Crap – The Vegans Are Coming to Dinner
What happens when you throw a dinner party for friends, and you find out that two of the six of you are vegan? Well, first you throw an Anthony Bourdain-like tizzy, then you find acceptance, and then you reach for a copy of Charlie Trotter’s Raw cookbook.
Raw was one of those food-porn books that sat on my bookshelf for ages, after I read the inspired recipes and soaked up the surprisingly salivating photos. And then I decided that I couldn’t be bothered to make things like rejuvelac (fermented wheat or rye berries), source micro herbs or buy a dehydrator.
I finally gave the book a whirl when I tried out for the inaugural season of Masterchef, having to meet the criteria of bringing a cold dish to the trials. I took inspiration from a recipe for bleeding hard radish ravioli with a vibrant yellow tomato sauce. I couldn’t find bleeding heart radishes, nor yellow tomatoes, so I experimented, trialing white turnips and beetroot. The main gist was to slice the raw vegetables paper-thin on a mandoline, carve them into perfect rounds with a pastry cutter and then soften the rounds with lemon juice so you could use them as “ravioli” skins.
The turnips won out, but I wasn’t overly excited about making vegan cheese from cashews, so I opted for soft goat’s chevre, mixed it with fresh herbs and then put it atop the most beautiful tomatoes I could find at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Markets. The dish was a stunner, and sent me straight to the third and final round in Melbourne, upon which I imploded using a Thomas Keller recipe for butter-poached lobster over a beetroot reduction. But that’s a story for another day…
Fast forward to the vegan dinner, and I decided to repeat the feat, but this time was going to need to go whole hog (not the most appropriate phrase for a vegan meal, but what the hell) and make the cashew cheese filling. I still couldn’t be bothered creating rejuvelac, so I scoured the web for other cashew cheese recipes and found another good recipe that simply called for lemon juice, water and herbs. I’d share it with you, but I can’t remember the link, but trust me – do a Google search and you’ll eventually find one.
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