Enchiladas with home made vegan cheese sauce
Every time I make this recipe I think: This is so simple and so delicious, I really need to share this recipe, more people need to know the secret of simple, healthy, delicious homemade vegan cheese sauce.
And even if you're not necessarily looking for a vegan cheese recipe, this is a must try. It's really easy and much healthier than cheese sauce that you buy in a jar (yuck, like that cheese dip for Doritos or something, who likes that???) or that you make with grated cheese. By the way, have you ever read the ingredient list of grated cheese?
The ingredients list of this cheese sauce is surprisingly short: potato and carrot form the basis, then we add oil and water and finally the seasonings: nutritional yeast flakes, lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Optionally, you can also add dried onions, garlic powder and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Nutritional yeast flakes are a commonly used seasoning in plant-based cuisine, you can buy them in health food stores or online. On the site You can read The Green Girls what it is exactly.
In addition to the recipe for the cheese sauce, you will find the recipe for Enchiladas below: a rolled up tortilla filled with, among other things, veggie mince, covered with tomato sauce and cheese sauce and then briefly placed in the oven. But you can use the cheese sauce for a hundred and one other dishes in which you would also use cheddar cheese or other variants. For now, I have mainly used the sauce in Mexican-inspired dishes: Quesadillas , nachos, chili sin carne, ... And I have also used the sauce to make mashed potatoes creamier.
Enchiladas for 4 people
100g soy chunks (or 2 containers of veggie mince)
bouillon powder (or bouillon cube)
2 onions, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
can of corn
Fresh bell pepper or jar of roasted bell pepper, chopped
pepper, salt, cumin
1 serving vegan cheese dip (see recipe below)
A jar of neutral tomato sauce
A pack of tortillas
Optional: avocado, spinach, …
Soak the soy chunks with some stock as indicated on the package. Drain. Or open the package of veggie mince ;). Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Stew the onion and add the chopped garlic. Add the soy chunks or veggie mince and fry like mince. Add paprika and corn. Season with pepper, salt and cumin.
Warm the tortillas briefly (in the oven or in a large frying pan) until they are supple. Spoon some of the minced meat mixture into the middle of a tortilla. Also pour a little cheese dip over it. Roll up and fold the edges inwards and place with the fold facing downwards in an oven dish. Repeat this with all the tortillas, arranging them neatly next to each other. Pour the tomato sauce and cheese sauce over it and place in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes*.
* it's not real cheese, so you won't get real cheese rinds.
'Mexican' cheese dip sauce
2 cups potatoes, cut into pieces (350 grams)
1 cup carrots, chopped (150 grams)
½ cup water (120 ml)
1/3 cup olive oil (80 ml)
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ cup nutritional yeast flakes (= about 6 to 8 tablespoons)
Optional: ¼ tsp dried onions, ¼ tsp garlic powder and a pinch of cayenne pepper
Steam* the potatoes and carrots together until soft. Let cool slightly and add to a bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Blend until smooth. Taste and add more seasonings if necessary. This is more than enough cheese dip. You can store the rest in the fridge for up to a week. The sauce will probably stiffen a bit in the fridge, but when you reheat it, it will “melt” again!
*Steaming doesn't need fancy smancy equipment, but can be done in a cooking pot with a large amount of water, in which you place a colander or sieve. Alternatively, you can also boil the potatoes and carrots, but then add a little less water in the next step.
Source: I did not invent the recipe for this cheese sauce myself, but found it on the site: http://www.veggieonapenny.com/vegan-cheese/ .
Oreo cake!
This cake is a real crowd pleaser: deliciously decadent and full of creamy flavor. Yet this is not such an unhealthy cake: there is no cream or butter involved. The cake is even 100% plant-based. But it remains a cake ;)
This pie is super easy to make (you don’t even need an oven) and has only a few ingredients. Oreos and margarine for the crust and dark chocolate, silken tofu and a liquid sweetener (like agave syrup) for the filling. Easy as pie! Uh wait… Tofu? In pie?
Yes, yes, you can even use tofu in desserts. Usually not the regular variety, but silken tofu, a softer variety that is more runny. Mixed with dark chocolate, this gives a creamy chocolate mousse. You could also serve the chocolate mousse in glasses. The biggest challenge for making this cake is finding silken tofu. You can certainly find it in health food stores such as Bioplanet and Natuurhuis. You can also order it via the Collect&Go of Colruyt/Bioplanet under the name zijdeentofu. And sometimes you can also find it in Delhaize or Albert Heijn. You can also be lucky in an Asian supermarket.
Ingredients for a 20cm cake :
For the bottom
26-30 Oreos (or similar brand, definitely two rolls)
1/3 cup* margarine (e.g. Alpro)
For the filling
300 g dark chocolate (without milk)
600 gr silken tofu (also known as silken tofu)
6 tbsp agave syrup (or other liquid sweetener such as rice syrup or maple syrup)
Optional: raspberry, orange slices or oreos to decorate
* I like to work with capacity measures, this is often faster than weighing. 1 Cup corresponds to a cup of approximately 25cl. 1/3 Cup is therefore approximately 8cl. This corresponds to approximately 5 tablespoons.
Method :
For the base: Crumble the cookies very finely (in a food processor, or in a zip it bag with a paper towel). Melt the margarine (au bain-marie). Add the crumbs and the margarine together and mix well. Line the base of a springform pan of ±20cm with baking paper and add the mixture. Press very well and ensure a raised edge. Place in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes (or 15 min in the freezer) until the base is hard.
For the filling: Chop the chocolate into smaller pieces and melt in a bain-marie. Drain the silken tofu. I do this by poking holes in the packaging and letting the liquid drain out. Be careful that your silken tofu doesn't leak out! Then mix the silken tofu in the food processor or with a hand blender until it is nice and smooth and creamy. Add the melted chocolate and mix well. Mix in 3 tbsp agave, taste and add more agave to taste. The amount of sweetener depends on how bitter your chocolate is and your taste. Pour the mixture onto the cake base and place in the fridge for about 30 min - 1 hour to stiffen nicely.
Remove from the mold and decorate with raspberries, oranges or Oreos before serving.
Keep in the fridge until you are ready to serve the cake. This way the cake will stay nicely set.
Tasty!
Another fun fact to conclude: did you know that Oreos (and therefore this cake) are vegan? They do not contain milk, butter or eggs. There are more cookies that are 'accidentally' vegan. Like the speculoos from Lotus. Oil is cheaper than real butter, which is why it is often replaced. Just look at puff pastry in the supermarket: you have the more expensive brands that contain real butter and the house brands with oil. Because most manufacturers are not consciously making vegan products, there is no Vegan label on the packaging. And the products can always contain traces of milk, for example, because other products are also made in the same factory.
Lost Quiche – Cooking together with Velt
In the meantime, it has been a month since my co-cooks and I cooked a delicious ecological buffet on Den Dam. Time for a report and a recipe!
Cooking together on Den Dam 25/09/2016 
What have we actually made:
- Carrot-pumpkin-hummus dip with stale bread toasts
- Lost quiche: a quiche on a base of old bread (read on for the recipe!)
- a version with leek-walnut-blue cheese
- a version with romanesco mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella
- Pasta with Chard and Feta
- Beetroot – Lentil Burgers with Homemade Veganaise
- Moroccan stew with borlotti beans and pearl barley
- Oven-grilled vegetables: bell pepper – pumpkin – zucchini – …
- Baked butter beans with paprika
- Salad of various grated vegetables (celeriac-radish-carrot-apple-celery + sprouts and iceberg lettuce) with a grapefruit-mustard-honey dressing
- Baked apples with a crumble of speculaas biscuits, oat flakes and almonds
- Rocks of puffed spelt and chocolate
We used as much leftovers as possible:
- Apples and walnuts from a garden where they would otherwise be left lying around or end up on the compost heap
- Old bread from a baker
- Vegetables that the organic farmer enjoys Pure Nature Melsele had a surplus at that time
- Organic products that were very close to their best-before date from organic wholesaler Biosano
- …
This cooking session was part of the cooking festival together by Field : at various locations in Flanders, the 14 other students of the eco-cooking course and I organize a cooking session as our exam assignment. Velt promotes cooking together to put food waste in the spotlight. If you know how much food is wasted! Food that you can still make so many tasty things from, food that you can still feed so many mouths with. The loss occurs throughout the entire chain of the food production process: at the farmer on the field, at the food producers, during transport, in the supermarket and in your (refrigerator) cupboard.
Improvisational cooking is a brilliant technique to (at least to a certain extent) counteract this food waste. With improvisational cooking, you don't start from a recipe. So you don't have to go to the store first to get all the ingredients (and sigh when that store (logically) doesn't have everything you need in stock). And you don't have to buy a whole package of a crucial ingredient of which you might only need a little.
You start with the ingredients that you have at hand at that moment. You combine, see which preparation technique you can use, choose your seasonings and before you know it you have a delicious meal on your plate!
- Pleasant consequences: you cook very diverse and seasonal food
- Ideal for processing a weekly (organic) vegetable package
- Doesn't have to be expensive or a lot of work
- Roasting a pumpkin? Suddenly a large one or a few extra vegetables in the oven: tomorrow you will think of something for the rest of the pumpkin or those other vegetables
Combining and improvising: you can learn :) just dare and do it! With small steps (by adding an extra ingredient to a fixed recipe) or with big steps (a whole menu without recipes!). If you think about it, you have probably done this before and discovered delicious combinations.
Would you like more information about cooking together and improvisation cooking? Then definitely take a look at the website of Velt , there will be more co-cooking and improvisation cooking lessons soon!
Or keep my site and facebook page in the eye for inspiration and workshops!
Below to inspire you a recipe for Lost Quiche. And if you leave a comment below (and/or sign up for the mailing list), I will mail you the recipe for the beetroot burgers for free on top :).
Lost Quiche
Ingredients :
- A few slices of bread that are a few days old. Still quite flexible, so keep it in a bag, but make sure it doesn't get moldy. Depending on the size of your sandwiches and your baking pan, you will need 6 to 10
- 4 eggs from happy hens and 250 ml milk: (organic) cow's milk or unsweetened vegetable milk. Beaten and mixed with a pinch of salt and some pepper (possibly x 1.5 or x 2 depending on the size of your mold and the amount of vegetables you use)
- +- 2 to 3 cups of vegetables and seasonings
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180°C
- Check whether you can simply grease your tin or whether you need to line it with baking paper:
- You can simply grease silicone molds
- springform pans: it is best to line them, otherwise the filling will leak out
- for other shapes, baking paper can make it easier to remove the mold after baking
- Place the bread in the pan so that you cover the bottom completely. You will have to cut a few slices into pieces and do some puzzling. It is not a problem if there are still a few small holes in your bottom. The filling will seep through the bread immediately anyway, but will solidify during baking.
- Also form a raised edge with the bread: Cut a slice of bread into 2 or 3 pieces and use these strips to place against the side. If necessary, place them at a slight angle so that they do not fall over.
- Now spread your vegetables over the base and sprinkle the seasonings over them.
- Pour the egg-milk mixture over it and place in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes, or until the egg-milk mixture is completely set.
As you can see, this is a very flexible recipe, so feel free to experiment! During the cooking together, we made the following combinations:
- stewed leek and onion with a small handful of walnuts and a little blue cheese
- Romanesco (or broccoli) cut into small pieces, some mushrooms, finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella
At home I also made the following combinations:
- beetroot, chicory, feta and sunflower seeds
- (cherry) tomatoes, courgette and mozzarella
- pumpkin, kale and thyme
Would you like the recipe for the beetroot burgers?
And what are your favorite quiche ingredients?
Make your own detergent
It's been over two years since I first made laundry detergent according to the recipe that I found on the site Ma vie en vert by Kelly. Super cool site, with lots of do it yourself ideas and green tips.
And in those two years I have made a new batch of detergent many times, so you can say that I am happy with it. I have adjusted the recipe a little bit. Not much, because there is not much to adjust in this super simple recipe. In the original recipe you use 5 liters of tap water. I use 1 liter of lavender tea + 4 liters of tap water. Of course you can also just use 5 liters of tap water. The lavender tea will not give the detergent (and your laundry) a pronounced typical lavender scent, but in my opinion it does give the detergent some extra scent. And lavender also has a disinfectant effect.
What do you need?
- a large 5 liter cooking pot. I use a cooking pot from the thrift store for this, which I only use for my detergent: the cooking pot moves to my washing machine after making the kitchen, until it is time for a new batch. But of course you can also transfer the detergent into large plastic pots or something.
- 80 gr grated soap. Preferably a block of natural soap with a scent that you like. You can simply grate the soap with a kitchen grater. If you are a bit lazy: I have also used Marseille soap flakes and that works fine too ;)
80 g grated soap - 80g soda crystals. They sell them in 2kg bags in the supermarket, usually on the bottom shelf with the detergents.
80 g soda crystals - 1 liter strong lavender tea (5-10 tbsp lavender flowers)
1 liter lavender tea - 4 liters of tap water
How do you proceed?
- First, make the lavender tea: Scoop your lavender flowers into a glass measuring cup or cooking pot and pour 1 liter of boiling water over them. I once received a beautiful bundle of lavender twigs as a souvenir from Provence, so I usually throw them twigs and all into the pot. You can of course also use lavender cuttings from your own garden. Let this tea steep for at least an hour. Overnight is also fine, but then put the infusion covered in the refrigerator after it has cooled.
- Strain the lavender tea and measure whether you have about 1 liter left, otherwise add some more tap water.
- Add the grated soap to the large 5l cooking pot with 1 litre of tap water. Heat and stir until all the soap flakes have dissolved. The finer you grate, the faster the soap will dissolve, but fine grating is a bit more work (go for it, train those muscles! :) )
- Then dissolve the soda crystals in the soap mixture.
- Finally add the remaining 3 liters + the liter of lavender tea. Heat everything and stir everything well together. At this point your mixture is still very liquid.
- Let the soap mixture sit overnight. You will notice that it has become very thick. Stir it well again. Now, if you want, you can transfer the mixture into jars or bottles with a wide neck. I always just leave it in the cooking pot.
5l homemade detergent!
How to use?
I use about 120 ml per washing machine and a dash of vinegar as fabric softener.
Well, one more warning : better not use this detergent if your washing machine has an aluminum drum, because the soda attacks aluminum. In itself the soda is diluted, so I don't know for sure how much harm this can do, but the internet doesn't say much good about this combination ;) .
Have fun making it! I always enjoy doing it the way you do it on my website. instagram video can see :)
I also love that I don't have to lug around packets or cans of detergent from the store, it's much cheaper, ecological and my PMD bag is also much emptier than it used to be!
Making vanilla extract
A cookie without vanilla isn't really a cookie, but vanilla usually isn't really a cookie either...
Vanilla in the supermarket is either super expensive or super chemical. But luckily you can make your own vanilla extract for a fraction of the price, and it's super simple too!
What is vanilla extract?
It's actually in the name: extract of vanilla. You extract substances from your raw material (Vanilla in this case) into your final product. You can make many different types of extractions, with different goals: for the taste, for the color, but also for medicinal properties. Actually, that is mainly what herbalists do: they extract the ingredients from herbs into an extraction agent. This extraction agent can be water (yes, tea is also an extract), but also oil, alcohol, vinegar, honey, ... . For Vanilla, alcohol is usually used.
What do you need for vanilla extract?
Vanilla and alcohol. Ha, life can be that simple :)
You'd best just take neutral vodka between 37 and 40%. Doesn't have to be expensive, just a cheap bottle is fine.
The vanilla can be of good quality. It is ultimately the vanilla that will give the vodka its flavor, so choose good (preferably organic) quality.
So, to recap:
- 250 ml vodka
- 2-3 vanilla sticks
- a clean bottle or jar of at least 250 ml
What should you do?
You cut the vanilla pods in half, so that they are small enough to fit completely in your bottle/jar. Then you cut them open lengthwise, so that those little black dots can be released better in the alcohol. You put the pods in the bottle or jar and pour the vodka over them. Make sure that the vanilla pods are completely covered. Shake well and then you just have to be patient, from about 2 months you can start using your vanilla extract.
You can also just drink half of your vodka bottle and then stick the cut up vanilla pods in it :)
Or make a lot of vanilla extract and put about 4 sticks in a full bottle of vodka. That's how I did it. The amounts are not that important. I always fill my small bottle from the big bottle, and occasionally I pour vodka into the big bottle. I also put 2 fresh vanilla sticks in there once.
This bottle has been with me for about 5 years now :) .
