We tried the Beyond Burger

We visited the Cruelty Free shop in Glebe recently and when I saw that they had the Beyond Burger in stock, I couldn’t resist.  We had it for dinner that night with roast vegetables, steamed snow peas and a Greek salad, made with a vegan feta that I also purchased at the Cruelty Free shop (unfortunately I don’t remember which brand).

The Beyond Burger really is kind of amazing.  The  taste and texture is very realistic.  It’s almost too realistic.  We all enjoyed it and I’m glad we tried it, but I don’t think I’d want to eat it *too* regularly.

The feta tasted nice but kind of melted into the tomato and cucumber, as you can see in the photo.  So I ate up the rest of it by spreading it on toast when I wanted a savoury snack, and it was delicious.

Homemade vegan cheese

This is the first recipe I’ve tried from Julie Piatt’s book This Cheese is Nuts. Many recipes in the book involve a dehydrator, but I don’t own a dehydrator. (Do you own a dehydrator? Are they worth it? I’m very interested in any comments you may have.)  So I tried a “form cheese” which doesn’t require a dehydrator.

This is the cashew cheddar. The colour comes from emptying out beta-carotene capsules. You mix up all the ingredients in a blender and then stir it around in a saucepan until it reaches a particular temperature and starts pulling away from the sides of the pan as you stir.  I didn’t use a thermometer but I did stir and stir and eventually, the magic happened.  Hooray! Then, the mixture firms up in the fridge.

Even when chilled, the cheese wasn’t as solid as I expected. It was good on sandwiches or on top of chillis. But I had also put some of the cheese in the freezer (I used four ramekins, because I didn’t have a larger container of the right size). Freezing the cheese changed the texture and it became more solid, as pictured. After freezing, the cheese was sliceable but still easily spreadable.

If I made this again, I would add some more flavourings, like pepper and garlic. The strong and gorgeous flavours of (my sister!) Leigh Drew’s cashew cheese recipe has set the bar really high, I guess.  I’d also like to try some of the other recipes in the book, and may try using the oven on a very low temperature for a very long time, as an alternative to a dehydrator. (Have you ever tried that?  How did it go??)

Aquafaba mozzarella

As soon as I read this recipe one One Green Planet, I knew that I had to try it.  I’d never made a cheese using chickpea liquid before. The recipe was very easy to make, combining soaked cashews with the chickpea liquid, and some flavourings, before stirring over heat to make the mixture thicken, then cooling overnight. As you can perhaps see from the photos,  what I ended up with was a kind of soft spreadable cheese… and that’s fine with me.

The cheese is tasty, though mild. Next time I make it I might try increasing the quantity of lemon juice and nutritional yeast a bit. But it definitely pressed all the right buttons when served with tomato slices, home-grown basil and olive oil.

Next I tried the mozzarella in a toasted sandwich. It didn’t form any long strings when I bit into it but it tastes cheesey and comforting. Again, this is totally fine by me. I guess the next step would be to try it on a vegan pizza.

Easy vegan pizza

It’s very satisfying to make your own pizza from scratch, including the base, but it does take time. Here’s a simpler option, just using a store-bought (but uncooked) plain pizza base. (I’m sure you don’t really need instructions for this, but here goes…)

Step 1: Buy a pizza base from a major supermarket (a plain one, with no toppings). Check that it’s vegan: if it’s a traditional recipe, it should be.

Step 2: Roast some garlic (instructions on how to do this are available lots of places, including here.) If you want any other roasted toppings (e.g. capsicum), roast them on a tray at the same time.

Step 3: Heat up a tin of chopped tomatoes, stir through the roasted garlic and add herbs. (Some dried basil and dried oregano is OK, or you can use fresh if you want.) Season to taste. (You can also squeeze in some tomato puree if you like.) Leave over low heat for a while so that the sauce reduces to the desired thickness.

Step 4: Prepare your toppings. I don’t like dry, uncooked bits of mushroom on my pizzas, so I tend to fry the slices first in a little oil, until they soften and release their liquid. Getting this liquid out in advance also helps to make sure your pizza doesn’t get too soggy while it cooks. As well as mushroom, on this pizza I used roasted capsicum strips (with skin removed), kalamata olives, sweetcorn kernels, some Vbites Cheatin’ Meat Pepperoni style slices (chopped up) and some grated vegan cheese.

Step 5: After your tomato sauce has thickened a bit, leave it to cool for a while. Then use a spoon to dollop some sauce onto the base and spread it around, not too thickly. Then, add your toppings: other than the cheese, you want the topping in a single layer. Finally, cook the pizza according to the instructions on the pack. Dig in and enjoy! I know I did.

Soft macadamia cheese

I love the cashew cheese recipe from Veganissimo so much that I hadn’t tried any of the other cheeses…. until now. This is Soft Macadamia Cheese from Veganissimo. It has 6 ingredients and is very easy to make: you just whizz everything up in a food processor, place into a cheesecloth and leave it in the fridge overnight, suspended over a bowl. The idea is that any excess moisture will come out, but I guess mine was just right because no moisture came out. (I used a very clean, unscented Chux instead of a cheesecloth.)

The resulting cheese is soft and tastes delicious (this is the word my six-year old suggested we use here). I didn’t have any grapes or guava paste (the serving suggestions given by Leigh at the end of the recipe) but found that the cheese is very nice on a cracker with a little Branston pickle: not too much or the taste of the macadamia cheese might be drowned out. I will definitely be making this lovely little cheese again.

My man made vegan chilli

For years, chilli was my husband’s signature dish. I guess he missed not making it for me since I became vegan, because last week he did some googling and found a recipe called Kerryann’s chilli con veggie (on Jamie Oliver’s website). Then he cooked it for me and it was delicious. Just as well, because it makes a huge amount so we ate it for 3 nights and we all enjoyed it.

This recipe has kidney beans, black beans, lentils and the surprise inclusion, leeks. We all enjoyed it. Mine is pictured here with My Life Biocheese grated on it. This is a “fasting cheese” from Greece which is vegan, looks like a softish cheddar, grates and melts well… and I like it. I do detect a mild coconutty after-taste, but that’s fine. I was very excited to see it in my local supermarket earlier this year, and will definitely buy it again.

Next time we have chilli I might try making vegan sour cream using this recipe from Oh She Glows.

Toasted sandwich with vegan mozzarella

While we’re on the subject of vegan mozzarella (recipe from Veganissimo), it also works very nicely in toasted sandwiches.

I have to confess that I took this photo to prove a point: vegan margarine does NOT cause sandwiches to stick to toasted sandwich makers. (My mother-in-law blamed vegan margarine for the disaster we had with her ancient toasted sandwich maker last December. I think perhaps the ancientness of said appliance might have had something to do with it.)

Pizza with vegan mozzarella

I made this delicious pizza and I am proud. The pizza base recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance. The toppings were roast capsicum, roast asparagus, kalamata olives and toasted pine nuts, and some homemade vegan mozzarella cheese! The mozzarella cheese recipe is from Veganissimo.

Cashew Cheese – a love song

OK, so I wrote a song… this happens, very occasionally.  I wrote a song about a vegan cheese…  That’s never happened before. It’s on SoundCloud if you want to listen.  (Just don’t expect high production values, OK?  OK.)

Cashew cheese with roasted garlic and smoked paprika

Everyone, please. Try this cheese. It is the bee’s knees!

This is a baked cheese which is easy and fun to make. It only has eight simple ingredients, including the two mentioned in the name of the cheese.

The taste is the best part though: it really hits the spot. You don’t have to just take my word for it: see what Ally thinks of it at Made of Stars.

You will find the recipe on page 106 of Veganissimo. As Leigh says in the recipe, there is a “slight change to the texture” if you freeze the cheese. I’ve tried it never-frozen and post-frozen and both are great. The texture is slightly smoother if it hasn’t been frozen, and slightly crumbly if it has been frozen, but still very sliceable. So you don’t have to feel pressured to eat it all in one sitting, though I warn you, you might not be able to avoid it!