Dairy Free Sprinkle Cheese

This recipe produces a powder you can store in an air tight spice jar and sprinkle on foods as a topping, much like store-bought Parmesan cheese, but with out dairy or nightshades, which are common in other products.

Besides using this recipe as a sprinkle-on spice, you can also turn this recipe into a quick cheese sauce. To do so, simply add 4 TBSP of the powder to 4 TBSP of butter in a pan over medium heat. Then add cup of liquid (broth, water, “milk”, etc). This recipe easily scales up or down, as needed.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 Cup Nutritional Yeast
• 1 tsp Onion Powder
• 1 tsp Garlic Powder
• 2 tsp Thyme
• 1 tsp Real Salt
• 6 TBSP Tapioca

METHOD:

1. Grind the thyme into smaller flakes or powder.
2. Combine all of the ingredients together.
3. Store in an air-tight container at room temperature. Consider adding to a well-labeled recycled spice jar with a tight-fitting lid, to use as a sprinkle on topping over favorite foods.

Pictured is a quick, go-to, freezer meal including: 7-Spice meat balls, zucchini, 2 TBS Faux Tomato Pasta Sauce, steamed until fork tender sprinkled with salt, pepper, and sprinkle cheese sauce for a quick meal.

CREAMY SAUCE INSTRUCTIONS:

To make a cheese-like sauce, you will need to add to a sauce pan over medium heat 4 TBSP of the “cheese sauce” powder mix, 4 TBSP of butter. Allow this to cook until fragrant and all of the butter is melted and mixed well into the “sauce” mix like you would to make any traditional Roux gravy. Once the roux is fragrant, add 1 cup of liquid. For the liquid pick what ever makes sense for the use you are making the sauce. If you want creamy mac-n-cheese style sauce, consider using a plant based milk. If you want to flavor it with meat or veg, consider using bone broth or veggie broth. If you are short on time or don’t have any thing else on hand in your pantry, use water. It is still good!

The creamy sauce pairs nicely with so many things! You can use it as a cheese sauce for dipping veggies and crackers into. You can use it as a salad dressing for taco salad. You can pair it with poultry, beef, or sausage. You can use up left over veggies such as cauliflower or broccoli or other yum veg with this sauce. It pairs really nice too with home made sausage. And one of my favorites is cauliflower or broccoli rice! YUM!

To turn left over veg, such as cauliflower rice, into the most delicious cauliflower rice you’ve ever tasted follow these steps: start with cold, refrigerated left over cauliflower rice (or other cold, left over veggies–if your veggies are too large, don’t worry, you can “chop” them into the sauce to smaller, bite-sized, pieces to amalgamate the flavors and different veggies into a flavorful way to eat up left overs). Make up the Creamy Sauce as instructed above, toss in the left over veggies, blend and serve. This makes a nice lunch, too, if you have too little of a portion of left over (meat) added to the dish to use everything up. Serve while hot and enjoy.

Left over broccoli “riced” with this cheese sauce served with onion style “noodles” and beef patty.

VEGAN: This recipe is very easy to turn into a vegan recipe. Simply swap out “butter” for vegan butter or a neutral flavor oil when making the sauce use a plant-based milk or water.

RESULT: This is a basic go-to recipe which I’ve re-made many times since first giving it a try. One note: it is claimed by other health care experts that fortified nutritional yeast vs unfortified, natural, nutritional yeast makes a big difference in health; however, as I’ve not studied it out for myself and the only brand of nutritional yeast available to me in my local market is not fortified, but naturally rich in nutrients, I didn’t bother to research this topic out–but if your nutritional yeast is fortified, you may want to do so before using it in this quantity, especially if you have people in your life who are allergic to several things, have autoimmune, or other health issues already.

Pasta Sauce (Tomato Free)

Also known as “Italian Gravy” pasta sauce is traditionally made by cooking down tomatoes (a nightshade plant family), reducing the liquid, and adding a number of Italian seasonings. This experiment is a night-shade free version. It is pretty good–sort of like mystery meat in the cafeteria: you can eat it just fine, but you know its not quite chicken, or beef, or pork or what ever the TVP is imitating.

SOURCE: I saw there are MANY versions of this recipe (sometimes also called “nomato sauce” online at various cooking sites, recipe databases, YouTube, blogs, and Pinterest. Yet I decided to go first with the Cotter Crunch recipe because I had all the ingredients on hand. There are a number of versions, even within her website’s recipe, and I haven’t yet tried all of them–but I will! I highly recommend reading her thoughts on the various ingredients and why she included them (read those here). Recording the results here so I remember which ingredients worked best for the people I make meal for their enjoyment.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 TBSP EVOO (best quality you can afford as this plays a vital role in the flavor–also, don’t substitute it for some other kind of cooking oil)
• 1/3 Cup minced yellow onion
• 1/3 Cup minced red onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 Cup Beets (peeled and diced)
• 1 Cup Carrots (scrubbed and diced)
• 1 tsp Italian Seasoning
• 1 tsp Oregano
• 1 tsp dried Parsley
• 1 Cup Bone Broth (or filtered water) divided, used at different times.
• 1/2 Cup Bone Broth (or filtered water) divided, used at different times.
• 1 Cup Pumpkin Puree (this leaves 9 TBSP left over from a standard can of pumpkin–which I measured into 1 TBSP portions and froze on a silicone mat in the freezer before removing and storing in an air-tight labeled container in the freezer for convenient portion sized servings without wasting any)
• 1 TBSP lemon juice (fresh squeezed) * see note
• 2 tsp balsamic vinegar * see note

METHOD:

1. Begin by putting the olive oil and onions in the bottom of a sauce pan. Heat over medium heat until beginning to brown. Add garlic. Continue to sauté a few moments until garlic is fragrant.
2. Add bone broth, cubed carrots and beets, dried spices: Italian seasoning, oregano, and parsley. Cover and cook for 30 minutes over medium heat. Test for “fork tenderness” before proceeding. Cook longer, if needed. Remove from heat.
3. Add 1/2 cup of bone broth and the 1 cup of pumpkin puree to the pan. Use stick blender to carefully blend this mixture. Use caution because it is HOT!
4. Stir in lemon juice and balsamic vinegar.
5. At this stage you can freeze a portion or two, or go ahead and use it in the recipe you intend to use it for. Comments from other users state it is excellent over: cassava noodles; zoodles (specialized zucchini); over spaghetti squash; made into meat sauce with celery, onions, and cooked & drained ground beef to mix together with cooked macaroni style noodles; or in a low-carb lasagna soup with spinach or kale or both.

After cooking but
before blending

NOTES and TIPS:

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil: This ingredient is super important to the quality or outcome of this recipe. You’re going to be cooking these ingredients in the olive oil. For this recipe, purchase the best tasting, freshest, imported olive oil you can afford to purchase.
• Onion: The original recipe didn’t call for the specific blend of onions I used–I was just using what I had on hand to use up produce before it went bad and I’m recording the exact way to replicate the recipe, as I originally made it.
• Carrots: Organic, of course! I didn’t peel mine. I skipped that step, but I used a stiff veggie brush to thoroughly scrub them, which removes the “fuzzy” root hairs and much of the peel without the added step of peeling the carrots, and thus preserves the nutrition in the peel, too. It didn’t make the end product “hairy” or any other “bitter” sign of having left on the peel. It is a very small amount of carrots in the recipe.
• Garlic: My cloves of garlic were a few left over from the bunch I purchased last for the Passover celebration. I wanted to use them up, and they were small, so I peeled 4 of them and minced them to add to the sauce. In my opinion, the resulting sauce could have used more garlic. And more basil.
• Water to thin: I used left over bone broth from making additive-free lunch meat earlier in the week but any type of liquid will work. Don’t have bone broth or liquid? Then boil the peels of the onions and carrots, you minced above into the desired amount of water, to make some while you are sautéing the onions in the the EVOO. Taste to adjust for saltiness as homemade broth and/or water can be significantly less salty than store bought. Likewise if you are reheating this recipe as left overs, you will likely want to add more water or bone broth to the recipe while reheating. Frankly, because this is true, I wouldn’t worry too much about getting the base recipe perfect, water content wise, as the left over portions will need water to perfect and if you over pour slightly, you can always “reduce” down the liquid. Makes the sauce taste great!
• Parsley: I didn’t have fresh parsley on hand when i made this recipe the first time. However, it would taste BETTER with it! I highly recommend using fresh parsley. That’s especially true when re-heating this recipe (leftovers).
• Pumpkin: The recipe will leave exactly 9 TBSP left over from a standard can of pumpkin–which I measured into 1 TBSP portions and froze on a silicone mat in the freezer before removing and storing in an air-tight labeled container in the freezer for convenient portion sized servings without wasting any. I’m going to consider purchasing enough ingredients to make this recipe turn out “even” in terms of the number of cans required to not have any left over, and then freeze the unused portions. I’ve seen other recipes substitute pureed squash (butternut) or yams/sweet potatoes if you don’t have pumpkin on hand (I am reminded my Australian friends don’t have canned pumpkins as Americans do). While it is easy to cut pumpkin in cubes, freezing them for later use like this recipe, it may not be available everywhere, or all the time.
• Don’t skimp on the flavorings.
• Nutritional Yeast: When reheating some of this sauce for “left overs” I sprinkled atop some of the instant cheese sauce I had on hand, salt, and pepper and it worked. Not the same as Parmesan cheese but dairy-free and allergen-free pretty close.
• TOMATO PASTE SUBSTITUTE: This entire recipe tastes a bit like cafeteria food, but good. The texture before adding the additional bone broth was PERFECT as a substitute for tomato paste. I highly recommend freezing one batch of this recipe, perhaps with less flavoring added, just to use as a tomato-free substitute for tomato paste in recipes you used to enjoy before you couldn’t have nightshades. I am going to work on this for my favorite “Enchilada” sauce and for making dishes like American goulash, lasagna, and ketchup.

SERVING SIZE: this made six meal portions of sauce and a lot of people sampled it too! This freezes well and thaws well only when it is thawed it really needs the lemon juice and balsamic vinegar added back in.

One serving suggestion: Lasagna Soup. Another serving suggestion: spaghetti with making a meat sauce, adding this sauce and serving it over zoodles (spiralized zucchini).

“Caesar-Style” Salad Dressing (Vegan)

This vegan salad dressing is you ceasar-style but dairy-free and anchovy free.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/3 Cup Coconut Yogurt (or other non-dairy based yogurt)
• 1 TBSP Olive Oil
• 1 TBSP Lemon Juice
• 1/2 clove of Garlic
• 1 tsp capers, minced
• 1 tsp brown mustard seeds
• black pepper (I used 2 twists, fresh cracked)

METHOD:

1. Place all of the ingredients into a blender.
2. Whirl.
3. Taste. Add pepper to taste. Adjust seasonings, as needed.
4. Enjoy right away, or store in an air-tight container in the fridge.

NOTES:

This is good served over romaine lettuce. But it is also good as a salad dressing over any greens. Capers grow in a plant family which is closely related to cabbage and mustard. Capers give this vegan dish its saltiness, which is a substitute for anchovies which are traditionally used in the non-vegan version.

Savory Crackers

This recipe is a trial of turning various recipes I’ve viewed online into an allergen-friendly recipe based on the allergens I’m making meals and meal plans around based on the folks in my life who have various allergies and sensitivities.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup freshly GROUND sunflower seeds.
• 4 tsp nutritional yeast
• 2 tsp psyllium husk powder
• 1.5 tsp italian seasoning powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 cup boiling filtered water

METHOD:

1. Begin by measuring all of the dry ingredients into an appropriate sized bowl.
2. Mix together dry ingredients well.
3. Add boiling water.
4. Mix together well to incorporate all dry ingredients into water. Press together until it forms into a dough ball (it may be a bit sticky–that’s okay)
5. Allow “dough” to rest for a few minutes.
6. Place dough ball on baking tray between either two pieces of parchment paper or two silicone baking mats. Roll out thin. Now you can leave it whole and bake it that way (watch closely this is going to require longer baking by a few minutes), score it to break easily, or cut it into bite sized crackers. Any method works great depending on how you are going to use it later.
7. Bake until desired done in a 350 F degree toaster oven. Cooking time may vary on each batch.

NOTES:

• Add color: parsley flakes, mustard or turmeric powder, beet or spinach water (left over from cooking and draining a colored veg) or never mind the fact they look ugly–they taste fabulous! With the fresh nutritional yeast combined with the other herbs and spices this tastes like Italian Parmesan something–not quite the texture of breadsticks but not bad either.
• Watch the salt. It can taste too salty. So adjust to your likely and purpose. This is okay as is, but I would tweak the salt down (or leave it out all together) for some uses.
• Serving suggestions: with dip: Don’t pre-cut or score the dough prior to baking. Instead bread into dippers and serve on your snack boards with dip. as a chip: simply enjoy as you would chips or crackers on the side with favorite go-alongs or alone, as is. as a snack: spread with jam, preserves, butter, a compound butter, or top with dairy-free cheese or fish/salmon/sardine/ or plant-based “spreads” atop such as pesto or olive tapenade.

Kale Bake

This casserole is a lower-carb version of a lasagna-like dish, with similar flavors, but unique. This is a great, gluten-free, nightshade-free, recipe to use up things you have on hand and it tastes great. It is lovely paired with a side salad.

INGREDIENTS:

• 9 x 9 pan
  • White sauce (home made or store bought)
    • Kale (or spinach)
      • One or more cheeses (can be vegan, homemade, or store bought). Suggestions include: Italian cheeses, ricotta, cottage cheese (drained), fresh shaved Parmesan, mozzarella, or Monterrey Jack.
      • Dried Italian Seasoning to taste.
      • Pepperoni (vegan, or turkey based) or sausage (vegan or beef)

METHOD:

Layer, alternating layers, into – 9×9 Pan the following:
– kale pesto white sauce
– Kale
– 1 to 3 Cheeses (ricotta, cottage cheese, fresh shaved Parmesan, mozzarella, Monterrey Jack)
– Italian Seasoning
– (optional crumbled sausage or other favorite protein source)
– repeat layers as needed to fill the pan
Bake 350 for 45 minutes, or until cheese is to your desired brownness.

SAUSAGE (optional):

To make sausage (optional) take 1 lb of your favorite protein source and place it in a bowl. (If you are using canned beans, rinse and drain well before placing in the bowl). Lay down a “bead” (where you can still see the spice and it doesn’t get lost into the moisture of the protein source) of each spice: fennel seeds, pepper, salt to taste (optional-cheese is already salty), celery powder, garlic powder, parsley, dried onion flakes, a pinch of brown sugar, and a pinch of mustard powder. Mix the spices throughout the protein source so it is equally distributed. For raw-meat, cook and cool before placing on pizza or in the lasagna-like kale casserole. If using beans, add enough onion flakes and spices to bind the beans together and you can skip the cooking step for this recipe and use them in bit-sized drops as a protein layer in your casserole dish.

I’ve tried this recipe with an additional ingredient. Read about my trial of adding Palmini Lasagna sheets to this recipe.