So I've recently tried out another vegan cheese in a few different recipes. The vegan cheese of the last week or two has been "Earth Island Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella". So I was basically terrified, despite my positive experience with the last vegan cheese but decided if I was going to do this, I needed to really put this cheese to the test.
Experiment #1 with Earth Island mozza: Mozza sticks!
This is basically the ultimate test of mozza cheese. I mean really, deep fried cheese sticks that are ooey-gooey and total naughty? Count me in! Make 'em vegan? Bit of a scary concept to a former dairy cheese lover. Anyhow, god bless google for recipe searches, I managed to find a vegan mozza stick recipe. The only pain was having to freeze the breaded mozza sticks for an hour before frying them, but the process despite being messy was relatively easy and painless. The sticks once fried were very convincing to look at, if you didn't know it was vegan cheese, you might assume it was dairytastic. So I got my marinara sauce ready to go and got me a plate of vegan mozzarella sticks. The verdict: not bad. This cheese does NOT get stringy when melted, which really took some of the fun out of it for me, but the flavour was mild and creamy. Actually could have used a bit of salt (I never say this...) but not barf worthy. Only thing was, after eating I felt really bloated. Possibly the frying? Maybe too much soy that day? Either way, an experiment mildly successful.
Experiment #2 with Earth Island mozza: Baked pasta
So I already knew that this cheese wasn't gag worthy which made this experiment much less intimidating, but ultimately I decided that this cheese should be the addition to a meal rather than the centre-piece of it. So I made a delicious dish of penne with tomato, portabello mushroom, and collard greens sauteed in garlic and chili. As if this dish couldn't get any better, I decide to toss some vegan cheese on top and melt it in the oven. Pretty tasty I must say. The cheese melted nicely, and while didn't add tons of flavour (it's a fairly bland cheese) added a nice richness and creaminess to a pretty swell pasta.
What I've learned: Earth Island mozza is edible but not especially flavourful which would make it a decent base for a creamy "cheese" sauce so long as there were other flavours involved. I won't be trying mozza sticks again until I can get my hand on some "teese" vegan cheese which is supposed to be stringy and spectacular.
In other news, I am slowly working on my mission to seduce my family with vegan baking. I have two of my sisters obsessed with my vegan carrot muffins (next batch less sugar though!) and have just pulled out of the oven vegan chocolate hazelnut biscotti. My cookbook of choice: "VEGANOMICON" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero. Aside from being full of amazing recipes, is loaded with fun and humour which makes it a pleasure to go through.
Looking for a website with lots of vegan recipes, chat, and info? www.vegweb.com has been a fantastic resource for me.
Well that's it for now, once I find my camera I plan to start taking pictures of some of my amazing creations to post here and will include recipes for you adventurous folk.
Cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment