Friday, November 4, 2011

Pumpkin Cashew Cheese Dip

          Remember that ginormous pumpkin I stuffed and baked last Sunday?   Wow, that was a lot of pumpkin.  After the dinner guests took their small slivers (My husband:  "No pumpkin for me, I'll just have some stuffing.") and I gave a huge hunk to our hostess, I still took this much home.
          We ate the stuffing with a chicken dish on Monday and I cut, peeled, and refrigerated the rest of the pumpkin.  Then I got really busy and couldn't cook much for a couple of nights.  Finally, on Thursday, I needed to bring an appetizer to my book club and found a recipe for something called cashew cheese.  This is actually a vegan recipe that contains absolutely no dairy and is foundationally built upon pumpkin.  Yea, that's good for me.
         I couldn't find raw cashews in Tunis, but I had blanched almonds and gave those a try.  I don't know what cashew cheese is meant to taste like, but this made an interesting pumpkin spice flavored dip, slightly sweet, with a little kicky heat from some cayenne.  Served with baguette slices brushed with olive oil and rosemary, slices of fresh apples, and some real cheese,  it was nice.  The almonds didn't completely break down so my dip had some chopped nuts that needed further chewing,  It was fine. 
This is REAL cheese my friend, Lauren, just brought from The Hague.
The first new lemon of the season. 

No comments:

Post a Comment