That is a direct quote from my check-out woman at Trader Joe’s earlier this week. She was very confused as she held up my prosciutto and my vegan cheese. I explained to her I try to avoid dairy when possible so I’d be giving this vegan cheese a try. I tested it out this week and have mixed feelings- more on that later.
While buying those ingredients I had an Eggplant Prosciutto Rolls recipe in mind (from Budget Bytes) but altered it to make it dairy-less. As I started cooking last night I expected to completely fail with this recipe as I wasn’t using any of the cheese, one of the main ingredients and I don’t own a mandoline (& my knife skills are sub-par at best). I decided instead of stuffing the eggplant with prosciutto and ricotta, mine would be smaller and only have prosciutto.
I followed most of the directions listed HERE and left out the cheese in the middle. Plus I topped mine with a jarred tomato sauce (far too lazy to make my own). To give my dish a little cheesiness, I topped half of the rolls with the vegan cheese (and left half without in case it was gross). I’m happy to report it was NOT gross and in fact, it was quite delicious! The vegan cheese melted extremely well in the oven and was a good stand-in for the real thing. It tasted cheesy and melty without any dairy.
As I mentioned, my knife skills can be described as “eh” so I had a lot of messed up eggplant slices that weren’t going to work for these rolls. I sprayed them with olive oil (sprayed from the Misto) and sprinkled salt and pepper on top and put those on a baking sheet in the oven along with the roll ups. They were a nice side dish (yes, my dinner was essentially eggplant with a side of eggplant).
Despite missing a major ingredient, the roll-ups came out good. My one complaint is that they were way too salty. I think if I put only half a slice of prosciutto in each roll and included something else to balance it out it might be better. Not sure what I’d add, but potentially sauteed spinach and kale. I think these would also be good on a bed of fresh spinach.
Fresh out of the oven:
Plated:
And if you’re curious, here’s a bit more on the vegan cheese: I’ve been craving melty cheese and this really did the trick for me. Does it taste like real cheese? Umm, not really. The consistency is a bit strange (pre and post-melting) and depending what you put it on, it has a bit of a glue-like consistency (appetizing, I know). For some reason, on top of these eggplant roll ups the consistency and the taste was REALLY good. I had also put it in my chili earlier this week and that was not good. It didn’t really melt much and tasted chalky. I think further experimenting with this cheese would be needed as it can be hit or miss depending what it is paired with. My only other con to this cheese is that it’s super processed. Like many vegan packaged goods, there are a lot of weird ingredients and I’d probably be better off just eating a little bit of real cheese; I’m not vegan so as long as it is in moderation I’d be fine to eat the real thing.
