans so instead I added a can of white kidney beans and black-eyed peas, along with a can of crushed pineapple to add a Hawaiian taste. Some ketchup, a bit of mustard, brown sugar and let it sit in it's nice warm slow cooker pot to soak everything up. This would be a meal for another day and definitely lunches at work.
vegan Hawaiian chili
 Something else that I was missing with vegan eating was cheese. While I had found a site that showed how to make blocks of cheese out of cashews and other ingredients, I was dubious about this. I did find another recipe on Dreena's Vive le Vegan blog that had me very interested. It was called "Vegveeta" and was supposed to taste like the similarly named cheese-like food. You can find the recipe here.
The base of this cheese is raw cashews, which I had a big bag of from Bulk Barn just for this purpose, although it was quickly dwindling down due to my post-workout snacking. Nutritional yeast, tahini, lemon juice, white vinegar, almond milk, mustard, corn starch, paprika, salt, pepper, turmeric and canola oil were added with the cashews to the food processor. This vegan diet was giving our KitchenAid a real workout! After blending until smooth, the cheese was poured into a saucepan to heat through and thicken.
I added some reduced salt taco seasoning to the cheese dip to give it a more Tex-Mex flair and served it with dinner to dip the potato wedges into. 
How was this fake cheese? OM NOM NOM!! So good! Definitely try this one, folks.
Dreena's Vegveeta
 Dinner was a slice of seitan, marinated in leftover "bacon" liquid and served on a slice of sprouted grain bread with vegenaise, tomato, and sprouts. The sides were roasted carrots, sauteed spinach, and potato wedges. Mmmm, crispy potato wedges dipped in creamy fake cheese sauce!!
vegan dinner
I was craving something sweet so decided to use up a bunch of our fruit to make a compote. Chopped apples, bananas, fresh cranberries and leftover crushed pineapple with juice. I poured the chunks into a casserole dish and put this, covered, into the oven at a lower temperature to slowly bake/steam the fruit.
Fruit compote, pre baking
 The next day, leftovers were on the menu. Leftovers and the chili that I had made the night before when I had time. The meal came together really quickly. All I had to do was lightly cook some broccoli then pour some reheated cheese on top and a bowl of heated chili. Wonderful and colourful!
Hawaiian chili and broccoli with cheese sauce
 Since I had really liked the soy slice stir-fry I had made earlier for myself, I decided to make it again for C and I. Broccoli, carrots, snow peas, soba noodles, and soy slices were stir-fried with some teriyaki sauce mixed in water. Some warmed cherry sauce dotted on top, yum! I love serving bowl foods like this in certain bowls I bought at Urban Outfitters in Ottawa and hauled back with me in my suitcase ages ago. They are perfect half rounds, vibrant colours, and fit so nicely in my hands. I love eating stir-fry with wooden chopsticks. These utensils force me to slow down and allow me to really savor and enjoy the meal. 
I call this thoughtful eating.  
a thoughtful colourful bowl of stir-fry
 After the success with Vegveeta, I was willing to give another one of Dreena's cheese recipes a try. This one was called Mac-Oh-Geez (I love the name!). Same idea with the processed raw cashews.
raw cashews
 Blend the cashews until they are as smooth as possible. Be patient.
blended cashews
 I didn't have any raw Brazil nuts so I just used more cashews in their place. The rest of the ingredients went into the food processor. I would recommend transferring the cashews to a blender though and then adding the rest of the ingredients since this sauce is very watery.
cheese sauce, uncooked
 I had bought a bag of cute curly pasta that was going to make the perfect mac and cheese.
curly noodles
 Once the noodles were cooked, I poured them into a strainer to drain the water, but didn't rinse the noodles.
cooked pasta
 I poured the noodles back into the same pot and then the cheese mixture from the food processor. This will be really liquid-y but trust the recipe. This all changes after being baked.
mac and cheese, pre-baking
 This whole mix was carefully poured into a greased casserole pan and then covered with foil for baking.
mac and cheese unbaked
 As promised, the cheese thickened during the baking process. The casserole looked puffy, like an egg bake of some kind. I was a little worried that this wouldn't be creamy at all.
mac and cheese baked
 I tentatively slid a serving spoon into what appeared to be a casserole and scooped up a bunch of the noodles to mix them up. Ohh! The pasta and cheese made the right squishing sound! You know the sound I'm talking about. Only pasta and cheese sauce makes this sound and it sounded right!
mac and cheese, stirred up
mmmm no cheese mac and cheese
 Well, since it sounded right, I just assumed that it would taste right as well. No sense in formalities since it was just me home this evening. A fancy fork skewered a few spirals and I popped them into my mouth, licking the cheese sauce off the spoon. Well, they don't taste like cheese per say, but the texture was spot-on to what I was hoping for and craving.  Something to keep in mind is that don't let the fact that this is vegan fool you into thinking that you can eat loads of it. Well, you can, but you shouldn't if you want to maintain your girlish figures. This dish is still full of pasta and cashews are high in fat, albeit healthier fat. So, all good things in moderation.
creamy mac and cheese
 To stop me from standing at the stove eating forkful after forkful of this awesome dish, I made a side of broccoli and mushrooms and pan fried the last piece of tofu bacon and added some mustard to it. I tossed on a bit of leftover taco seasoning to the mac and cheese and it was such a good dinner. I only wish that C had been home that night to enjoy it with me, but he would get a change to try it later when he came home.
a dinner with mac and cheese
A side note about the tofu bacon I've been making. I went to Boon Burger Cafe today for lunch with a friend and we tried the vegan "fish" burger and bacon cheeseburger. There was tofu bacon on the cheeseburger and we both decided that the recipe I used was much tastier!

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