Cottage Cheese Faux Quiche Loaf

Walking back from the library, I’m pretty sure I got pinged in the ear by a piece of hail this morning. Brrrr! I can’t really complain, after looking at everyone else’s pictures of their kids hip-deep in snow drifts, but baby, it’s COLD outside, and it’s not even winter yet! Yikes!

We tend to keep the flat not overly warm, because walking means we’re warmer than drivers (and there’s nothing nastier than walking in from the cold — perspiring under your layers — and walking into a stiflingly hot house) but Mac has been having a difficult time getting bread to raise. We realized that we’re not keeping the flat warm enough for even yeast to feel like shaking a leg, so we’ve pushed all of our baking and soup-making and food-inventing onto the baking days, so we can raise the heat all at once. It’s lovely.

Now that things are warm and toasty, we’re in the mood for scrumptious and savory. Pille started the fun by posting her cottage cheese muffins last week, and we’ve been craving them since. We had plenty of cottage cheese in the house, but preferred not to use the two eggs called for in the recipe, and we were out of flaxseed, and couldn’t find it anywhere.

A long and careful perusal of our local health food store, Grassroots, delivered up what we needed: linseeds.

I know: Duh. We’ve been searching everywhere for flax seeds, and could only find ground flax meal, or processed flax oil. In seed form in Scotland, apparently flax is called linseed. Oddly enough, in the U.S., only the non-edible flax is called linseed. Linseed oil is for treating wood; linoleum and linen are byproducts that are familiar. We would never have figured this out if we hadn’t seen the seeds first, then the name.

Anyway, success! We now have the binder we need to make not eggless cottage cheese muffins, but eggless cottage cheese loaf.

What’s a cottage cheese loaf? Oh… it’s one of those rainy day, end-of-the-week odds-and-end one dish casseroles passed down from one’s mother, made with breadcrumbs and onions and cheese curds and bits of chopped fresh herbs and seasonings. It’s baked until it’s the consistency of a quiche and served with a bowl of vegetable soup or a salad. Vegan Lunchbox author Jennifer McCann jokes that dinner loaves are a magical food source among vegans and vegetarians, and came up with her own Magical Loaf Generator, which is endlessly entertaining if you’re in the mood for a vegan adventure.

The variations on the cottage cheese loaf are practically endless. Since we have okara, we’ll use that instead of breadcrumbs, but the recipe is basically this:

Faux Cottage Cheese Quiche Loaf

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One large onion, diced

One large garlic clove, minced

1/2 cup dried mushrooms, broken and chopped (can soak up extra liquid)

2 cups cottage cheese OR mashed firm tofu

1 cup dry okara OR whole wheat bread crumbs

1/4 to 1/2 cup vegetable broth, as needed

1/4 c. flaxseed meal

1/2 tsp. dried sage, onion and garlic powder

1 TB baking powder

1/4 tsp. rosemary

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 TB smoked torula yeast, or other nutritional yeast

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Optional chopped parsley

1 tsp. salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350º. Spray a loaf pan or 8×8 square baking pan with nonstick spray and set aside (an 8×8 pan makes a crisper loaf).

Briefly sauté your garlic and onions until translucent, about five minutes. In a separate bowl, combine the remaining ingredients, and add the garlic and onions. Mix and mash together well, adding only as much liquid as needed to create a soft, moist loaf that holds together and is not runny (you may not need to add any liquid at all — depends on the freshness of your breadcrumbs – dry soaks up more). Add more mushrooms or a cup of leftover rice, a cup of potato flour or grated cheese as needed if the loaf seems too wet. (You may then need to adjust your seasonings.)

Press mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until cooked through.

Important** Because cheese is really fragile when hot, let the loaf cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then turn out onto a plate or platter and slice. This is tasty fresh and hot and also good in a sandwich cold.

Crunchy, cheesy, flavorful, savory and warm, cottage cheese loaf hits the spot.

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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.