Easy Vegan Parmesan Cheese

Another week. Another set of sunrises over Lake Superior. Another set of meals cooked for one and eaten at a table set for two. The two-place setting is the thing the kids have stopped commenting on. They used to remark when they came to visit. They used to gently suggest, in the way grown children gently suggest, that perhaps it was time to set just one. Now they set their own additional plates around mine and they let Paul's plate be Paul's plate. The setting is the love. The setting is the staying. Elsa called from Voyageurs. She had a sighting of a wolf — a single gray adult crossing a frozen bay at dawn, fifty yards from her cabin. She had a sighting of a moose two days later. She is happy in the woods. I am glad someone in this family is happy in the woods. I have always loved Lake Superior, but the deeper woods are not for me. Elsa is for the deeper woods. The match is right. Anna sent photos from Minneapolis — the kids in their school uniforms, David's new bookshelf, the dog (their dog, not mine; their dog is named Cooper, and Cooper is a Bernese mountain dog who weighs more than Anna and who is, by all accounts, the most relaxed dog in the upper Midwest). I printed three of the photos and put them on the fridge. The fridge holds the family that is not currently in the kitchen. I cooked Mushroom risotto this week. Wild mushrooms when I can find them, dried porcini reconstituted otherwise. Arborio rice toasted in butter, white wine, warm stock added slowly, parmesan and butter at the end. Thursday at Damiano. I brought a tray of pepparkakor — the second batch from the Christmas freezer, brought back to crispness in a low oven. They were eaten in fifteen minutes. The cookies are not the soup. The cookies are the extra. The extra is the message: you are worth the effort of cookies. Most of the world does not give the people who come to Damiano the message that they are worth the effort of cookies. The cookies are doing political work. I dreamed about Paul last night. The dream was specific: we were at the lake, in the canoe, fishing for trout. He was teaching me the right way to cast (he was always trying to teach me; I never quite got the rhythm; I caught fish anyway, by accident, with embarrassing regularity). In the dream he was patient and present and entirely himself. I woke up at 4 AM. I made coffee. I sat in the kitchen. The dream was a visit. I have learned to receive the visits without reaching for them. They come when they come. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. The seasons in Duluth are unsubtle. The winter is long and white and dark. The spring is reluctant. The summer is glorious and brief. The fall is brilliant and quick. The unsubtlety is a kind of honesty. The seasons do not pretend to be other than what they are. They give you what they give you. They take what they take. The kitchen, in response, does what it does — soup in winter, salads in summer, pies in fall, bread always. It is enough.

The risotto I made this week ended the way it always ends: a generous handful of parmesan stirred in at the last moment, then more scattered on top, because Paul always said the second handful was the honest one. I have been making a vegan version of that finishing cheese lately — partly for Elsa, who has been plant-based since she moved to Voyageurs, and partly because it keeps in a jar on the counter and does not ask anything of you. It is ready when you are. That quality matters more than it used to.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 5 minutes | Servings: 16 (about 1 cup total)

Ingredients

3/4 cup raw cashews
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions

Combine. Add the raw cashews, nutritional yeast, sea salt, and garlic powder to the bowl of a food processor or a high-speed blender.
Pulse. Pulse in short bursts, 8 to 10 times, until the mixture resembles finely grated parmesan — sandy and crumbly, with no large cashew pieces remaining. Do not over-process or it will turn into cashew butter.
Taste and adjust. Taste and add a pinch more salt or nutritional yeast if you’d like a sharper, more savory flavor.
Store. Transfer to a clean jar with a tight-fitting lid. Store at room temperature for up to 2 weeks, or refrigerate for up to 1 month. Sprinkle generously over mushroom risotto, pasta, roasted vegetables, or soup.

Nutrition (per serving, approximately 1 tablespoon)

Easy Vegan Parmesan Cheese — The Finishing Touch That Belongs on the Risotto