Zucchini-Cashew cheese

If you've read my previous posts about allergies, you know that dairy has been on the no-fly list for me for a long time, though I have fond memories of cheese and will stare longingly as you eat your pizza in front of me because I do, in fact, know what I'm missing (it's so, so good...)

I generally eschew grocery-store cheese alternatives, as they often contain some dodgy ingredients.  After testing out a few homemade recipes, however, I think I've unlocked a pretty decent sliceable cheese alternative (this would be unwise as a melting cheese, since it would probably turn runny right away, due to its reliance on gelatin).

My concoction is a slightly altered conjoining of two recipes I found online, which stand quite well on their own.  The first is cashew-based, and is soft and spreadable, like a grainy, nutty cream cheese.

The other uses zucchini and gelatin to create a sliceable cheese, which has the mouthfeel and appearance of chilled green Velveeta.

While both of these options were good enough by themselves (I ate them all up, after all, didn't I?) I felt like each recipe was missing what the other lacked:  the zucchini cheese tasted kind of like savory jell-o, and the cashew cream cheese was a little aggressively nutty and gritty.

Like the culinary mad scientist I love to be, I decided to combine these recipes--I was not disappointed!

Here's how I made it (warning--there's prep to be done the night before--do not skip this step):

You will need:  

1 cup cashews

1 lemon (the juice of)

Salt

Pepper

2 TBSP nutritional yeast

3 packets gelatin (about 2 TBSP) OR you can substitute agar powder to make this vegan

2 small yellow zucchini/summer squash, peeled and sliced (green is fine, if you like green cheese)

1/2 tsp crushed or minced garlic

1/4 cup water

1 TBSP melted saturated fat (I used bacon fat; coconut oil would work fine)

FIRST:  soak 1 cup of cashews in water overnight.

Strain your soaked cashews and blend them up in a food processor with the juice of your lemon, water, garlic, nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper. 

While you're puréeing your cashew mix, you can put your zucchini slices on the stove in a pan of water to boil for about 5 minutes.  Strain the water out.

Once your cashews are puréed and your zucchini is boiled, put all the rest of the ingredients (salt and pepper to taste) into the food processor or blender together.  You should have a kind of pudding consistency.

At this point, you can pour your mixture into any heat-resistant container you like (you might like to line a pan with parchment paper for easy removal)--I decided to use a silicone mini-muffin tray so I could have little muffins of cheese.  Place it in the fridge for a few hours and voilà!

For someone who hasn't tasted real cheese in years, this was good enough to fool me.  I sliced up my muffins and snacked on them with the miracle of crackers I recently discovered (totally grain-free! They cost a fortune, but CRACKERS!) and now buy in bulk on Amazon.

Bon apétit!

image credits:

https://www.thefullhelping.com/go-to-cashew-cheese-recipe/

https://gutsybynature.com/2014/07/19/zucchini-cheese-dairy-free-nut-free/