Raw Boursin Cheese

Cheese was one of my favorite foods. I always loved the flavor and texture. I can easily say giving up cheese was the most difficult dietary change I have made yet. We liked the cultured macadamia nut cheese but weren’t thrilled with the time it took to make. There are many days I am not going to want to wait 2 days for a vegan cheese substitute.

Yesterday "Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen" found its way into my  book collection. (Note:  I did buy this for those that are wondering.)  Just as I do with all  my cookbooks I read it cover to cover. It is a very interesting book. Her cheese substitutes didn’t require soaking or culturing. Needless to say I had to try one today. A tasty cheese substitute in 5 minutes, can this be possible? Sign me up. This recipe is my adaptation of a few of the recipes from Ani’s book.

Raw Boursin Cheese
Adapted from “Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen”
Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

1 cup raw macadamia nuts
¾ cup raw cashews
¼ cup raw pine nuts
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon oregano
1 lemon, zested and juiced
3 cloves garlic cloves
1 tablespoon white miso
1/3 cup water (or what is necessary to process the nut cheese)

Directions:

Place the nuts, salt, pepper and oregano in your food processor and process until they are fine but not paste. If you grind them too far they can turn into nut butter. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic, white miso and water and process until the nuts are ground. If the nuts have not pulverized add water a tablespoon at a time and continue to process. The nuts will eventually fall about. But adding liquid you are reducing the risk of getting nut butter. The final nut butter will be very thick, like a cream cheese.   Refrigerate in a covered container until needed.

Nutritional Information:
Amount Per Serving
Calories - 206.54
Calories From Fat (80%) - 164.29
Total Fat - 19.63g
Saturated Fat - 2.95g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 300.74mg
Potassium - 167.58mg
Total Carbohydrates - 7.37g
Fiber - 2.19g
Sugar - 1.8g
Protein - 3.91g

Comments:

This cheese has a great big flavor punch. As you may have noticed I like my food to be very flavorful. If you like heat in your food this would be great with hot crushed peppers (wet hots) added. It was also be good with sun dried tomatoes. This spread is a great palate for many different flavors.

We had this cheese today with raw vegetables to dip into it. It made a great flavorful snack. This spread would also be great as the “glue” to hold vegetables into a wrap sandwich. I can imagine many applications for this spread.

If you have a Vitamix this cheese can also easilry be made in that appliance instead.  I used the food processor to see if I could get it creamy enough without my Vitamix.  The food processor worked fine.

Unrelated note:

I will be back later with a recipe or two. I have you are all having a great day.