Bitkisel Cafe: Cashew Mayonnaise

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hello everyone,

Today I'd like to share with you a great recipe that you can use in your Whole Food Plant Based kitchen: Cashew Mayonnaise.

As you can guess already from the title its main ingredients are cashew nuts. When you blend raw cashews with some water in a high powered blender, they melt and turn into a very beautiful smooth cream. Raw cashews have a very mild flavour, that's why they are often used to prepare plant based creams, cheeses and milk.

You can use this recipe not only as a mayo alternative but also as a cream to dress your pasta with or a cheesy spread on your slice of bread. You can thin it with a bit of plant milk when you use as pasta sauce. You can add nutritional yeast to give it a cheesy flavour.

I wanted this mayo to have a mild taste so I've limited my use of spices for this time not to create a strong flavoured mayonnaise. You can make any additions as you'd like. You can create distinctive flavours by adding fresh or dried herbs like dill, basil, thyme or spices like turmeric, curry, smoked pepper etc.

For those who don't like mustard, Dijon is a mild tasting mustard and adding 1 teaspoon into your mixture won't make your mayonnaise taste like mustard. So I'd say, don't be discouraged by the use of mustard in the recipe, it is up to you of course.

Yes, Cashew Mayonnaise is a healthier alternative to the classic one buy let's also remember that it is high in calories as well as nutrients. Even though our mayo has no refined oil but healthy fat, it is always wise to consume such nut containing calorie dense creams in small amounts.

About measuring cups and spoons I use in my recipes... I have a set that I bought from Amazon. As a person who likes trying new recipes I am a bit of perfectionist so I need to measure my ingredients with precision. They make my work so much easier. I have different sets of cutlery at home but none of them is the same in size. Besides, if you are copying recipes from cookbooks they almost always have such sets. Owning one would give you consistency and piece of mind. They could be easily bought in many stores or online.

Ingredients:
300 g raw unsalted cashews
180 g water
2 TBSP fresh lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon Mustard
1/2 tsp salt*
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder

Notes:

If you don't want to compromise from Whole Food Plant Based diet leave the salt out.
If you'd like your mayo to have stronger flavors, you can increase the amount of lemon juice, mustard and spices up to your taste. You can even prepare different flavored mayos by adding different herbs like dill, oregano, different spices like turmeric, smoked pepper, nutritional yeast or squeezed fresh garlic etc.
If you are using Thermomix or the container bowl of your Blender is as large as Thermomix's one (2 liters), you'd better to use minimum 300 g of cashews. Such large container blenders don't work well enough with small amount of ingredients and it is hard to obtain a smooth cream. Instead, if your Blender has a small container bowl you can reduce the amount that you plan to prepare.
I prepared a thick mayonnaise. If you'd like to have a thinner one add a little water up to your preference.
If you let it rest in the fridge for a couple of hours it will taste even more flavorsome.

Preparation:

Soak cashews overnight or a minimum of 4 hours. (If you are in a hurry soak your cashews in very hot but not boiling water for half an hour)

Drain and rinse the cashews.

Place cashews together with the rest of the ingredients in your high powered blender and blend until you obtain a smooth creamy consistency. If you'd like to have a thinner mayonnaise add a little water and blend again.

(Thermomix owners => Place cashews together with the rest of the ingredients in TM Bowl and blend for 1 - 1.5 minutes increasing the speed gradually up to 6-7 until you obtain a smooth creamy consistency. If you'd like to have a thinner mayonnaise add a little water and blend again)