Google thinks I'm Vegan

I follow a few food blogs via Google Reader but only one of them is vegan. Nevertheless, whenever I check the recommended items, my Google Reader tends to suggest more vegan blogs than non-vegan ones. At first I refused to click. If I didn't click them, Google would think that I didn't like them and stop recommending them. Right?

One night curiousity got the best of me and I started clicking. I was hopping from one vegan blog to the next when I came across this Eggplant Rollatini. It looked interesting. I have never cooked eggplants before and I have always wanted to try but just never knew what to make. I liked it even before since my vegetarian would be visiting in a week and I would need to think of meals for her.

One thing that bothered me however was the tofu ricotta. I don't like tofu. I've had tofu on numerous occasions but the texture has always been a turnoff. It has never had enough flavour to counteract my dislike for the texture. It has that eggy kinda thing going for it and I don't like eggs. I also don't like ricotta (again a texture thing) so I figured that I'd just use some cottage cheese with a mixture of shredded cheese instead. I asked my friend what she thought of the dish and she mentioned that she was avoiding dairy. Great. I guess I needed to think of a new dish then. Or... try the tofu?

I thought of a few other dishes but just couldn't get the eggplant rollatini out of my mind so I reluctantly purchased a block of extra firm tofu (with veggies). The next day I cut it in two and followed the recipe to make the ricotta. We ended up added a ton of other seasonings to the tofu ricotta - pretty much anything in the kitchen to punch up the flavour. We tasted as we went along. You can't go wrong it seems so do what works for you. I like bold flavours so I added accordingly. I followed the rest of the recipe as is but used store-bought pasta sauce tossed it in the oven and hoped for the best.

It was DELICIOUS! I loved it! It didn't taste anything like tofu. This was the first time that I was eating a dish that had tofu and loving it. I eventually sprinkled a little parmesan on my rollatini and loved it even more. Some vegan recipes suggest adding nutritional yeast for that cheesy flavour. I've never worked with nutritional yeast but I think it would be a great addition. If you're not dairy-free, sprinkle on some parmesan.


Go to This is Vegan to check out her step by step pictures of this recipe


Or go straight to the recipe here. You'll see that there are several steps but none of the steps are difficult. It is actually a pretty easy recipe.