Wine & Cheese: An Old Friendship – Part 1

It has been an exciting cheese making week! I joined a Dutch Facebook page that focuses exclusively on making vegan cheeses (Vegan Kaas Maken) and a member posted a picture of a red Windor cheese, which – according to Wikipedia – is “is a pale cream, English cheddar cheese, made using pasteurised cow’s milk marbled with a wine, often a Bordeaux wine or a blend of port wine and brandy.” Of course the member’s questions was whether anyone had ever been able to make a vegan version of that cheese.

The picture of the Windsor cheese so intrigued me that I just couldn’t let is go. My mind kept mulling over way in which I might be able to make a vegan version of that cheese.

One of the ideas that I had (there are a couple more brewing in my mind!) was to first make a steamed rice cheese, shred it, and then add the shreds to a batch of red-wine cheese, which was still to be steamed.

The link to the recipe of the steamed rice cheese is in the previous paragraph. In this post, I am including the recipes for a Merlot cheese and for a marbled cheese. I absolutely love the Merlot cheese, both in terms of taste and stunning appearance. The marbled cheese did not quite come out as I had hoped, but I feel it still looks nice all the same with just a delicate marbling effect.

Merlot Cheese

Ingredients:

100 ml water (3.38 fluid oz)
85 ml dry red wine, I used a Merlot (2.87 fluid oz)
75 gram Asian white-rice flour (2.65 oz) – NOT glutinous rice flour
35 gram tapioca flour (1.2 oz)
75 gram refined coconut oil, melted (2.65 oz)
1.5 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp beetroot powder (you can leave it out but it adds a lovely deep rich color)

Preparation:

Add all ingredient to a blender cup. Blend until completely smooth. Pour into in a glass or stoneware container. Steam for 25 minutes. Place in the fridge to cool and firm. You should be able to remove the cheese from the mould after about 1 hour or so.

Note: I divided the cheese mixture, that is the mixture BEFORE it goes into the steamer, into two portions. 100 grams was used to make the marbled cheese. The remainder was used to steam a plain red-wine cheese like you can see in the above image

Marbled cheese

Ingredients:

135 grams prepared and cooled steamed rice cheese, coarsely shredded
100 grams Merlot cheese mixture

Preparation:

Mix both cheeses and pour into a glass or stoneware container. Steam for 30 minutes. Place in the fridge to cool and firm. You should be able to remove the cheese from the mould after about 1 hour or so.

Part 2 of this post will include the recipes for