Curb Your Cheese Addiction with Italian Cashew Cheese

This cheese is dairy free! Did you know dairy contains casein, which is actually addictive? Home-made dairy-free cheeses are helping to free me from my cheese addiction. It's a great feeling to not have cheese cravings. And I am not clogging up my arteries.

This cheese is good too! Nice flavors from the spices and you can slice it for cheese and crackers if that's your thing. After it has chilled, it grates up very nicely. Add grated cashew cheese to your pizza halfway through the baking cycle. Yummy – I guarantee it!

Here's a quesadilla I made with it. The "cheese" is even kinda melty!

Here's the recipe for the cheese. The sky's the limit when it comes to seasoning; just be sure to add enough or your cheese may be too bland.

Ingredients
1/4 cup agar flakes
1-1/2 cups filtered water
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1 cup raw cashews, finely ground to a powder
4-1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 TB olive oil
2 TB nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp Italian seasoning
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1 TB oil packed sun dried tomatoes
1 TB fresh basil, chopped

Directions
Spray 2 ramekins with nonstick cooking spray and set aside. In medium saucepan, combine water and agar. Turn heat to medium and stir. While you're waiting for it to come to a boil...

Add cashews and all of the ingredients EXCEPT the sun dried tomatoes and basil, into a food processor and process until fairly smooth. Add tomatoes and fresh basil and pulse until chopped and mixed in with the rest.

Go back to the water and agar and turn heat up till it comes to a boil; then stir constantly for 5 minutes. Add the cashew mixture, take off heat, and mix until well blended. You will probably need a whisk to fully incorporate. It will be thick. Pour into ramekins. Cool for about a half hour or so and then cover and place into refrigerator until completely cool. It's ready to eat! You can freeze one of the cheese rounds if you can't consume in a fairly timely manner.

This cheese recipe is adapted from a recipe in 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman. I haven't had this cookbook long enough to review it but I am impressed by the number of recipes (500!) and the variety. Although the book has no photos it's typeset nicely and there's many, many great looking recipes. I really need to put it on the top of my stack!

Italian Cashew Cheese on pizza pie. Mmmmmm!
The crust is the quinoa bread recipe from Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

Vegan Pizza with Homemade Cashew Cheese

This pizza's crust was made with my quinoa bread recipe (see Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day), chunky tomato sauce, shredded cashew cheese, and some sun dried tomatoes. It was the day before shopping and I did not have any fresh vegetables. This pizza was still delicious. Add the cheese during the last 5 minutes or so of baking the pizza.

I'm such a pizza hound. Can't get enough. However, just try and get a decent vegan pizza at a restaurant – you can't. That's why it's so empowering to cook. I have my crust down. I'm happy with my basic tomato sauce. Toppings are not problem. It's the cheese thing. You need something to hold it together. If you like the fake cheeses on the market, that's great. But the one I really liked I discovered that it had casein in the ingredients. Casein is a milk ingredient. People rave wildly about Daiya cheese but really, I just don't care for it. So I've gone back to basics and I'm am going through cookbooks and blogs trying out vegan cheese recipes. I made one a couple of weeks ago that was very promising and I shredded it on my pizza. It was GOOD! I made a quesadilla with it, and it was GOOD! There was nothing fake or weird tasting about it. Didn't taste like nuts either. Now it doesn't melt but it does get soft when heated. So here is the cashew cheese recipe. Expect more cheese recipes in the future. But this one turned out quite nicely.

Cashew Cheese
Ingredients
1/2 oz agar flakes
1-1/2 C water
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1 C raw cashews, finely ground
1-1/2 TB fresh lemon juice
1 TB sesame oil
2 TB nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder

Directions
Spray a couple of ramekins with oil and set aside.

Place the agar flakes in the water and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring often. Watch to make sure it doesn't boil over.

Mix in processor bowl the cashew powder, lemon juice, oil, nutritional yeast and spices and process until smooth. It's going to be thick.

Scoop this mixture into the pan with water-agar and stir until creamy and smooth. Take off of heat and pour into ramekins, smoothing over top. Let cool, then cover and chill.

Yield: 2 small round disks of cheese suitable for cheese and cracker, pizza, whatever!

Here is the cheese, sliced. It grates very nicely, too. I pulsed some chopped jalapenos in the food processor just before adding to the water-agar mixture.