Altering your favourite holiday dishes to make them dairy-free, vegan, or vegetarian might not be as difficult as you think. In The Art of Plant-Based Cheesemaking, Karen McAthy shares vegan recipes for many of your favourite (formerly dairy-based) cheeses. It doesn’t require a lot of preparation or effort, and will satisfy even the biggest cheese lovers. Don’t believe us? Try out her recipe for Walnut Ricotta and see for yourself.
Walnut Ricotta
This cheeze is not truly a ricotta, but does have a ricotta-type texture and is a great addition to pasta or zoodle dishes. It is a little outside of the core recipes I present here in that it is not as flexible in terms of multiple uses, but is a soft-style cheeze and meets raw food requirements.
Method
- Soak the walnuts from 1 hour to overnight. Walnuts have quite a bit of tannin in their skins, giving them a slight bitterness. Soaking them longer helps to remove much of this bitter flavor.
- Drain the walnuts and place the almond (or coconut) milk, lemon juice, salt, and nutritional yeast in the blender, add the walnuts, and start blending on low speed.
- Increase the speed only moderately. You are not aiming to achieve a creamy texture, but rather a cottage cheese-style texture.
- Scrape the mixture out of the pitcher and into a cheesecloth or nut milk bag and allow to drain for 1–2 hours.
- Place the drained mixture in a sealed container. You can add garlic, parsley, or other herbs should you desire.
- Keeps refrigerated for up to 5 days, walnuts will sour.
