A Vegan Smiles ‘Parmesan’
Dried, granulated parmesan replacement
Pros: Strong flavour, superior texture to many other dried parmesans, nicely coloured, Australian made
Cons: Not yet available outside of Melbourne, requires a trek
There aren’t a huge number of decent vegan parmesans on the market, or at least those that can’t be replaced adequately with nutritional yeast, however I think A Vegan Smiles’ Kinda Cheese range’s parmesan may have worked out the formula perfectly.
I went in to Prahran Convenience to buy my three bags of Daiya cheese, and ended up with quite the collection of purchases (including another slab of bio cheese). One of the items I bought was this parmesan cheese from A Vegan Smiles, a Melbourne-based vegan start up that does a number of cheeses (some of which I need to go back and try!) and a few other products, including pet biscuits, pea protein, lasagna and vegan sausage rolls. The parmesan doesn’t look like much in its little zip lock packet, and it almost escaped my notice in their vegan cheese-stuffed fridges at the shop, but luckily I managed to grab it. I noticed a number of other A Vegan Smiles cheeses (including a cheese log and a hard cheese) so I will have to pick some more up soon.
It’s gritty but nutty at the same time as being strong, and my favourite qualities are the deeper colour (you can see how pale Angel Foods’ Bellissimo parmesan is here), as well as its slightly more irregular texture, with some of it clumping together when you sprinkle it out. While it’s primarily dry it has a slight oily texture to it that is better on the mouth than the completely dehydrated shaker cheeses.
I decided to use this to help me with my revised version of a pesto in the latest Women’s Weekly Italian cookbook. Firstly, a shout out to this amazing food collection – the recipes, images and entire layout of the cookbook is just fantastic, and it only set me back $9.95 on a whim buy from the supermarket. I highly recommend! I already have a pesto recipe partially stored away in my mind from the one my Mum used to make, and the recipe in the book helped me to be inspired by a few other ingredients and textures.
In the end, this was my very simple combination (based on the walnut rocket pesto sauce).
Two-step pesto
200gram bag of baby spinach mixed with rocket (set me back about $2.50)
Bunch of basil ($2.95)
Olive oil (from the pantry)
Pinenuts (from the pantry – 1 handful)
Salt and pepper (from the pantry)
Half a lemon, juiced (50 cents)
Garlic (we used two cloves finely chopped, but one is ample if you’re not a huge fan)
A scoop of my homemade macadamia ricotta
Liberal amounts of Kinda Parmesan
Get the spinach, rocket, parmesan, olive oil (about a third of a cup), salt, pepper, garlic, Kinda parmesan, a pinch of the pinenuts and lemon juice in a container. Blend this mix thoroughly with a stick blender until it becomes a fine paste. Get a pestle and mortar (or just use the olive oil glass bottle) and crush the rest of the pinenuts up into smaller pieces. Stir through, with the ricotta, for texture.
Pour olive oil over the blended pesto mixture if you’re intending to keep it. I am told that traditionally pesto is just ground up in a pestle and mortar, but I like mine at a fairly even consistency, and I’m also incredibly pushed for time when I’m cooking usually so this to me is the most efficient way to get it done.
I served it with gluten free spaghetti (and stirred through some leftover fondue as well for an added touch of cream. If you want to make it creamy, I recommend blending in some Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese) and I added some fresh coriander that I stirred through.
The pesto mix has a great bite to it, a slight bitterness from the rocket and is absolutely incredible with pasta. I love the colour of it and its freshness that is unmistakably homemade. Even if you’re not a pesto fan, I highly recommend trying to make some of your own – store bought pesto is nothing in comparison (and rarely vegan, unfortunately). You can also shake it up with whatever you like, some extra herbs or flavours? Want some onion? It’s the easiest thing to customise. Spice lovers might want to add some chilli, while others will maybe want to notch up it up with some lime instead of lemon.
One packet of pasta with this amount of pesto served three a hearty meal, and provided lunch leftovers for one the next day. I’d recommend serving with some veggies, or adding corn. You could also use it as a spread, dip, on salad or in a wrap, it’s fabulous. I’ve heard some traditionally used it in minestrone soup as well.
The Kinda Parmesan gives this a huge uptick, providing a slightly nutty and tangy base to it that, even with the macadamias and pine nuts, just wouldn’t be replicable otherwise. I topped my pesto dinner with the parmesan as well, and it looked beautiful – that dehydrated parmesan look with a rustic edge.
It comes in a re-sealable plastic bag, and keeps until October, which isn’t too bad a run time. I’m not sure I’ll get through it all, as parmesan actually isn’t high on my list of cheeses I regularly aim to eat, however it’s so good I might actually start mixing it in with other seasonings, on roast potatoes and on vegetable bakes. I also thought it might be nice mixed in with rice crumbs as an arancini crust.
The next dish I tried it with was, unusually, congee. I’ve read that a lot of people eat parmesan with a sort of savoury oatmeal dish, and I figured it would also be similar. This nutty flavour also suits congee – the vegan congee they serve at The Star casino’s Fat Noodle restaurant comes with crushed peanuts to have with it, along with a number of other pickles and things. I was therefore pretty comfortable with using it on this dish.
My mother in law made this congee – and she always does a brilliant job with it (she says she ate it as a child growing up in Malaysia as well). It’s apparently eaten by people when they’re sick as well, which personally just makes me think of gruel. While it’s often served with meat, smoked tofu, oyster/shittake/shmeji mushrooms and mock meat all go perfectly. I had mine with some garlic shoots, chilli, spinach fried in garlic, oyster mushrooms, chilli and garlic sauce, kimchi and tempeh. As it turned out, the parmesan worked beautifully on it – giving it a lift and a good bit of texture. I really recommend this combination.
Unlike the Bellissimo shaker parmesan, this one does need to be refrigerated.
The price
Around $6.50 for the 65 grams, I think it was a fair purchase – particularly considering that these aren’t mass made and aren’t available particularly widely. I’m also nowhere near through the 65 grams. A serving size is noted as 10 grams on the packet, but I think that may be an overstatement.
The ingredients
Almonds, Cashews, Savory yeast [Dried yeast, Niacin (B3), Pyridoxin (B6), Thamin (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Vitamin B12], Miso [water, soybean, rice, salt, ethyl alcohol], Onion, Garlic, Salt
The nutritional value
It’s basically nut based, and it’s good to see it with the additional B12, however I don’t think it’s a hugely healthy option if you were to eat it by the cupful. As I said about the last parmesan offering, it’s just for a flavour boost on your food so it’s not such an issue.
They deliver Melbourne-wide, although when I was looking at the options it suggested it only delivers to the nearest market. Check out A Vegan Smiles website for details on the nearest market.
