Look, all this experimenting is bound to end up in perfection, right?

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes: Oscar Wilde

I'm not even sure why I'm so obsessed with this mission to make vegan cheese. I'm not going to die without it (I don't think) but I'm curious, and it's a challenge. Can it really be done? My last one tasted cheesey and made a fab dip or stir through sauce, but I was low on agar agar so it wasn't the solid sliceable meltable cheese I had hoped for. I reckon you could definitely put it on a vegan lasagne though! You can read about my efforts here, in my Vegan Cheese Files #1.

It's all a learning curve, really. One thing I've learnt is that I need a blender that can process nuts a lot finer, and I really need to get myself a dehydrator, for reasons that will become clear later on.

Plus, I've learnt I don't cook without some tunes going. We're in love with Radio Scratch on Spotify, which plays non stop awesome reggae, perfect for Sunday pottering. Today it's been stuck on Lee Scratch Perry, but that's not such a bad thing. Enjoy whilst you read the rest of my post.

After a bit of internet searching last week, I came up with two ways to make vegan parmesan. One is a quick and easy sprinkle, as pictured below. This basically involves blending brazil nuts, nutritional yeast and salt or garlic salt. You can find a recipe online : http://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/brazil-nut-vegan-parmesan/ - however, I was more interested in a recipe that called for richer tastes and using sauerkraut liquid, miso and nooch (nutritional yeast) which I thought might bring cheesier flavour to it.

Thus, I follow this recipe, kinda sorta!

Vegan Parmesan

1 cup Brazil nuts
.5 cup pine nuts
.5 cup sauerkraut liquid (or rejuvelac)
2 tablespoons white miso
.25 cup nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon sea salt

Soak the brazil nuts overnight, drain and discard water. Blend with pine nuts, sauerkraut liquid, miso, nooch and salt until smooth, then transfer into a container, cover and let sit at room temperature for a few days until the flavours have deepened - it will taste richer and sharper.

As it's pretty cold here, it took a full week for that to happen. I made the mixture last Sunday and figured it was ready this morning.

The next step is to spread the mix into a paper thin sheet on top of baking paper laid on a tray. Pre-heat the oven to about 150C and bake them for about 30 minutes, rotating the trays until they are dry and golden brown.

Cool, then break into shards and store in a tightly sealed glass container. Should keep for around a month, according to the original recipe. Their shards looked like this:

Here's the first mistake - my blender just isn't tough enough to get the mixture into really fine layers. Thus, it was never going to get super crispy and into lovely slivers.

My 'cheese' looks like this - less like shards of cheese and more like slivers of toast:

However, it tastes delicious! I think it'd be lovely on top of a salad or as a side dish. I ran it through the King's taste testers (Jamie's tongue) and he approved, although he was a bit worried he was going to have an anapalyatic shock from the brazil nuts. At the time of writing, he seems okay. He did say it tasted cheesy, which is the whole point, right? It was really super tasty!

The second thing I realised is that I reckon this would be far, far better in a dehydrator. I still can't understand why you'd use sauerkraut liquid but then heat it so all the probiotic goodness would be lost. I'd hope this wouldn't be the case with the super low heat you could get with a dehydrator. Does anyone have any input on this idea? I'm not sure if I'm right or not.

Would I make it again? Absolutely. It's delicious!

Stay tuned for Vegan Cheese Files #3!

Oh - and I'm really excited to say that this is my first post as an official passenger of #ecoTrain! I'm totally honoured to be on the train as I totally admire all the incredible things happening on these folk's posts from permaculture to meditation, environmental issues to food forests - I highly recommend checking out this tag as you're guaranteed of sweeeetness!