Cashew Chevre

I made fermented cashew cheese!

Cashews aren't into selfies.

This past summer I discovered a fancy fermented cashew cheese from a brand called Treeline Cheese. And as I very un-fancily ate it out of the container with wheat thins while driving a minivan home from the 1000 islands I thought to myself "I should make this!" and "dear god I hope the kayak doesn't fly off the roof!" Seriously. I had a bike rack loaded with two bikes fall off my car going 70 on a highway once and now anything strapped to the outside of the vehicle makes me panicky. I'm like a nervous dog during a thunderstorm. I drive anxiously staring upward out the windshield for hours at a time asking my wife "did it just move?". But enough about me, back to the cheese. With the price of the Treeline brand at $8 for 6 oz, combined with the fact that all my money is tied up in change these days, making my own seemed well worth the effort.

After Googling 'fermented nut cheese' when I got home and praying for no sketchy results, I discovered the book Artisan Vegan Cheese by Miyoko Schinner. Not only did it feature an entire chapter on fermented nut cheeses, but it also got rave reviews. So I asked for it as a birthday gift, got it, looked it over excitedly for about a week, and then promptly sat around for 3 months doing nothing (probably watching cartoons and eating salsa) until I remembered I was supposed to be making fermented cashew cheese. Better late than never.

This is the most involved ferment I've made to date, but it wasn't difficult, and it didn't involve a lot of ingredients either. So if your thinking about making it stick around.  And if your just here to kill time instead of doing work, welcome to the boring part!

The recipe breaks down into 3 separate steps.

Step 1: Sprout Grains
Ingredients
- 1 cup whole grains (brown rice, millet, quinoa, wheat berries, etc)

Check out that mug.  I started celebrating Christmas in early November this year. Christmas is awesome!

If your smart you'll use quinoa, which Schinner points out will sprout within a day. If your me you'll use millet, because you wont see her note until after you bought the millet and you think it'll make this sound more exotic anyway (everybody knows what quinoa is, but who's out there cooking with millet?). This will also cost you 2 days of your life as it turns out millet takes much longer to sprout. Stupid millet.

Anyway, to sprout grains you soak them in water in a jar with the top covered with cheese cloth tied off with a rubber band for about half a day (8 - 12 hours). Then you drain off the water, rinse the grains, and flip the jar upside down so the grains stay damp but aren't sitting in water. You'll want to prop the jar up so the covered top is off the ground and the water can drain into something.  I had mine sitting in a coffee mug, but a measuring cup or small bowl would work too.  You'll rinse the grains everyday and flip them over again until they've grown little tails, which means they've begun to sprout.

I stared at the jar for 3 days waiting for these tails to emerge. Lost a lot of productivity around the house because of this.

Step 2: Make Rejuvelac
Ingredients
- 1 cup of sprouted grains (from step 1)
- 6 cups of water

The finished Rejuvelac. It's an odd name, but it sounds better than fermented grain water. 

Rejuvelac is just a fermented liquid made from sprouted grains. To make it, divide your sprouted grains in half into 2 quart sized jars and fill each jar with 3 cups of water.  Then cover the top with cheese cloth (or something similar) to keep stuff out of it and let it ferment for 3 days at room temp. You'll know its ready when it gets all cloudy and smells funky.  Supposedly it will taste tart like lemon juice as well, but after smelling it I took a pass on the taste test. I have limits.

Step 3: Make Basic Cashew Cheese (makes about 1 pound)
Ingredients
- 2 cups raw cashews, soaked in water for half a day and drained
- pinch of salt
- 1/4 - 1/2 a cup of your Rejuvelac

Blended together it looks and feels like frosting.

Blend the cashews with the salt and the Rejuvelac until its smooth and creamy. You'll start with 1/4 cup of the Rejuvelac and then add the rest if you need it to get the desired smooth consistency (which is like a thick frosting).  If you own a $500 blender you can probably get away with the 1/4 cup.  If you own my blender, you'll need the full 1/2 cup of Rejuvelac to get it smooth. After its mixed, move it to a glass bowl, cover the bowl with its lid or plastic wrap or whatever you got, and let it ferment at room temperature for 3 days.

After fermenting for 3 days. The instructions were to smooth the top. Clearly I failed at that.

At this point, you have yourself basic cashew cheese (go you!). You can refrigerate it and eat it as is, or you can use it as the base for an assortment of cheeses in her book. Myself, being a young go getter, doubled the basic cashew cheese that you see above (which resulted in 2 pounds of it) and made it into two different types of Cashew Chevre.

To make the first type, you take 1 pound of the basic cashew cheese and add a tablespoon of nutritional yeast and 1/2 tsp of salt, mix it all together, then stick it into a container wrapped in cheese cloth and let sit in the fridge for a day (or more).

Cashew Chevre in all its glory!

The second type used the tablespoon of nutritional yeast and 1/2 tsp of salt, but then adds in two tablespoons of lemon juice, zest from one lemon, and peppercorns on the top (2 - 3 tablespoons). And again you wrap it in cheese cloth and let it sit in the fridge for a day or longer.

This is the one with the lemon and peppercorn. It tasted like the first, but with lemon and peppercorn.  Interesting.

That's it!  Show of hands, how many people made it this far? If you did, then welcome to the results section!

So how was it? I'm not gonna lie, this stuff is delicious! Its got that tangy, tart flavor that you'd expect from a cheese, and a smooth consistency that's easily spreadable. The description in the book says it supposed to taste like goat cheese.  I have no idea if that's true or not.  I've been vegan for 5 years now and I'd be lying if I said I knew what goat cheese tastes like anymore (purple?).

It tastes purple, just how I remember!

But who cares, this is awesome stuff. My wife and I ate it with crackers and thinly sliced pears and our minds were blown at how good it was.  Plus, who eats pears with their cheese and crackers? We felt like rich people! Until somebody asked for another glass of boxed wine, then reality came crashing down.

"Did you want a glass from the red box or the white box, or should I surprise you?"

This is the most exciting thing I've fermented in a while. It's so much different from the fruit and vegetable ferments I usually do and I can't wait to make more. And after I do, I'm gonna eat unhealthy amounts of it while I watch Christmas movies alone on the couch. Go me!