If, like me, you find yourself in need of an appetizer to take to a party–or just want to treat yourself or your family–but have little time and want to avoid a trip to the grocery store, this simple, speedy, and flavorful dip may be the answer. Plus, it sports holiday colors–though it is tasty all year–and is carnivore approved!
1 cup Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream (or 3/4 cup Better Than Sour Cream + 1/4 cup Better Than Ricotta 1/4 cup plant-based pesto 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 1/2 teaspoon onion powder 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/4 cup finely sliced or snipped green onions (approximately 1 large or 2 medium) Garnish: a couple teaspoons thick balsamic vinegar (fig flavored is nice), a couple tablespoons finely sliced or snipped green onion, pinenuts, etc. I like to finish with a “flower” made from the trimmed end of a red bell pepper, as in photo. Accompaniments: red bell pepper strips, cucumber slices crackers, bagel chips, etc.
Stir all dip ingredients together with a fork in a small-medium bowl. Transfer to serving bowl, drizzle with balsamic, sprinkle with green onion and pinenuts if using, and add optional bell pepper flower. Serve immediately with desired accompaniments, or cover and refrigerate until serving time.
Today I offer a perfect late summer vegan/plant-based recipe and an apology…for being “gone” for so long.
First the recipe:
Tomato-Peach Caprese is perfect for a light summertime snack, lunch, or dinner. Made with Tofutti Better Than Ricotta Cheese, fresh peaches and tomatoes, and chopped pistachios, it is especially light and refreshing served with cucumber slices, but serve it with crostini for a treat that is a little more substantial. We love the ricotta, but if you can’t find it locally, feel free to substitute Better Than Cream Cheese. But, good news: all Tofutti products are available at PlantX.
At least 30 minutes before preparing, combine garlic and olive oil in a small container and let steep at room temperature.
In a small bowl, stir together Tofutti Better Than Ricotta Cheese, red wine or balsamic vinegar, chives, and pepper until completely combined. Spread onto serving plate or board.
In another small bowl, gently toss together tomatoes and peaches with 1 tablespoon garlic oil and spoon on top of ricotta. Drizzle with remaining garlic oil and sprinkle with reserved chives, pistachios, and sea salt to taste.
Serve immediately with crackers and/or cucumber slices.
*Created exclusively for Tofutti Brands, Inc. by Betsy DiJulio of The Blooming Platter.
The apology:
As some of you may know, over a year ago, much to my delight, Tofutti Brands hired me as a recipe developer and food photographer. But, since fall 2020, I have also been a full-time teaching artist in the Upper School at Norfolk Academy in Norfolk, VA, where I concurrently–and gratefully–serve as the curator of Perrel Gallery. This rich new path follows a 16-year career as a public high school art teacher. And Tofutti isn’t my only side hustle, as I manage a busy magazine and newspaper freelance writing business.
I share this not as an excuse, but an explanation for my too-long neglect of my beloved website, The Blooming Platter.
Initially, I planned to post a recipe every time Tofutti did, but that plan got sidetracked by life and by my obsessive weekly recipe creation and testing. However, with this post, I am recommitting to that plan. I sometimes create other recipes which I will also share here. But for the most part, I am so consumed–see what I did there?–by my tasty work for Tofutti that virtually all my new recipes include Better Than Cream Cheese, Better Than Sour Cream, or Better Than Ricotta.
Substitutions/Tested Recipes
You can certainly try substituting other brands BUT be advised that, not only are Tofutti my favorite plant-based cream cheese, sour cream, and ricotta, but the recipes have only been tested with these products.
Get the Skinny
To make sure you don’t miss a single recipe, visit Tofutti here and sign up for our mailing list where your privacy will be respected and you will not be inundated. But you will receive all our recipes and eCookbooks, with the next featuring recipes for busy school and work mornings, afternoons, and evenings, as we gear back up for another school year.
As many of you know, Tofutti hired me last spring to create tasty content for them, a side hustle made for me if there ever was one!
I also love my day job as an art teacher in the Upper School at Norfolk Academy in Norfolk, VA, so when school let out last June, I went on a recipe development bender over the summer. You can access those recipes which have been published on the Tofutti site’s recipe blog. But there are many more in the can, as they say!
I backed off my flurry just a little once school started back in August but, for the most part, I have continued to create recipes, stage and photograph the finished dishes, and work on various special projects of which this eCookbook is my favorite.
Please note that, while I am paid a contract fee by Tofutti, the eCookbook is NOT monetized, so I am not promoting it for $$. Rather, I love these recipes, think the book is so beautiful to page through, even digitally, and wanted to share with you.
In Quick & Easy Entertaining: The Holiday Edition, you will find
Mex Chex Mix Cream Cheese Pecan Balls Turnip Greens, Red Beans & Vegan Sausage Soup Roasted Butternut Squash, Arugula & Candied Pecans Savory Vegan Sausage & Rice-Stuffed Microwave Baked Apples Oatmeal Streusel-Stuffed Microwave-Baked Apples Mini No-Bake Pecan Pie Cheesecakes Mini No-Bake Pomegranate Cheesecakes
To access your book, simply click on the link below which will take you to a pretty page where you enter your email address and submit. You will receive your eCookbook via email right away. And, not to worry: you will NOT be inundated with email from Tofutti…or me!
Once you have downloaded the eCookbook, you could certainly send it to friends, but we would love it if you would send them the link so that we know how many people are accessing it. And please share on your social media. The more the merrier.
We’d love to know what you think, as well as what other cookbook topics might interest you. We hope you love this little gift from us to you.
Recently, Spero Foods generously shared some of their sunflower-based products with me after I happily agreed to review their goat cheese alternative, The Goat.
I was excited to sample it–the fresh, modern packahing is appealing–but I wouldn’t say it is the “greatest of all time,” though It certainly has some merit.
I wanted to try it first without reading any reviews. My taste test revealed a creamy, but textured, product. However, I did not find that it tasted like the goat cheese that I recall from my pre-vegan days. Rather it tasted strongly–very strongly–of blue cheese.
Some of the reviews I later read raved about it’s exact match with goat cheese. Others shared my view that it tasted like blue cheese, and still others were much less kind about the flavor, the texture, and the aroma.
I tasted it plain and enjoyed it as a blue cheese-flavored spread, but then I made a Butternut Squash Spread with it. It was a little bit too robust in its flavor for the roasted butternut squash, so it would probably better complement something equally assertive, say a piquant Buffalo sauce.
I would buy the product, but I would buy it intending to use it more like a blue cheese. And I encourage you to see what you think.
2 cups diced roasted butternut squash 1/4 cup vegan goat cheese, blue cheese, ricotta, or cream cheese Leaves from 1-4 inch piece fresh rosemary 2 large fresh sage leaves, torn in half 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon onion powder Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided Garnish: fresh herbs and nuts, plain or candied
Process all ingredients together, except 1 tablespoon olive oil, in bowl of food processor until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary. Transfer to serving dish, make a swirl in center, drizzle with remaining olive oil, garrnish with fresh herbs and nuts as desired, and serve with crackers, toasts, or fresh vegetables.
Savory Parmesan-Fennel Shortbread make every hour happy!
Few things are better than these tasty rounds–buttery, tangy, and crisp-tender–with a glass of wine or non-alcoholic Proxies (pictured is “Pastiche”). Made by Acid League of teas, fruit juices, vinegars, bitters, herbs and other unexpected ingredients to pair with food, these wine alternatives have an “intoxicating” nose.
A Gift from Your Kitchen
An easy and welcome gift, the Shortbreads pack beautifully inside coffee filter-lined tins which I shared this holiday season with my freelance editors/publishers/clients and other professionals who provide service of inestimable value throughout the year.
On December 27, I contributed a dozen shortbread rounds to a happy hour for two (pictured) at the beautiful home of Angela Phillips. We also enjoyed her air fried brussels sprouts and chestnuts warmed with just a hint of olive oil.
Why Proxies?
Angela lives 8 or so miles away from us and, despite splitting the entire bottle of Proxies, I could drive home safely. These bottles really are “free of alcohol, full of complexity,” but are NOT dealcoholized–and are perfect when you want something beautiful, interesting, and exciting to sip on its own or, especially, with food, but prefer not to imbibe.
The pair of us drank the entire bottle of Pastiche, at only 75 to 100 calories total for each of us. Pastiche is a white wine alternative, made of the following: (FRUIT) Lychee, Pineapple, Peach, Gewurztraminer Grapes; (ACIDITY) Rose Vinegar; (SPICE) Pink Peppercorn, Amchur, Galangal, Clove; and (BODY) Bai Jian White Tea, Oolong Tea, Mosaic Hops. Proxies may remind you a bit of Kombucha but without the assertive fermentation and with many more layered and subtle flavor notes.
2 cups flour 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast (optional) 1 teaspoon sea salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon onion powder 1 cup Follow Your Heart or your favorite plant-based brand shredded Parmesan cheese 1/2 cup plant-based butter (I like Myokos), broken into chunks 1/2 cup olive oil (may need slightly more or less)
Place first 7 ingredients in food processor and pulse a few times to break up fennel seeds. Add parmesan and pulse a couple more times. Add butter and pulse to distribute. With motor running, drizzle in olive oil, stopping occasionally, until dough comes together, but is not sticky. It should be fairly firm, like roll-and-cut cookie dough. Form into 3 to 4 logs, approximately 1 1/4 to 1 1/2″ in diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line a baking sheet with Silpat or parchment paper. Slice rolls into 1/3-inch disks, place 1″ apart on baking sheet, and bake 18-20 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool on wire racks. Package in airtight containers.
A Thanksgiving guest you will want at the table: Caramelized Onion, Dried Cranberry, and Pistachio Tart. It is vegan, plant-based, and very well-behaved.
Plus It is easy-breezy, thanks in part to a press-in crust, but elegant in that rustic way that is so appealing in autumn.
I was comes honored to be hired by Tofutti to create 3 holiday recipes and it is super fun to share the first one with you for the holiday of gratitude this week, at least in the US.
Find my vegan/plant-based–but no one will no–recipe here.
The larder was pretty bare but I needed a bite of lunch that was plant-based, interesting, satisfying, and beautiful. We had yellow onion and one tablespoon of chickpea flour which was was about all I needed for a lite vegan lunch on the fly. But these would be tempting appetizers as well.
1/2 yellow onion, sliced into slivers
1 tablespoon chickpea flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons water
Garnishes: chutney, plant-based raita, cashews, mint leaves, cilantro, etc.
With a fork or spoon, combine all ingredients in a medium bowl. Heat skillet sprayed liberally with nonstick spray over medium heat. Divide divide fritter batter evenly into 4 disks a couple inches apart. Cook for a minute or 2 on first side, flip with a spatula, and cook a couple minutes more. Serve warm, garnished as desired.
You know those weeks: full to the brim at work and in the evenings and bracketed by similarly packed weekends of entertaining, yet you invited new friends for Friday happy hour in a rare moment of downtime. Then, Friday arrives, and you realize you have nothing more substantial to serve them than cashews and olives.
This is the dip for THOSE times. On our lunch buffet at school this week was a Buffalo Chicken Salad, creamy, not chunky. The staff prepares inspired vegan food for me, but this was not and I abstained. But I have been fantasizing about it, so I dashed into the grocery on the way home, picking up the ingredients along with everything we needed to host Bob’s father’s 90th(!) birthday party and his sister’s 60th–they were born on the same day–on Sunday. Whew!
Please enjoy even when you aren’t harried or maybe especially then:
1/4 to 1/3 cup diced red onion
4 celery hearts, cut into 1-inch chunks
8 ounces chick-un substitute (I use Tofurky Sesame-Garlic Chick’n)
2 to 3 tablespoons mayo (I use Walden Farms no-calorie mayo, but use what you love)
1 tablespoon agave nectar
1 tablespoon wing sauce or Sriracha
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
Optional garnishes: sprig of herbs, green or black olive, crumbles of plant-based blue cheese or blue cheese dressing
Accompaniments: celery sticks, cucumber slices, crackers, or sturdy chips
Place onion and celery in food processor and pulse to coarsely chop. Add chick-un and pulse until finely chopped. Add remaining ingredients and pulse until mixture comes together with a creamy-course texture. Cover and refrigerate. To serve, garnish as desired and serve with vegetables, crackers, and chips.
Vegan and plant-based queso blanco is typically made with cashews and potatoes, but mine is made with cashews and cauliflower for fewer calories and loads of nutrition. Served with plantain chips, it is my new obsession.
Yield: approximately 4 cups
12 ounces cauliflower florets 2 cups raw cashews 4 cups water 1 teaspoon sea salt 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 1/2 teaspoon onion powder 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin Juice of 1 medium lemon 2 tablespoons brine from a jar pickled jalapeños 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast 2 teaspoons white miso 1 tablespoon cornstarch 4.5 ounce can chopped green chilies with juice Garnish: Fresh cilantro and finely diced bell pepper (I like tri-color) Accompaniment: plantain or tortilla-style chips; also delicious served over Mexican dishes like enchiladas, Quesadillas, and nachos
Place cauliflower, cashews, water, and sea salt in a medium saucepan and gently boil until very tender and all but about 1/4 to 1/2 cup water has evaporated. Carefully transfer to food processor or high speed blender and add all remaining ingredients except green chilies. Process for several minutes or until very smooth. Rinse out saucepan, pour in cauliflower mixture, green chilies and juice, and heat through for a couple minutes over medium or medium-low heat, stirring frequently. Garnish with bell peppers and cilantro, and serve with chips or spooned over the Mexican dish of your choice.
