Cashew cheese with dill and red onion

So one thing about making egg salad is that afterward you still have 3/4 of a bunch of fresh dill to eat. This is not a huge problem for me, since I love dill, but it does get a little interesting if you're trying to figure out how to eat ALL of it in a short period of time.

I mixed some dill with cottage cheese and pepper and ate it on toast. I...uh, that's actually all I had done by this point. So when I unearthed a container of cashews from the back of the freezer, they seemed like the best idea ever. Cashew cheese with plenty of fresh spring herbs, coming up!

Cashew cheese is one of my favorite spreads ever. It's super versatile and works well with any number of flavors. This time I threw in plenty of dill and some diced red onion for a delightful fresh and herbal nut cheese. So good!

This makes a small batch of about 2/3 cup of cashew cheese, but you can easily double or triple it for a full party tray of Memorial Day tidbits. No problem!

Cashew cheese with dill and red onion

1/2 cup raw cashews soaked in water for 1+ hours & drained
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill, loosely packed
additional chopped fresh parsley if desired
2-3 tbsp chopped red onion
1/8-1/4 cup water
salt, pepper
squeeze of lemon juice
cucumber slices and extra dill & onion to serve

Start by soaking your cashews. Simply cover them with twice their depth of water and let them sit for an hour or more. I actually let mine go for a couple days in the refrigerator, but that is not necessary at all. In fact, if you soak cashews too long, they can start to turn purple! This is evidently their previously dried juice getting rehydrated, so it's not a cause for alarm, but it can be a little disconcerting.

When you're ready to make your cashew cheese, drain your cashews. In a blender or food processor, combine your herbs, onion, 1/8 cup water, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and finally the cashews. It's a good idea to put the heaviest things (in this case the nuts) on top, for a smooth blending experience.

Blend until well combined. If you have a hard time getting everything to combine well, add a bit more water. I ended up using the full 1/4 cup in my standard blender, but if you're using a high-powered blender or food processor, you may not need to do that.

Taste and correct the seasoning, and you're done. Hooray!

Once you have your batch of cheese ready, it's time to use it. I decided to have mine with cucumber.

Top each cucumber slice with a spoonful of cashew cheese. Garnish with an extra frond of dill, some finely chopped red onion, and a grind or two of pepper. Voila! Fill up a few plates, pour a few glasses of sauvignon blanc, and you're totally ready to party.

Since I was eating my cashew cheese by myself, I did not make a gigantic party tray. Instead, I refrigerated my leftovers and later ate them with a lot of pretzel sticks. So, you know, that is a less fancy but similarly delicious alternative.

Hooray!

What delights are you whipping up for the holiday weekend?

Cucumber shallot salad with rice wine vinaigrette

So we've covered picnic sandwiches. Now, how about salads?

My picnic salad criteria are pretty simple: I want to eat a lot of delicious vegetables, preferably with a similarly delicious dressing. So when I checked out the crisper for salad components, I discovered a beautiful cucumber, just waiting to be loved. Perfect!

Typically, salads with cucumber include iceberg lettuce, thick chunks of cucumber, and fat wedges of watery tomato. If you're so unlucky as to be eating this salad at a restaurant, you might be inundated with stale croutons and shredded fake cheese as well. Obviously, this is not the way to go. Instead, let's take that cucumber and make it the star of the salad. Let's slice it thinly and get rid of those watery seeds. Let's shower it with intense shallots and dress it in a delicious tangy dressing. Let's eat it.

This salad has two components: vegetable and dressing. For optimal time management, you'll want to slice and drain your cucumbers, make your dressing while you wait, and finally combine everything together.

Cucumber shallot salad for two

1 large cucumber
salt
1/2 shallot
rice wine vinaigrette

If your cucumber is waxed or tough-skinned, peel it. Otherwise, you are totally free to keep the peel on and eat it.

Slice your cucumber in half vertically. Scoop out the seeds with a spoon; throw them in the compost or your freezer stock stash. Cut the remaining cucumber into thin crescents.

Toss your cucumber pieces with a sprinkling of salt, put them in a strainer, and let them drain for about a half hour. This will drain off some of their natural moisture and keep your salad from being watery later.

Now is the time to make your vinaigrette.

When your cucumber pieces are drained, put them in a bowl. Cut your shallot in half, and from there into fine slices. Separate the slices into fine shreds and add them to the cucumbers.

Toss your vegetables with a couple spoonfuls of vinaigrette. Use as much dressing as you prefer.

Let your salad rest for at least a half hour before serving. This gives the vinaigrette a chance to soak into the vegetables and pickle them slightly. It also gives you a chance to pack your salad into a container, stick it in your picnic basket, and go off on the excursion of your choice. Just don't forget the forks!


Rice wine vinaigrette

1 tbps rice wine vinegar
1 tsp hot Chinese mustard
juice of half a lime
1 minced green onion
1 tsp sesame oil
3 tbsp veg oil
salt & pepper to taste

Whisk all ingredients together with a fork, adding the veg oil in a steady stream at the end for optimal emulsification. Use to dress your cucumber shallot salad.

Keep any leftovers in a jar in the refrigerator, and shake before using. I found this to be just about as delicious on plain greens as it was on cucumber and shallot.

Eat your salad, either with egg salad sandwiches (obviously that's what we did) or with the other picnic entree of your choice. If you like, you can add a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds or gomasio to your salad after serving.

What are your favorite ways to eat cucumber?

Spring salad with shredded root veg, chickpeas, goat cheese, and almonds

Guys, it's spring. That means SALAD.

I want all the vegetables on the planet. Okay! What if we take some classic spring greens, combine them with some raw shredded veg, and add a few beans, some bits of cheese, and a handful of chopped nuts? Cover a plate and you have a full meal: tender, crispy, crunchy, and chewy all at once. Hooray!

Since we're hovering right at the boundary between winter and spring, I decided to take advantage of the juiciest winter root veg: carrots and beets. Combined with chickpeas, goat cheese, and almonds, they were just about perfect.

Not very many people seem to realize raw beets are even edible, let alone sweet, earthy, and delicious, but they absolutely are. They're a great option for a raw veg when the new spring peas and asparagus are stubbornly hovering just out of reach. I like to use golden beets, so as not to get my entire kitchen covered with magenta juice, but an ordinary beet will work just as well. And since the golden beet was bright yellow, I decided to use some beautiful purple carrot for extra visual punch.

A box grater is all you really need for finely shredded veg, but if you happen to have a spiralizer or mandoline, now is an excellent time to break them out.

We had some really excellent applewood smoked almonds from our farmer's market on this particular occasion. They're pricy, but they're worth it, especially when you use them as a sparing garnish. (I actually crushed some up and used them to coat a piece of flounder before searing a bit ago--and why I didn't take any pictures of that, I don't know. It was AMAZING.) Of course, then there's the issue of just eating them all out of hand, but they're so delicious that I think we can live with that.

This salad can take all kinds of variation. Don't have almonds? Try some toasted cashews or sunflower seeds. Don't have goat cheese? Crumble a chunk of feta or blue cheese, or use mozzarella bocconcini. Want to get rid of a handful of radishes or a kohlrabi bulb? Shred them up and go forth. It's all good.

Spring salad with shredded root veg, chickpeas, goat cheese, and almonds

salad greens
carrot
beet
cooked chickpeas
goat cheese (or your preferred cheese)
smoked almonds (or the nut or seed of your choice)
vinaigrette (we use Thomas Keller's house vinaigrette)
pepper

Wash and dry your greens; arrange them on a plate. Cover your greens with a layer of shredded raw carrots and beets. Add several scattered handfuls of cooked chickpeas and chunks of cheese. Finish with a sprinkling of chopped smoked almonds. Drizzle a vinaigrette over the top of your salad, add a bit of cracked pepper if desired, and eat.

Hooray for salad!

What are you eating on your early spring salads?

Cashew cheese and carrot

Cashew cheese has definitely been on my mind of late. What's not to love about a rich nut puree blended with herbs and vegetables? (Unless you have a cashew allergy, of course.) I decided to take advantage of our giant bush of oregano--the only non-citrus plant that is actually producing right now--and make a batch of cashew cheese with oregano and shallot. Perfect.

At first, I wanted to eat my cashew cheese in rolls, like I did with my raw zucchini rolls this past summer. I decided to use a beautiful yellow carrot instead of the totally out-of-season zucchini. Of course, carrot is quite a bit harder, and I found that my vegetable peeler only wanted to make the thinnest and most breakable of strips. So instead of making rolls, I cut thin slices of carrot and put cashew cheese on top of each. Maybe it's not quite as pretty a presentation (although I honestly find that arguable, with that brilliant yellow carrot color), but it's just as delicious.

I'm having a hard time naming this. Raw carrot and cashew cheese nibblers? Cashew cheese with oregano and shallot atop shaved carrots? Farmer's market yellow heirloom carrot with oregano-shallot cashew cheese and cracked black pepper? Sure, why not?

Farmer's market yellow heirloom carrot with oregano-shallot cashew cheese and cracked black pepper

1 cup cashews, soaked 1 hour or more & drained
leaves from four or five sprigs of fresh oregano
1/4 a large shallot or 1/2 a small one, chopped
1/4 tsp white miso, optional
1/4+ cups water
salt & pepper
a large carrot of your choosing
more fresh oregano and pepper to garnish

First, make the cashew cheese. Combine your cashews, oregano leaves, shallot, miso, water, and a mild sprinkling of salt and pepper in a food processor or blender. Pulse, scraping as needed, until the mixture is thick and well blended, adding a trickle more water if needed. As always, you should use a food processor for this if you have one. I used our blender, which was actually less frustrating than usual. Remove the finished cashew cheese to a container of your choice.

Scrub and peel your carrot. Slice it on the diagonal into oblong disks. Top each piece of carrot with a spoonful of cashew cheese, and garnish with cracked black pepper and an oregano leaf or two. Repeat until you have as many bites of carrot and cashew cheese as you like. Refrigerate any leftover cashew cheese in a sealed container and use it within a week.

These guys would make an amazing plate of hors d'ouvres for a party. Little delicious bites of finger food full of vegetables, nuts, and herbs? They'd certainly give the standard crudites a run for their money.

Hooray! Snacks for all!

Last fruits of summer

We're starting to close in on actual fall. Eat all the fruit you can right now.

I had figs and nectarines and they were delightful.

Raw zucchini rolls with cashew cheese and heirloom tomato

Everyone still needs to find new and interesting ways to eat their summer zucchini stash, correct? Well, have I got a deal for you!

How about some raw zucchini rolls filled with cashew cheese and garnished with that queen of summer lovelies, the heirloom tomato?

I found these rolls to be surprisingly filling--and unsurprisingly delicious. Even John, cordial disliker of zucchini, thought they were good. Raw zucchini obviously tastes a bit different from cooked--which makes this an even more refreshing change from the endless squash sautes and pasta sauces and bread and cakes that normally dominate the summer zucchini discussion.

The process is simple. First, make yourself a batch of cashew cheese. Next, cut up your zucchini and tomato. Finally, assemble your rolls.

I've been experimenting with various additions to cashew cheese. I based this variation off Gena's "pizza cheese", switching out the basil for scallion and sweet bell pepper. Result: delightful.

Cashew cheese

1 cup cashews, soaked 1 hr and drained
pinch salt
1/2 tsp white miso
small handful sun-dried tomatoes
large handful chopped scallion greens
small handful chopped sweet pepper of your choice
1/8 cup water

Essentially, you just want to grind everything together into a medium-thick paste. Start by grinding the cashews alone. Then add everything else and continue to grind until everything is pureed together. You can also add a bit more water to thin down your cheese if necessary.

I make my cashew cheese in the blender, because we don't have a food processor. You should use a food processor if you have one, because the blender--being better suited to more liquid pursuits--will make you want to hurl it across the room. (I actually got the tip of the spatula stuck under the blender blade and had to use a second spatula to scrape out the finished cheese before completely disassembling the pitcher in order to get the damn thing out. AWESOME.) I'm just saying.

This recipe will be enough to fill two or three medium zucchinis' worth of rolls. I had plenty left over for later snacking and garnishing.

When you're done making your cashew cheese, it's time to make the rolls themselves.

Raw zucchini rolls with cashew cheese and heirloom tomato

cashew cheese, made as above or by your method of choice
whole raw zucchini
heirloom tomato

To make the zucchini strips, just take a vegetable peeler to a topped & tailed zucchini. Cut a bunch of long thin strips all the way down the length of the zucchini. You'll probably have to discard (or, you know, just eat) the first few strips because they'll be very narrow & irregular. When you start getting to the seed chamber, rotate the zucchini 1/3 of the way around and start cutting more strips. Cut as many strips as you want rolls and save the middle for some other purpose.

The tomato is easy; just core and dice it. (You can also leave out the tomato if you want to eat the finished rolls as finger food--for instance, if you're making a big tray for a party. Tomato is delicious, but it does get messy.)

To make the rolls, deposit a small spoonful of cashew cheese on one end of a zucchini strip. Then just roll it up. I find it easiest to wrap the long tail around the cashew cheese section to form the roll, but do whatever works for you. Repeat until you have a lovely plateful of rolls.

Scatter the tomato over the rolls, sprinkle with pepper, and eat.

Hooray! A cool, refreshing, easy to make, filling, and totally delicious plate of food. You win summer!

Raw cashew cheese

So the other day, after months of saying "I should really make some cashew cheese one of these days..." I finally made a batch of Gena's sun-dried tomato and basil raw cashew cheese. I left out the miso, since we didn't have any, but otherwise made no changes whatever to the ingredient list.

I haven't done the cashew cheese thing before for a few reasons. First, I frequently eat all our cashews before I have the chance to use them in recipes that require two hours of soaking. Second, I don't have a food processor and have no plans to get one.

Wait, what? No food processor? No. I mean, we have an immersion blender that came with a tiny little processor-like attachment, but it is definitely not big enough to handle a full batch of cashew cheese. Instead, I used my blender, which was slightly problematic but worked out fine in the end. It really only meant that I added liquid at the beginning of processing instead of the end, and that I scraped and pulsed a lot more. Have you ever tried to get a thickish nut paste out of the bottom of your blender? Yeah. It was a little interesting.

But ultimately the whole experiment was a success. I soaked my cashews patiently without eating a single one in advance. I blended everything together with minimal drama. And then I had a beautiful big batch of delicious homemade cashew cheese to eat with dinner! Hooray!

Gena calls this "pizza cheese" due to the super Italian flavors of sun-dried tomato and basil. So I decided to combine it with some of my favorite vegetables to have on pizza--fresh spinach and red pepper--as well as a pile of baguette slices, for an ultra-simple, vegetable-focused dinner.

Crinkly spear-shaped spinach leaves don't exactly lend themselves to formal wraps, but that's ok. I just spread spoonfuls of cashew cheese down the middle of each leaf folded them in half, and ate them that way. Spinach tacos!

The red pepper provided a more solid boat on which to rest the cheese, but its strong flavor overwhelmed the more delicate cashews. Next time I'll probably go get a narrow head of radicchio or endive and fill a bunch of individual leaves with spoonfuls of cheese, shredded crispy carrot, radish, or cucumber, and maybe a sprinkling of sprouts or other fine greens.

John and I clearly couldn't eat an entire batch of cashew cheese in one meal, no matter how tasty. Maybe I can actually try it out in my tiny food processor attachment next time--I'll just halve or third the batch, and then we can eat it all in one go! Anyway, this meant I knew exactly how to garnish my dinner of angel hair with shallots, zucchini, green beans, and spinach the next day. The cashew cheese worked perfectly--tasty and fresh.

After this experience, I definitely think I will be making nut cheeses more often. Just imagine the hundred different ingredients I could add to the basic mix of soaked nuts, salt, and water. Scallions, ginger, smoked paprika, carrot, shallots--I want to try them all!