Today I attended a fab master class workshop put on by Cate and Chris of Green Renters. I’ve never made my own tofu, or the numerous cheeses I planned to make when I purchased vegan cheese cookbooks a long time ago. Same with vegan yoghurt, I always meant to make it (I even bought a yoghurt maker on sale… which isn’t necessary for making vegan yoghurt) but felt a bit too information-overloaded when I’d look up different vegan yoghurt making websites. So I thought that for my first efforts, I’d prefer to have an expert show me.
We started off with making tofu. Soy beans were cooked up and then strained/drained but the strained liquid is what you want, not the actual mooshy beany part (which can be used for other things):
Next up was almond milk. Retro blender!!!
Coconut bacon on the stove (I’ve made mine in the oven before), with liquid smoke, tamari and molasses (I’ve used maple syrup in the past but I liked the molasses):
Vegan butters, oh my:
Some vegan butters Cate brought along:
We split up in to small groups and made a variety of different cheeses. My little group, which included Linda from The Lentil Institution, made a mozarella, which I put in the fridge there and forgot to take home:
One of the cheeses made by another couple in the class:
I’ll need to go over the instructions for the yoghurt again but here is some barley and quinoa a-sproutin’:
Apple cider vinegar added to soy milk to make it curdle:
These vegan yoghurts were used in the process:
We had to give these a shake and now at home it still hasn’t really appeared to work unfortunately!
Kitchen hustle-bustle:
Cate and Chris provided an awesome feast. For morning tea there were Portugese custard tarts and a banana cake with a cashew icing. Yes I asked for a second tart and I was very tempted to ask for more cake but I think I may have wound up on some blogs, in the context of “I met Veganopoulous and man WHAT a greedy guts”:
Anyway, below is a coconut peppery cheese on the left and a basil pesto cheese on the right:
Some really, really good bread. Made even better when Cate said she would send me the recipe and it’s no-knead. I love it more already:
My plate. It looks polite and demure but I went back for way more bread and the cheeses (which you see on the bread). That Veganopoulous, mannn what a greedy guts:
And then 4pm rolled around a little too quickly. My bus stop was nearby and although it was a pleasant day, my icy hands and ears were not impressed to see I missed the bus by five minutes and I had a forty minute wait for the next one. Silly Sunday timetables:
While sitting on the bench at the bus stop, I saw this sign on the footpath. From a distance, I was saying to myself “why did they spell school as scool? Are they trying to be all totes cool with the lingo? Appeal to the kids with the whacky spelling? And if so, why did they spell school correctly in the bottom triangle?” So I was sitting there doing armchair psychology on the person who came up with this sign, then when I got up to take the photo I realised the second triangle doesn’t actually refer to the word ‘school’. That Veganopoulous, man what a whiner:
Here are today’s efforts now safely at home (minus the mozarella and my Tupperware). Also missing from the cheese-butter platter photo is a red capsicum cheese one of the other couples made. Because I dropped it right before taking this photo. So here it is, cleaned up a bit but still not edible:
I’m very glad I went, everything was great and I’m now super confident about going off in to the wild to make my own tofu, cheeses, butter spreads and yoghurt!