For the past three years, I used to go to Santa Monica, California, for about three weeks to spend time with my daughter. I haven't yet this year. Anyway, I remember the first year I went in February 2009, she drove me straight from the airport to a restaurant called 'Rawvolution', I fell in love with the place right away. All the ingredients are so fresh, local and organic, no additives, canned stuff is used, no rancit smell of nuts, oils or fragrance candles. It is simply a great place to eat. I don't think I could get tired of eating there. We went to quite a few different number of other raw restaurants, they were all good however, Rawvolution remained and still remains my favorite. After eating some of the patries in these restaurants I became hooked on cashew cheese.
Since then I have made cashew cheese several times, somehow the one I made lately turned out to be the best one. I purchased quite a bit of raw, organic cashews and soaked them with big, organic garlic, the ones called musical which I bought from Small Wonder Organics Farm, run by lovely young couple, Sarah and Peter. A MOFGA (Maine organic, farmers, gardeners association) certified farm in Bowdoinham. They are relatively new, hard working farmers and produce the best tomatoes and garlic. So I soaked the cashews with a few cloves of garlic. Peeled the garlic and sliced it. Left the cashew and the garlic soaking for couple of days then used a mixer to mix and make it creamy.
I bought some root vegetables from Sarah and Peter, three different kinds of carrot, two different kinds of beets, turnip. I had bought quite a bit of shallots in Autumn from another farmer Suzie, who owns 'Patchwork Farm.' I decided instead of roasting the vegetables I am going to slow cook them so I put a teaspoon ful of coconut oil in a big pot, peeled a big shallot, added it to the pot, peeled and cut the vegetables, added it to the pout and put the lid on to cook for about an hour on very low heat. I did not add any salt, pepper, water, nothing, just the ingredients I mentioned. Since I cooked them on very low heat and vegetables contain water anyway, it came out nice and moist at the same time crunchy.
I served the vegetable with a big spoonful of the cashew cheese and winter savory herb. It was excellent, my kind of food. I plan to make it for my next batch of guests.