In my dairy days I would fry a soft cheese such a brie or camembert in a similar manner, and it was a real treat. This isn’t a firm replacement for the latter concept, but it’s still tasty and it looks fancy (so it’s a good dish to impress).

Recipe Notes

An easy starter, yes, but one which takes some planning ahead. You’ll need to start with a batch of vegan labneh, so it’s best to plan for this salad with a day or so worth of notice. You can make the dressing in advance, too. Add some pizazz by throwing in some thyme or other herbs if you’d like, to the dressing I mean, but for this I personally prefer an extremely basic, tangy vinaigrette. Raspberries and vinegar, with sugar to adjust the tartness.

Don’t skimp on the mint and basil chiffonade, either. And if you can’t pronounce that word, let alone be arsed to do it, just chop stuff up small and you’ll be good to go.

When it comes to snacks and dinner party appetisers, sometimes the simplest things are best; this gourmet vegan cheese ball (hey, it looks gourmet, even if it’s easy) is no exception. I feel like I’ve said that about something else recently. I get paranoid about repeating myself too much. Four gold stars to the person who can find where I’ve already said that. Metaphorical stars. Invisible ones. Use your imagination, okay?

You remember those containers of plastic cheese (yes, the adjective “plastic” refers to the cheese as well as its receptacle) your mother would pick up from Sam’s Club or Costco, or whatever your local cash and carry megagluttony store might have been? Specifically, do you remember the port wine ones? Yeah, that stuff was pretty much one of the best tasting things ever. I mean, I don’t even know how I didn’t have a heart attack at age 11 based on how much of that I consumed.

Recipe Notes

Okay, so point being this non-dairy cheese ball is reminiscent of the port wine spread. I used sherry here, but feel free to use a port wine too for a stronger flavour (but don’t expect that red and orange streaked nonsense without astronomical rations of dye).

This makes a great vegan cheese pasta sauce too! Just mix it with a bit of margarine and/or pseudo cream cheese to bulk it up and add an extra creamy texture (if that’s your thing). Perfect with a side of garlic bread, but then again what isn’t?

But how do you get creaminess without the cream?

You’d be surprised what cashews can do, baby! This isn’t an original concept as many a dairy free souls have discovered the value of nuts as an ice cream base, but I’m all about spreading the love. This is a great vegan ice cream to fool dairy fans, and it’s divine with a dollop of peanut butter on top.

Psst, if you’re curious about the stuff that looks like marshmallow fluff stuff, that’s Bryanna Clark Grogan’s marshie fluff (thanks, Bryanna). Talk about fun to make. Talk about sugar high. Talk about… well, I think vegans could talk about marshmallow fluff quite a lot, come to think of it.

Recipe Notes

Okay, so I’ve got one of those annoying frozen drink blenders and the base is pretty much permanently sealed on. This means there’s always a whole load of liquid I can’t get out, especially if it’s a thick blend like this is. Here’s a tip: reserve 60ml (1/4 cup) of the soy milk and after you’ve poured the ice cream base out, chuck the remaining liquid in and swish around to help get the rest of the mix out.

Oh, and if you’ve got a blender which errs on the side of shite and you hate lumpy bits then you can strain the base to filter out any potential cashew hanger-onners.

Half of my recent batch of this vegan macaroni dish got packaged up and sent to a friend who’s recently moved on campus to do her PhD. The other half was devoured by my hubs and I for lunch one afternoon. Thumbs up all around and it catered to my craving for broccoli cheese sauce, so next time this sauce is going on some jacket spuds. Nom nom nom.

Recipe Notes

I’m of the opinion that the best milk to use in a vegan cheese recipe that calls for a creamy sauce is a very thick soy milk (none of this watery vanilla flavoured nonsense), but I’ve used oat milk successfully too.

If you like your broccoli to be soft, I suggest steaming it for a few minutes first. I like it to be a bit crunchy though, so I just chop it up and bung it in as it is.

Over the years I’ve tried several varieties of vegan ice cream and while not completely unimpressed, I was, well, not that impressed. The first commercial product I tried was perhaps 12 years ago, and it tasted like sugar flavoured straw soaked in rain water drained from the gutter of a halted urban development project which eventually became no more than a bird toilet.

Enter Booja-Booja, an English company known for its production of organic vegan chocolate truffles. On my bulk Bonsoy run one Saturday (have you tried the stuff? It’s to die for), I saw tucked in the freezer of my favourite organic shop a new gem: Pompompous Maple Pecan “Stuff in a Tub.”

I had to try it.

This so-called “stuff” immediately rivalled recipes of my good friends Ben and Jerry in flavour, if not in texture as well. I was gob smacked. How could this be?

“May contain nuts”

The culprit behind my new discovery which brought me so much joy? Cashews. Vegan, organic, delicious ice cream based on cashews.

I never knew I liked cashews so much, and I have since extended their use across many other aspects of my cooking. I tried cashew based ice cream recipes from books and from the interwebs, and with some success made made some ice creams fairly close to that of my beloved Booja-Booja.

But I wanted to experiment with my own methods based on what I already knew about making ice cream, what I’d tried and liked, and concepts about which I’d read somewhere once upon a time. This is my result, and really it’s pretty good.

Will I make it again? Most certainly. Will I likely experiment some more with the ingredients? Definitely. This is a work in progress, only one where the first attempt came out damned good.

Recipe Notes

A lot of people ask why I used vodka in my ice cream recipes as most ice cream doesn’t contain vodka. The only reason I use it, aside of course from hoping to take advantage of those I feed, is because alcohol doesn’t freeze. This is a useful trick for anyone with a home freezer which doesn’t circulate air well. Is your ice cream so solid upon removal from your freezer that you have to leave it to thaw before a spoon can touch it? Easy solution: add some alcohol to the mix.

I used granoVita CremoVita as part of the cream base in this recipe. While I usually like to provide generalised products for ingredients, this one fell into the mix simply because I spotted it on the shelf and had to try it. I’m sure you could use any other soy-based sweet whipping cream alternative.

The sorbet vs sherbet argument came to me when I was preparing this recipe. Sorbet is, or at least should be, vegan by nature. Sherbet, on the other hand, has dairy components (though clearly not as much as ice cream). The texture of sherbet isn’t quite as smooth as that of ice cream and is generally lighter in texture, an apt description of my final result. For that reason it became more of a sherbet than an ice cream in my mind. My recipe is “creamy,” but less rich. It’s good. I think so anyway.

And now on to the good stuff…

I currently have a refrigerator overflowing with so many glorious root vegetables and soup is one of my favourite ways to use them when I find myself in this state. Plus after a long day soup is both an easy and nutritious meal which can be prepared easily while planning a holiday on the phone with my mother.

People underestimate soup. Too many people think of it as a tinned (canned) emergency food, the sort of thing you plop into the microwave and give your kids as an easy afterschool snack or chuck into food drive boxes at the supermarket. This is soup that’s often heavy in salt, sugar, and who knows what other preservatives and colourings. Not that I’m completely against this (confession time: tinned tomato soup + grilled cheese (non-dairy of course) is a junk snack craving I get about once a year that must be filled).

What I’m saying is I don’t really get the idea of tinned soup for ease of preparation, because there aren’t many things you can do in the kitchen easier than making soup from fresh ingredients. Sure you have to wait a little while longer past the simple process of using a tin opener and pressing some buttons on the microwave, but it’s worth it in the end. I promise.

Did I mention we got rid of our microwave?

Recipe notes

This is, like most soups, a recipe easily prepared by even the greatest kitchen novice. I usually use my pressure cooker for soups, but if you don’t have one that’s okay too; it will just take a bit longer to prepare. If you aren’t using a pressure cooker simply follow the same instructions, only in a large pot, cooking the vegetables until tender.