Glop Was in the Bottom

Last night I tried to make cannelloni.  An attempt, I tried to make it with veggie cheese.  B-minus, I’m afraid.  Winging it.  Build the shells till their a bit soft, but not too mushy.  And throw some things in the blender and make a poultice.  What did I put in?  Mushrooms, and parsley and cashews and some tofu and almond milk and salt and pepper and garlic and onions and a bit of yeast.  Get it all in there and get the consistency into something liquid enough to whip and blend but sturdy enough to resemble cheese and stand within the shells. 

First off, too much parsley is a mistake.  The glop looked green, which wasn’t especially appetizing.  The garlic, the onions the mushrooms were all baked, eventually, but the taste probably would have been better, certainly would have tasted better if they’d been sautéed key ingredients first.  I put the yeast in because it was recommended.  I couldn’t taste it or see what it had done.  Perhaps I should have discerned its purpose and worked to activate it more scientifically than haphazardly.

In my mind I have the vegan sauces and the vegan cheese taste of the restaurant my older one and I visited on 7&A this summer, in the Lower East Side.  That was heavenly.  That most likely did not have seven or eight different ingredients, but was confident about the three or four it chose.  Someone there was well past winging it. 

I took my shells and filled them full of green glop.  It was not the most artful effort.  Glop got on the outside of the shells.  Stuffing one end, the glop slipped out the other.  Much glop was in the bottom of the cooking pan.  But in the end the shells were stuffed and I smothered them with tomato sauce.  I baked them, clearly, for longer than I should have because in the end they stuck to the bottom of the pan were not easy to serve despite applying olive oil before the bake.  I believe I was sensitive because the glop had raw ingredients that needed to be properly baked and I more than once defaulted to leaving them in so I could ensure they were cooked. 

This pre-cooked theme is arising over and over. That then is my main, take away.  Making veggie cheese get most of your cooking done ahead of time, before you bothering to bake anything and figure out how to blend without turning it to puree.   We’ll keep experimenting on veggie ricotta cheese.  Still, I had the left overs for lunch.  I'm not sure I'd want you to have it but I enjoyed it. 

Wednesday 10/10/18