Vegan Cashew Cheese

The best part about parties is the food - planning the food, shopping for the food, making the food, and plating the food. Oh yeah, and then watching people enjoy the food! I am never able to restrict myself to a reasonable quantity of food, as parties mean pulling out all the stops and indulging in all the recipes I would never make just for wife and I (not that she's not worth it!) One recipe leads to another recipe leads to another - and everything is for the sake of balance - sweet and savory, vegetarian and vegan. At our last big shindig, I tried my hand at making vegan cashew cheese. I got the recipe here, but halved it, which still produced a large wheel of vegan cheese. Despite the fact that it says it makes a "hard" cheese, I would describe it as a firm, but pate consistency cheese. It was a great experience and wonderful to finally use some of the agar agar that I had bought almost a year ago, intending to play around with some molecular gastronomy type stuff but - cough cough aside - haven't made time for yet. Definitely happening this year though, I mean how much work can reverse emulsion oil sphere be???

Many of my non vegan friends actually really enjoyed the unusual flavor of miso and nutritional yeast in the cheese. If you don't have light miso, I would definitely reduce the amount called for at least a bit as it can be quite strong tasting. I also think after making it that toasted cumin seeds might go quite well in it. I let it harden in a glass bowl and actually wasn't able to get it out without running a spatula around the edges. It could therefore be useful to grease the bowl to save yourself some effort. Also, I've been told by a reputable source that this cheese freezes well -- my leftovers are currently in the freezer, so I'll update this post once I pull them out!