Creamy Vegan Mac & Cheese – VeganMoFo Day 9

We’re onto week 2 of VeganMoFo 2018! This week is about Dietary Restrictions…which sounds slightly boring but isn’t actually, it’s a good challenge to think about things people can and can’t eat and learn to cook for them. After all, we’re vegans and there are things we can’t eat – shouldn’t we try to be inclusive too?

Today’s prompt is “creamy without nuts”  – a lot of vegan cream/cheese is cashew based, making it unsuitable for those with nut allergies. But there’s an easy way around that – tofu! Using tofu as a cream base is a little old school, but I based it off my gooey cheese sauce which is honestly really good, and has no nuts!

Of course, if you’re cooking for someone with allergies you must be very diligent about what ingredients you use. This recipe has breadcrumbs in – make sure your breadcrumbs are nut free. It’s always better to err on the side of caution when it comes to allergies.

I make up the sauce for this pasta, combine it with cooked pasta, top with breadcrumbs and bake in the oven for a crispy topping. It’s so creamy and moreish!

You could use whatever pasta you want for this – shells would work well – but I used macaroni for the pictures!

 

Creamy Mac & Cheese

• Servings: 2-4
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Ingredients

• 250g macaroni pasta, cooked
• 100g breadcrumbs
• 350g silken tofu
• 500ml vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 40g cornstarch
• 1 tsp salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180C/355F
1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan, and add the minced garlic, cook until beginning to brown (keep an eye on it as it turns quickly!).
2. Remove from the heat, and add the tofu, nutritional yeast, salt, cornstarch, and vegetable stock.
3. Using a stick blender (or transfer to a stand blender) blend the mixture until smooth.
4. Return the saucepan to a low heat, and whisk continually until the mixture has thickened.
5. Once thickened, continue to whisk for a further minute, before removing from the heat.
6. Mix in the cooked pasta, and pour into a baking dish.
7. Top with the breadcrumbs, and place in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, until browning on top.
8. Serve and enjoy!

Falafel Scramble – VeganMoFo Day 28

I think I mentioned earlier in the month that I’m not really a breakfast person. I just don’t really switch on til later in the day. I technically “wake up”…but then I actually wake up several hours later. This makes today’s prompt, brunch, perfect for me, because I just can’t do early morning breakfast, so why not combine it with lunch?

Tofu scramble is a classic vegan brunch option. You’ll probably see it on vegan brunch menus all over the world, and I’m sure I’m not the only VeganMoFoer to use it today. I wanted to do a different take on it though, and so I made it into a falafel scramble!

This scramble has your tofu scramble ingredients, plus your traditional falafel ingredients…so it’s two great foods combined into one! I actually considered making this for the Deconstructed prompt earlier in the month, because how much more deconstructed can you get than scrambled? But I decided it’d work even better for brunch.

Falafel Scramble

• Servings: 2 as a main course
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Ingredients

• 1 red onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1/4 tsp cayenne powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 block tofu (approx 400g)
• Handful of chopped fresh parsley
• 100g chopped cherry tomatoes (optional)

Directions

1. Begin by heating the oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and garlic and fry until softened, about 5 minutes.
2. In a bowl, roughly mash the chickpeas with the cumin, coriander, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice. Don’t mash them completely – leave several chickpeas still mostly whole!
3. Once the onion and garlic are cooked, add the chickpea mixture, and crumble in the tofu.
4. Scramble on a high heat for 5 minutes, then add the parsley and cherry tomatoes for a further minute.
5. Serve!

Creamy Tofu “Cheese” – VeganMoFo Day 25

My first vegan meal…well, I have no idea. I was brought up vegetarian and sort of stumbled into veganism, becoming dairy intolerant first and then realising there was no good reason to not be fully vegan. So I never had a “first vegan meal” – probably a lot of the meals I ate growing up were vegan anyway.

But an early memory of vegan food I have is cheese. When I stopped eating dairy, I thought that was it, I’d never be able to eat cheese again. However, I realised you could get vegan cheese. Wow! Dairy free cheese, what a winner! So I bought some. And tried it. And promptly spat it out. Yuck! Vegan cheese has not always been the violife/chao/etc that we have now.

Don’t worry, I am not going to recreate nasty cheese for this blog. What I am going to make is a nice, mild and creamy cheese that goes really well on pasta, soup, bread…all sorts of applications. In fact, it’s the cheese I used a few days ago on top of my spinach risotto!

And it’s really quite simple to make. Just tofu, blended together with nutritional yeast, vegetable stock powder, onion and garlic powder, lemon juice, olive oil, and a tiny amount of vinegar.

You then tie it in cheesecloth, or a tea-towel, and leave it to drain over a bowl overnight. This firms the cheese up and lets it hold its shape.

I then like to bake the cheese, which firms it up even more and gives a nice crust, but you could use it as a cream cheese just as it is!

 

This cheese recipe is SO versatile. You can adapt it however you want. Add herbs to make a herby boursin like cheese. Add chillis and smoked paprika for a Mexican style cheese. Add olives if you like! Or just have it as it is.

Creamy Tofu Cheese

• Servings: 1 cheese block
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Ingredients

• 300g tofu, drained
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1/2 tsp vegetable bouillon powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp cider vinegar
• 1 tsp salt

Directions

1. Place all the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and blend. Scrape down the sides and blend again, until a smooth mixture is formed.
2. Pour the mixture onto a cheesecloth or (clean) tea towel. Pull the ends together to form a little parcel, and place in a sieve over a bowl.
3. Leave in the fridge overnight to drain.
4. Next, remove the cheese from the cloth. It should be much firmer now!
5. You can either have the cheese as it is, or bake it.
6. If you wish to bake it, heat your oven to 175C/350F and bake the cheese for 40 minutes. Cool before eating!

Hummus Tofu with Kale Fried Rice – Vegan MoFo Day 11!

Despite the fact that the title of this post sounds like a very stereotypical “vegan” meal, it was very tasty. And my husband enjoyed it too, so it’s not like I have some form of vegan Stockholm Syndrome.

The prompt for today was “Focus on a Nutrient” and I chose to focus on calcium. Calcium is one of those things that you get a lot of questions about. “You don’t eat dairy?! Won’t your bones rot?! What about cheese, surely you can eat this cheese, else you won’t have any calcium!” no!!! You do not need dairy in order to get enough calcium.

The NHS recommends that adults need 700mg of calcium per day and according to the Cron-o-meter website – this meal has all 700mg in it! And if you have tea or coffee throughout the day, or cereal with milk – a lot of plant-milks are fortified with calcium too, giving you even more. This meal has more calcium than you’d get in a cheesy pizza or whatever else people think has “calcium” in.

This Hummus Crusted Tofu is absolutely wonderful. Hummus isn’t only useful as a dip! I made my own hummus because it’s super easy, but feel free to use shop bought if you like.

I also used a whole 200g of kale, which seems like a lot when you put it in the pan – but it reduces in size a LOT when you cook it! So don’t worry.

I made the kale garlicky, and added sundried tomatoes and sriracha for an extra kick! If you don’t have sriracha, add a little cayenne powder.

Hummus Crusted Tofu with Kale Fried Rice

• Servings: 4
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Ingredients

For the Tofu

Hummus:

• 1 can chickpeas, drained
• 2 tsp tahini
• 3 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, crushed,
• 3 tsp water
• 1 block firm tofu, drained and pressed
• 100g breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp dried chilli flakes

For the Rice

• 200g curly kale
• 150g uncooked rice
• 50g sundried tomatoes, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sriracha

Directions

Preheat the oven to 200C/390F
1. Cook the rice your preferred way, and set aside.
2. Slice the tofu in half lengthways, then into four triangles, then cut each of those triangles in half again – leaving 16 triangles.
3. To make the hummus, add all the ingredients to a food processor and blend until smooth. Add extra water if needed, and season with salt and pepper.
4. Dip each piece of tofu in the hummus (use a knife to make sure it’s all covered), and then in the breadcrumbs. Place on a baking sheet.
5. Continue until all the tofu is covered, and place in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove, and very gently flip the tofu. Put back in the oven for another 20 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, in a large frying pan, fry the onion and garlic until soft.
7. Add the kale and let cook down until it halves in size.
8. Add the sundried tomatoes, soy sauce, and sriracha to the kale.
9. Finally, add the rice and mix through. Turn the heat up to allow it to become slightly crispy.
10. Serve by placing the tofu on top of the kale rice!