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Friday, November 20th.
- broccoli and cashew cheese—quinoa burrito -
Oh She Glows
I got out of school at noon on Friday. It was the start of a week-long thanksgiving break!
My way of celebrating the start of break was by making one of my favorite comfort foods in the world: burritos.
It had been a looong time since I'd had a burrito. Too long. When I was living in Massachusetts, there was a burrito place called boloco that we would get burritos from. A burrito from boloco constituted a special outing or occasion. Nothing can beat their burritos. Not even chipotle.
Ah, it brings back fond memories thinking of boloco burritos. I would always order their chicken and cheese burrito. What made their burritos was the delicious, warm, creamy, oozing cheese. It pooled up in my mouth on every bite.
This burrito from Oh She Glows was, albeit, a little different. There was no chicken. And there was no cheese. Hello: vegan!
Still, I had high hopes for this recipe. Angela Liddon writes, "Stuff this cheesy, warm filling into a wrap for the ultimate comfort-food burrito.
The ultimate.
I already knew this was going to be different. Oops, did I say that already? I could tell from looking at the list of ingredients. This dairy-free cheese sauce was made from a secret ingredient: soaked cashews. I was already familiar with the magic of soaked cashews from a raw raspberry cheesecake I had made. The cheesecake filling was made from cashews. Nutritional yeast is another important vegan ingredient in the imitation of cheese.
By no means was this "cheese" the same. The cashew cheese sauce was very different from the warm shredded cheese stuffed into the boloco burritos. However, it did it's job in satisfying the cheese craving. After transferring the sauce from the food processor to the pot with the cooked quinoa and sauteed vegetables, I licked the spatula clean!
Oh wow, this is actually pretty good. It was something unique. I wasn't so sure how it would turn out tasting when I was adding in all the ingredients...
The sauce, quinoa, and vegetables were all made, cooked, and sauteed separately. Everything was combined in the saute pan at the end to make up the filling of the burritos.
The broccoli was cooked with onions, garlic, celery, and sun-dried tomatoes. For the first ten minutes it was cooking, I was worried it would never become tender. Each poke and prod I gave the pieces was with mounting certainty that they would remain forever hard, firm, and unyielding.
Yes. A bit dramatic. Have you met me?
Finally, finally, finally. At last, in the last 5 minutes of its cook-time, did the stems start to shade slightly greener... and greener. A sign that they were... almost... tender...
What impatience.
This recipe was a lot more laborious and time consuming than I'd bargained for.
No surprise.
Anyways, at 1:30—yes, 1:30pm—it was done. And up next was heating the tortillas. Thank goodness that turned out to be easy. It constituted a 45-second pan-heating on both sides.
With the four warm wraps laid out on plates, I started the process of spooning over the filling. Which turned out to be a lot per burrito.
I was using gluten-free tortillas, because that was what the recipe called for. Though, I don't think that was a gluten-free tortilla shown in the picture, Angela! That looks like a wheat wrap to me.
When it came to wrapping the burritos, it was a spectacular failure. To put it kindly.
I even had four attempts. The problem was the ends weren't staying wrapped! Other than my utter lack of talent when it comes to wrapping burritos, I think it might have been due to there being too much filling. I got full-sized wraps so I don't know why this occurred. Maybe it was also that they were gluten-free, and thus a bit of a stiffer, less malleable texture.
It was disappointing. I felt a strong urge to break down and cry. I was hungry, frustrated, and disappointed. Hunger was the only thing that stopped me from wallowing in my misery on the spot. I arranged one burrito as best I could for a photo, and then proceeded to gobble it up.
It was messy, and delicious. The pieces of sun-dried tomatoes were amazing. To be honest, I had gotten lazy while chopping them, because by then I had already chopped multiple other things. There were some big chunks. I found these were the best part of it. Surprise!
There was no melting of cheese in my mouth. There was hardy quinoa and broccoli. Everything was falling apart. But what can I say; it was a burrito, and I was happy.