Daiya Makes an Appearance

The vegan world has been raving about Daiya since mid 2009. Bobby and I were excited to try it during our long road trip all over the Western U.S. in late 2009. We tried it for the first time at the enormous Whole Foods in Las Vegas. It was on a freshly made to order pizza, hot off the pizza stone. Bobby loved it. I found it to be a bit too sticky. However, as far as cheese replacements go, this is one of the best. I just prefer nutritional yeast and/or cashew cheese, personally, and Vegan Gourmet makes the best mozzarella substitute in my opinion. All that being said, Bobby adores Daiya, so I made some enchiladas the other night just for him. No, really, I didn't eat any of this. Bobby still has some leftovers frozen for future lunches. I did try a bite though, and it was good despite my Daiya dislike.

Fresh out of the oven

 So, I can't find the pictures of the process, or of the plates- sorry, friends! Basically I roasted up a bunch of veggies, and then pan fried white corn tortillas, rolled up some Daiya and the roasted veggies in them, and then doused the whole thing in some tomatillo and enchilada sauce. More Daiya went on top, and then it went in the oven (covered with foil) for 30 minutes. For the last 10 minutes I took off the foil so that the Daiya could brown.

On the side I made Spanish "rice", but I used cauliflower. I've talked about replacing rice with cauliflower before in this post. I just sauteed up some garlic, red onions, various bell peppers, and finely food processed cauliflower. Then I added in tomatoes, cumin, and chili powder. At the end I decided to just dump the black beans in with it, too. This was really delicious and would be excellent with some tofu scramble in a tortilla in the morning with a side of hash browns.

The Daiya cooked up really well in the enchiladas. I think it would be important to utilize the foil in any casserole style dish until the very end, just to keep it from getting dried out. A great thing about Daiya is that it isn't soy based, which is excellent for those with soy allergies, or people like me who try to steer clear of too much processed soy. You can find it in Whole Foods, and Sprouts has it as well. Plus I imagine that any quirky health food store would stock it, too.