Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Easy cheesey

Cashew cheese. Sounds weird, right? It's DE-LI-CIOUS. You'll make this every day. It's creamy and satisfying, and takes about 2 minutes of hands-on work. It's also versatile--you can treat it like goat cheese and roll it in "Stuff" to boost the flavour. Cracked pepper, herbs, spices, citrus peel, sun-dried tomato, dried fruit or even nuts--nut cheese rolled in nuts? I know, it's crazy--so crazy it's nuts! (Sorry, I can't resist...) And if you want to serve it as a trayed appetizer, you can make it all fancy by pouring something over the top, like those baked-brie concoctions that were popular a few years ago--only these will be more awesome because of their vegan-ness. Try red pepper jelly, antipasto, tapenade, pesto and pine nuts, caramelized onions, sauteed mushrooms...seriously, I'm getting hungry just thinking of it!
But first, you have to make the cashew cheese. When you see the recipe, you'll realize it's basically soak, drain, puree, mold, chill. I soak overnight, which requires planning ahead a bit, but the link suggests only 2 hours. You can also add extras in before you wrap and chill --the recipe suggests lemon juice, garlic, and pepper, but you could add herbs, spices, etc. to the pureed cashews before wrapping and chilling. The recipe also suggests putting in a bowl before chilling, but if you scrape out the pured cashews into a sheet of parchment paper, you can roll it up and shape it like goat's cheese. Or line a ramekin or French onion soup bowl with plastic wrap and you can shape it like brie, for fancy pouring of stuff over top. Or you can do like I do--however it's molded, spread it over toast and then put the tapenade directly on top.
Considering how easy, delicious and versatile this is, I'm surprised everyone just doesn't serve this all the time. Easy cheesey!

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