No-Dairy, No-Nut, No-soy Nacho Sauce and No-soy Tofu

Never one to turn down free food, I accepted a cheery red bell pepper from my friend after she and her husband treated me and Dave to a home-cooked meal (I get to dog sit for her next weekend.) She said she wouldn't be able to use it in time. Months ago I saw a nacho sauce recipe that claimed having bell pepper was a key ingredient. Naturally I was so excited, I forgot to book mark it and now can't remember which one it was.

I found a few versions online, some used cashews to make it rich (I tried No Meat Athlete's Vegan Mac N' Cheese but found I had to add lots of sriracha to make it to my liking), but like one blogger pointed out if you like to lay it on thick, a cashew based sauce may be a wee bit too high in calories for a recipe to be used more often than special occasions. The nutless ones I came across used miso...which interestingly one blogger claimed as being soy-free. Well, maybe she found the one made from chickpeas. Any way, I'm not ready to re-introduce soy into my diet to test my reaction yet and don't have time to wait to order chickpea miso or make calls trying to locate it locally. So substitution recipe for miso searching was needed. A few boards suggested using tahini or a tomato-paste/soy sauce substitution. I happened to have coconut aminos from my local Whole Foods to use instead of soy sauce/Braggs liquid amino-it's not as satisfying on my mochi and nori as soy sauce but it could just work for this recipe.I always keep a can of tomato paste in the pantry.

I'm not going to say the recipe really tastes anything like the cans of neon orange cheese, but by golly, I sure felt it was tasty and rich. I spent from about 6:40p-7:40p in the kitchen. A little prep work was done over the weekend (pepper roasting, soak beans).  I modified the recipe I found at Fo Reals Life to make it soy-free. And also tried making a soy-free tofu to put into this nacho "cheese" recipe (tofu not made from soy sounds contradictory, no? Apparently you can make tofu from other kinds of beans. And if you only have 45 minutes and chickpea flour, you're ready! I had no idea about any of this until I read this blog Triumph of the Lentil. If you enjoy legumes, I think this lady's blog is worth a gander. I hope to find some other recipes to try...maybe doing a test vegan body building month WOULD be possible without soy after all).

Here's the modifed ingredients and instruction:

NO DAIRY, NO NUT, NO SOY NACHO SAUCE

1/4 c. roasted red pepper (if making from scratch, just brush with oil, and roast at ~400F for 20 minutes, rotating 2-3 times if leaving whole so all sides get some charring. Place in a brown paper bag after for about 10 minutes to make the skin easier to peel off and pull out the seeds)
1/2 c. nutritional yeast
1 tsp. lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 TBSP.sesame seeds
1 TBSP. tomato paste + 1 tbsp coconut aminos
1/4 c rice. flour
1/4 tsp. salt
6 oz of chickpea tofu (recipe below)-this was probably a cup of strips if you don't have a scale.
1 c.plain hemp milk
1/2 c. water

Stick all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Cook over medium-high heat until nice and thick. Stir constantly to avoid a burnt bottom.

Serve it with your favorite nacho fixings. My dinner consisted of toasting some corn tortillas until crisp and piling it high with arugula, chopped olives and some kidney beans.

NO SOY TOFU
I made a half recipe of what was on the original blog since my chickpea flour reserves are low and I still have half an 8x8 pan left to make an additional 2-3 meals this week-score!

1.25 cups chickpea flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups cold water

Mix together dry ingredients, breaking up lumps.

Put dry ingredients into a pan or saucepan. Adding water a bit at a time and breaking up lumps.

Turn on the heat to medium and keep stirring until the batter thickens (my half recipe took about 4 minutes on a gas stove, the original chef says her full batch was 7 minutes on electric). 

Grease the pan and then spread the batter evenly. Allow to cool/firm up on the counter 20-30 minutes before attempting to cut. Reminds me of polenta but so much faster (no hand cramps)! And more protein!

And to think this all started with getting a free bell pepper.

What was the last free/good deal you got without knowing what you were going to do with it? What did you end up making?