Monday, February 12, 2007

I <3 NYC

A week ago I had "macaroni and cheese" at Good Karma Vegan Cafe in downtown San Jose (plug - it's one of my favorite restaurants and I've made a weekly routine of going). The "cheese" was made of this mysterious nutritional yeast stuff I have heard much about but never encountered. My impression was that it tasted somewhat like cheese, perhaps a bit more like gravy, with maybe a hint of peanut butter. Weird? Yeah, but lately I have been interested in weird vegan foods.

As luck would have it, I needed to pick up some stuff at Whole Foods, and they had nutritional yeast in the bulk bins, so I bought a bunch. Angeline has been requesting "breakfast for dinner" for the last few days and had even pre-cooked some cubed russet potatoes for this purpose. So, for dinner tonight, I made eggs and potatoes for dinner, and for my taters I made a batch of NYC.

I used 1 part NY flakes, 1 part flour, and 2 parts water, plus a bit of margarine and salt. I whisked it over a low flame until it took on a velveeta-esque texture, and poured it on the taters. This was not exactly how the guy at Good Karma said they made theirs, but it tasted almost exactly the same to me... I suppose that's mostly due to the NY's flavor.

Conclusion? I liked it so much that I wanted to lick the pot clean. But, I'm weird. Angeline said she could see why it would be used for gravy (which she generally doesn't like) and didn't feel inclined to comment any further on the subject...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can't say that I'm enthusiastic about the taste...but it did have an intriguing flavor that was not completely repulsive. I would use it for Thanksgiving mashed potatoes instead of as 'cheese'.