Lacto Fermented Dips/Spreads/Mayos/Whathaveyous

So here is another chapter in the fermented nut cheeze story of my lacto fermentation quest.

Or is it another chapter in my lactic fermented nut cheeze quest story.

Whatever.

I'm actually watching Bored to Death right now and am having a really hard time focusing on this post.  And I bet you thought you always had all of my attention.  Um...nope.  This show is really funny.  I don't know how I heard of it cause I'm kinda out of the loop on most TV - but I put in on hold at the library and just started watching it.

Anywho...a week or so ago I made a modified version of this Almonnaise (vegan gluten free mayo) as a dip and it was really freaking good.  I used way less oil (like 1/4 c) and ate it with some of my crackers and on some sandwich things.  Instead of grinding the almonds in the recipe myself I used almond meal/flour.  I wanted to make some more this week and I didn't happen to have any more almond flour, so I improvised - and man oh man did it work!!!  I used the remaining cup of fermented nut cheeze I had in the fridge and it turned out grand!  Grand, I tell you!  I also made another dip/spread thing that I would like to share as well.

Carol's Fancy-Ass Fermented Nut Cheeze Spread/Dip

1 cup fermented nut cheese
approx 1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp dried herbs (I used thyme and sage)
1 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup (or more if you prefer) safflower oil
1-3 Tbls lemon juice

Put nut cheese and water in a blender and blend and add more water till it's creamy and the blender seems happy with the whole arrangement.  Add all the seasonings and blend a little more.  Then, with the oil you will be making mayo - and if you have never done that then you will now.  You put the amount of oil that you want to use (less makes it more dippy, more makes it more mayonaissey) into a measuring cup and take that center part out of the blender lid and trickle the oil into the blender while it is going and it will slowly make an emulsion that will then be a dippy/mayo.  Then blend in the lemon juice.  It will be pretty runny at this point - whether you make it with the almond meal or with the nut cheese - but after it's been in the fridge a while it will thicken up a lot.

The other spread thing I made is this stuff that I used to make a long time ago.  I used to own this book called The Book of Miso and the one thing I remember from it that I LOVED was this miso spread thing that they had a bunch of variations in there.  It was basically miso mixed with whatever you want and then spread on bread or put on rice.  The main one that I made was mixed with peanut butter and honey. Trust me it was GOOD - sweet and salty and peanutty and so freaking good.  But you could also do tahini or some other nut butter and no honey and add just about anything like orange juice or garlic (probably without the honey) or other herbs or seasonings.  Anyway - it is just really good.  So what I did was substitute the fermented nut cheese for the peanut butter - so here is a vague version of my recipe for that.

Miso Spread

1/4 cup miso
1/4-1/2 cup fermented nut cheese
2 Tbls honey - more or less

Mix all together according to your tastes.

So, one morning this last week I was trying to put together a travel breakfast cause I was leaving early and was gonna be gone all day and I came up with this sandwich thing.  I used kamut bread cause I had it - but normally I would use regular bread or a raw wrap thing.  I put the mayo spread on both pieces of bread (mostly cause the kamut bread is really dry) and then a layer of the miso spread and then a whole bunch of sprouts and it was actually really good.  I know I keep saying that - I guess you'll just have to try it for yourself.

So anywho...those are the dippy recipes and the other stuff on the plate in the photos is the fermented nut cheese crackers I posted last time as well as some zucchini crackers I made that are really good too and some cheezy kale chips.

There are a bunch of recipes for kale chips out there that you can find on youtube or on raw food websites so I won't post it here unless I get a barrage of comments begging me for my recipe.  Or unless I feel like it.

Raw Fermented Cheeze Cracka! Gooood Cracka!

The other day I posted a big ole thing about fermented nut cheese/cheeze/cheece/sheese and immediately I was barraged with an email from my sister with a novel suggestion.  She had somehow come into possession of a recipe for cheese crackers with almond flour and thought it would be tasty to use my aged, fermented nut cheese.  This is the original recipe - I don't know the source so please don't sue me if this is your recipe.  Just tell me who you are and I will give you your blessed due.

2 1/2 cups almond meal

1/4 teas sea salt

1/2 teas baking soda

1 cup freshly grated cheddar cheese

3 tablespoons grapeseed oil

2 large eggs

My plan was to dehydrate them in my food dryer - and I'm not too familiar with how eggs do in that sitch - so I did a switcheroo and substituted chia glob for eggs.  I'll tell you all about it in a minute!  

I only had 1 3/4 c almond flour yesterday, and all I had for fermented nut cheese was one that had been going for 4 days - so it wasn't really super cheezy - but it was still quite good.  So, anywho... I reduced the amount of some stuff and threw some other stuff in and low and behold came up with these really very good crackers.  

So here is my adapted recipe:

Raw Fermented Cheeze Crackers

1 3/4 c almond flour

1/2 c fermented nut cheese

2 T chia seeds

1/4 c water

1 t lemon juice 

1t sea salt

The first thing you want to do is get your chia going.  Chia seeds are this like super miracle food that people are in love with and want to marry.  Google it if you want to weep with joy along with everyone else.  You can use them as the binder for raw crackers, as a thickener for puddings and sauces, and as an egg replacer in baking - so I figured this could replace the eggs AND be the binder of my crackers.  So what you do to get the binder action going (or to use them as an egg replacer in a baking recipe) is put around 1T of seeds in a bowl with about 1/4 c of water and let it sit for 5-10 min.  I used 1/4 c water total at this point cause I wasn't sure how it was all going to play out in the end, if you know what I mean.  I put everything in a food processor and wound up needing to add quite a bit of water - like 1/2 c or more. I smeared it around on a fruit roll tray in my food dryer - around 1/8 inch thick - and let it go to town.  I took almost 24 hours to dry - mostly cause I had it down at 105 degrees for most of the time.  So - these are great but I would do a few things differently next time around...

I would really like to try these with a much longer fermented nut cheese - so there's that.  But also I think I would up the chia amount - to like maybe 1/4 c or more of chia seeds and maybe a cup of water cause they came out a bit thicker than I wanted and more on the crumbly side than I was expecting.  That's not bad at all - neither the thickness or the crumblyness - I'd just like to see what I could do with these.  Also I think I'd use more lemon juice.  You can never have too much lemon juice in anything as far as I'm concerned.


Baron keeps calling these Soylent Green.