That milk is not so good for you, you already knew. It’s not new for you that, as a human being, you are not made to digest milk and all the dairy products. More than that, so many studies link lots of health problems to it. Heart disease, alzeimer, diabetes type 2, even cancer, just to mention some. It’s time you realize you don’t need it in your daily routine. But of course, we all know that cheese addiction. So that’s the reason behind this post: start making your own cheese and say goodbye to so many health problems.

I was never a cheese fan but when a friend of mine asked me to photograph her vegan cheese for her new online shop, I couldn’t believe what I was missing. That salty protein part of my salads which I was so looking for.

It’s really easy to make your own cheese. And it doesn’t take so much time. All you need is a blender and some 2-3 weeks of patience. The more the cheese will be resting, the better it will be. The most lovely part of making is that you have control on the used ingredients and you can add your different spices to cover it or in the cheese itself. My favourite ingredient for the cheese would be turmeric for the vibrant color but also for its anti-inflammatory add. And as coating we love za’atar, cumin, poppy seeds, but you can go as crazy as you want by using hemp seeds, sesame, paprika powder.

Ingredients (for 4 cheeses):

500gr cashews

10-12gr sea salt

a pinch of cheese starter culture from https://www.cashewbert.com/en/online-shop/vegan-cultures/ Or 2TbSp of miso/ probiotics or ferments from https://www.boutique-natali.com/fr/51-ferments

2gr pepper powder

3gr garlic powder

10-15 gr curcuma powder (optional, but for extra color and properties)

Let the cashews soak in water during one night. The day after, wash the nuts well and add them to the blender, also adding the rest of the ingredients and 200-210gr water. Mix it very well. You will need to stop from time to time and let you mixer rest a little bit and then continue. Also you can add more turmeric if you think that the color is not deep for you. Try it and add, if needed, some more salt/peper. Pour the mixture into 4 different empty recipients (like the ones I used, something easy to unmold or use some plastic). Put these filled with cheese recipients in the frizer.

The day after, take them from the frizer and unmold them: you can place your mold under the warm tap water to make the unmold easier.

This step can be a mess sometimes so don’t worry and just try to follow the instructions. Once you unmold your cheese, place your cheese on some kitchen wood where you will try to cover your cheese with your choosen powder: in my case I used hemp powder( but I recommend you use sumac powder or garlic powder in case it’s the 1st time you make it). The cheese is still frozen so covering it with powder would look difficult but just go on and and try to add it as much as you can. The cheese should be covered in your choosen powder.

Once your cheese is well covered, put it on a kitchen paper (this will help to absorb the extra water of your cheese). Starting from now on, you will have to turn your cheese everyday on a different side in order that your cheese gets drier. You don’t need to take everyday a new kitchen paper, just change it from one day to another so that the paper you take had the time to dry.

In this image, the cheese is almost 6 days old (the papers were used every other day, so that’s why there are so dirty of the turmeric), and we already took some of it for our salad. But the longer it stays, the better it gets. After 7-10 days the cheese is already good to eat. You can now keep it in the frizer or keep ip in the frigde but don’t forget to change it from one side to another. Otherwise the cheese will become bad.