Ultimate Vegan Alfredo Recipe

On our last trip to Napa, Tim and I picked up a bottle of wine from Mendocino that I've been saving for a special occasion. My last home-cooked meal in our current apartment seemed ideal. It's a smokey roset that I remember thinking would go well with cheese, if only I ate it. So instead I attempted a vegan fettucine alfredo.

I've made my share of vegan cream sauces before, usually cashew-based, but they usually taste... well, cashew-based. And nothing like the creamy Italian sauce I grew up with. But with the advent of the miracle food that is Daiya (seriously, who do I need to bribe to get this stuff into Australia?) I thought I might be able to make a better go of it.

And how right I was! I might make some tweaks if I were to attempt this recipe again, but this worked pretty darn well for me tonight:

Vegan Alfredo Sauce Recipe:

1/2 Cup Earth Balance

1 Cup Soy Creamer (I used Wildwood)

1/2 Cup cashew cream

2 Cloves garlic minced as finely as possible

1 tsp nutritional yeast

Cracked pepper to taste, a pinch of mutmeg

1 Cup Daiya Italian vegan cheese

Basil for garnish

1 lb. Fettucine

It's pretty simple. Start off by boiling your water for the pasta. Mix together all the ingredients but the Daiya in a pan over medium heat until it reaches a low boil. Reduce heat and simmer. Once you put the pasta in to boil, you can add the Daiya to your sauce mixture. Stir continuously until you get a creamy sauce. If it's too thick, add more creamer or soy milk to thin it out.

Drain the pasta and ladle on the sauce generously. Top with a basil chiffonade if you're feeling fancy. It's good with some sort of green veggie side like steamed broccoli with lemon juice.

It may not be the healthiest meal ever... in fact, for the sake of my new year's resolution, we'll pretend it never happened. But it's the closest I've come to replicating an authentic alfredo sauce and still probably way less heart attack-inducing. I sort of have this idea in my head that because everyone in Australia is so fit that as soon as I arrive there, I'll just start shedding pounds by proxy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Delicious Daiya - Recipe and Photos

When I first decided I was going to try out being vegan in 2005 I made an ill-fated trip to my natural food store to pick up some shiny new products including a block of soy cheese that was hard, gray, and smelled like sweat socks. "I've been tricked," I thought. The pizza cravings set in pretty quickly. There was a place near Tim's apartment that advertised vegan pizza that was pretty decent but we eventually learned they were using casein-based cheese. Bastards!

Eventually I learned of Follow Your Heart brand soy cheese which made a reasonable substitute in small quantities and I started making pizza at home. Sometime in 2008 I believe, Chicago Soy Dairy came out with Teese. It was basically love at first taste. It melted so much better and the taste was a little uncanny. (Tim actually didn't care for the nacho Teese because he thought it tasted too much like the real thing.)

And then along came Daiya. For months I've heard it being hailed as the holy grail of vegan cheese, so when Rainbow Grocery finally started carrying it, I stocked up. It is very good. Perhaps I've gotten spoiled, but it didn't blow me away like I thought it would. But it has a lot of advantages going for it: it melts much faster than other vegan cheeses, it lasts a long time in the fridge, it comes pre-shredded, and it is soy-free, made rather from casava root.

I bought kind of a ridiculous amount of it though and I'm still looking for dishes to use it up. Here's a little collage of meals I've made with it so far:
Starting at the top we've got a veggie pizza and a basic spaghetti marinara (made with Mariquita Farms tomatoes). The middle two are from a lasagne which was awesome. By far the best vegan lasagne I've ever had. Bottom right we've got tempeh marinara with breadsticks and salad. The salad had Daiya in it too because I find that it works really well as a Parmesan substitute as well as a mozzarella. That's what inspired the last dish.

When I was just vegetarian I used to make this all the time using Parm, and it was probably really bad for me. I modified the recipe to make it a bit healthier and will share it for you here:

Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Broccoli, Chard, and Daiya

While your pasta water is boiling, chop up one stalk of broccoli into small pieces. Steam it in a covered pan for just 2 minutes or so so it's still somewhat firm. Add a tablespoon or olive oil, one chopped clove of garlic, a pinch of thyme, and a cup of chopped chard. (Spinach would work as well.) Add some vegetable broth keep it cooking and liberally add salt and black pepper. Once your pasta has nearly finished cooking add 1/4 cup of Daiya Italian cheese to the broccoli mix and keep stirring. Drain your pasta and toss it right into your pan to mix it all up.

Plate it and top it with some more Daiya and extra black pepper (you really can't use too much). It makes either one really large serving or two small ones.

If you've got any great recipes using Daiya let me know. Or if you can think of any meals you used to enjoy with mozzarella or parmesan and would like to see veganized, I'm always willing to give that a shot!

Mid-Week Fancy-ish Dinner: Papardelle Primavera

One of my favorite things about eating out is the inspiration it lends to my own cooking. When I try a dish I love I'll do my best to try to figure out what's in it, and how I can re-create it. If I were a Top Chef contestant I think I'd do well at those challenges where they test your palate to see how many ingredients you can name in a dish.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post, I fell in love with San Diego restaurant Spread -- most notably their papardelle dish. Papardelle is my favorite pasta and it can be difficult to find a vegan version of it because it usually contains egg, which helps hold together the wide noodle. But I lucked out and found some fresh vegan papardelle in Whole Foods this week and knew I'd have to attempt to re-create the Spread meal.

This isn't an exact replica. It's more of a cross between theirs and a pasta primavera. But I was still pretty pleased with the results and it was pretty simple. Here's my recipe:

Ingredients Used:
1/2 Large Carrot, chopped
3/4 Can crushed tomatoes (I used Muir Glen fire roasted.)
1/4 Cup olive oil
1/4 Cup vegetable broth
1/2 Zucchini, chopped
1/2 Cup peas
1 Tbsp chopped red onion or shallots
1 Tsp lemon olive oil (use 1 tsp oil plus 1 tsp lemon juice if you don't have an infused oil)
1 Tbsp white wine or sherry
Assortment of fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme and sage) chopped. About 1 tsp all together.
Salt, black pepper, dry sage to taste
12 Oz. pasta (this would be good with penne too)

Directions:

In a small pot, heat the veggie broth and olive oil. Chop the carrot finely and add to pot along with salt and some dry sage. Simmer over low heat, covered for 15-20 minutes. Now's a good time to start the water boiling for the pasta.

In a separate small frying pan bring the peas, onion, zucchini, lemon oil, and wine to a low simmer. After 5 minutes or so, add half of your chopped herbs, along with some salt.

After your carrots have simmered, they should be able to easily be crushed using a fork or potato masher. Add the crushed tomatoes and some more salt, mash and continue to simmer, covered, over very low heat.

Keep stirring the peas and zucchini. You may want to add a bit more wine if they're looking dry. Once your water is boiling and the pasta. If it's fresh pasta it will only take about 5 minutes, and you'll want to continually stir it to avoid sticking. (Mine actually stuck together really bad which may have been the draw back to using it fresh. Tongs can be useful in helping separate while you stir.)

Once it's ready drain and dish out onto two plates. Cover with several spoonfuls of tomato sauce, topped with the zuccini and peas. Sprinkle the remaining fresh herbs and a little cracked black pepper.

Voila! Serve it with a nice white wine and a simple side salad - mixed greens and what not. This meal will probably get you laid.