Last year, coincidentally on the same day, I shared how to make nyemba milk. I like making plant milk more than I like drinking them and I like seeing all the different things you can make with them. I get to experiment and its fun to see the transformation of the ingredients.
When I first found out about vegan cheeses, I just assumed that they are filled with chemicals and I was right. The problem with a lot of what we buy at the shops is shelf life. Food made without preservatives goes bad fast and businesses use them to extend shelf life. Given the price of food, noone wants to buy bread that goes bad after a day or two and yet fresh made bread starts tasting weird after 2 days.
Also making food from scratch is expensive. We can talk about consequences of eating bad food but sometimes people just don’t have the option to eat anything else but instant noodles. This is something I thought about making this nyemba cheese, a lot of the ingredients like nutritional yeast and agar agar, would be hard to find in Harare and if you did they would be expensive. I hope in future I would be able to find alternatives that can be found locally in Zimbabwe.
Nyemba Cheese
Ingredients
- 2 cups nyemba milk
- 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
- 3 tablespoon canola oil
- 2 tablespoon agar agar powder or 6 tablespoon agar agar flakes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1/8 teaspoon turmeric
- 2 tablespoon tapioca starch
Instructions
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Prepare a cheese mould by spraying a smooth glass container with a little oil.
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Pour all of the ingredients into a medium-sized saucepan.
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Stir the ingredients and turn on the heat to medium.
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Cook your cheese sauce until it has slowly boiled for 6 minutes while stirring frequently. (It needs to boil for 6 minutes to fully melt and activate the agar agar).
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Pour the cheese into the chosen mould.
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Cool for about 15 minutes on the countertop and then put it in the refrigerator uncovered for 2 more hours until it cools and sets completely.
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Serve or put in a sealed container in the fridge for later.
Recipe Notes
- Agar Agar is a vegetable gelatine that makes the cheese hard. It is optional if you intent to use the cheese as a sauce
- Tapioca starch will make the cheese meltable, if this is not a concern for you skip it.
