Ciao Amicis!
This is my first in a 7-part series of inventive home-cooking ideas! Hope it inspires you to cooking healthy, happy, gluten-free food at home!
Inspired by my love of cheese, I came up with two italian recipes that use a vegan, gluten-free ricotta cheese substitute made from tofu!
So let’s start with how to make the key ingredient: the vegan, gluten-free ricotta cheese! Play with the core recipe… you can make it with subtly different tastes just by adjusting the ratio of the ingredients!
Vegan, Gluten-Free Ricotta Cheese
Ingredients
- 50g of tofu (plain, ol’ tofu)
- 3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast (make sure it’s gluten-free)
- half a lemon/lime (squeezed)
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 50g of soaked cashews
Method
1. Put the cashews in the blender and blend until smooth.
2. Add the yeast, salt and lemon/lime juice.
3. Roughly cut up the tofu block and put into blender.
4. Blend all. Taste. Add what’s needed, as per your taste!
And now, to make the pizza and casserole! To assemble the pizza, you’ll want to first make the dough! I honestly haven’t perfected this part of the process yet – my dough turns out a bit thick and… well… not “doughy.” You’ll find plenty of great recipes online.
On your pizza dough, smear some good pasta sauce. Smother the sauce with a bunch of diverse veggies. My favourites are: peppers, mushrooms (goes so well with the cheese), spinach, tomatoes, beans, and aubergine. Bake! After 15 minutes or so, take out of the oven, add the home-made ricotta cheese, and put back into the oven for another 5-7 minutes. Voila!
A casserole is my favourite end-of-week dish to put together. Literally every vegetable or bean or nut that you need to consume quickly can go into this dish! To assemble the casserole, line a dish with olive oil. Next, layer the casserole, alternating between veggies and pasta sauce (or white sauce – you can read my recipe for a white sauce at this link). I like to use: quinoa, mushrooms, spinach, beans, lentils, and peppers (guys I mean literally anything else you have lying around!). Again, bake for 15 minutes, take out, put on the ricotta, put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes, and you’re good to go!
See you next time, with a brand new culinary idea for you to explore with me!
Peace,
Daisy