CU Episode 4: Macadamia Nut Mac & Cheeze w/ Shelagh Krakower
Intro: Courtney….Courtney Uncooked. I’m Courtney Uncooked cause that’s how I like
my food. The vitamins and the minerals, you know they are get through. Absorbed into the body
so that nothing gets lost, When you start eating raw of your health you’ll be the
boss. Raw vegan for my health and you know that health is wealth. To help you stay
your best, we will welcome special guests. So let’s go make a recipe and have lots of fun,
Your healthy living journey has just begun cause I’m Courtney….Courtney Uncooked.
Courtney….Courtney Uncooked.
Courtney: Hey and welcome to Courtney Uncooked. I’m Courtney Uncooked and this is
one of my best friends, Shelagh. And Shelagh lives right around the corner so she’s
also my neighbor. She makes amazing salsa and hummus. Shelagh has been teaching
me things for years. And now for the first time ever she is shocked; I’m going to show
Shelagh something. Today I’m going to show Shelagh how to make delicious raw vegan
macadamia nut cheese out of just a few ingredients. It takes just a couple of minutes.
You always want to make sure you soak your nuts and of course, with this recipe we’re
going to have two cups of raw macadamia nuts soaked. And most nuts you want to
soak overnight, eight to 12 hours. Macadamia nuts, just an hour or so, but you
do definitely want to rinse them off and rinse them off really good. So I’ve already rinsed
them a couple of times, and now I’m just going to rinse them the final time before putting
them in the Vitamix. So what we’re going to do first is we’re going to take our
macadamia nuts, just drop them in there.
Shelagh: Nice.
Courtney: And then we’ve got a cup of chopped carrots. Pop the baby carrots in there.
So we’ve got our baby carrots in there and then we’ve got a cup of red bell peppers and
this is just going to give it the nice Mac and cheese color.
Shelagh: And those were the petite snacky kind.
Courtney: Yes. I love– this is my favorite snack is the little mini organic bell peppers
from Whole Foods. I just eat those all day long. And so these are the red ones picked
out. So you just want to do a cup of red bell peppers for color. The carrots are for color
and taste, it’s really good. Then we’ve got a teaspoon of garlic powder and a teaspoon
of onion powder.
Shelagh: Nice. Everybody should have those in their pantry.
Courtney: Yes. Three tablespoons of nutritional yeast. Now, nutritional yeast isn’t
technically raw; people ask me all the time, are you 100% raw? I would say I’m about
90, 95% raw, although I do agree being a hundred percent raw feels amazing. That’s
how I got started on this journey. Actually, Shelagh here accidentally got me raw;
Shelagh was going to the Floyd Fest and asked me if I wanted to go. So I was
researching the Floyd Fest, then I found the Woodstock Fruit Festival instead and said
Shelagh, I’m going to this hippie fruit festival and ate raw the whole week, felt great,
became a raw vegan chef; the rest is history. So I’m actually, all thanks go to Sheila for
this journey or all blame goes to Sheila. I like this because you got a lot of B12.
Shelagh: And flavor.
Courtney: And you get all kinds of vitamins and minerals, especially B12 and the flavor
from this. A cup of water. You also– macadamia nuts are pretty expensive, but for my
friends, of course, I only serve the best.
Shelagh: Yeah. But it’s probably less per pound than cheese is.
Courtney: Oh, it is. It is. But you can do this with cashews. You can do this with
almonds. If you do this with almonds though, you do need to peel the skins off, which is
quite easy. After they’ve been soaking you just pop the skins off of them. So if you want
to save money, go with almond, go with a cashew, but for you today, only the best
Shee. We’re using macadamia nuts from Hawaii. That’s everything, we’ve got
everything in the Vitamix, so we’re always going to start off on low and then crank that
baby up. Just give it a couple of minutes. You can watch it.
Shelagh: It’s working. It’s barking at us! It’s getting smooth.
Courtney: Can you smell that yet? Ahhhh it smells so good! Now that’s a beautiful
consistency. Are you happy with that or do you want to add more water or anything?
Shelagh: I just think we might end up with some moisture from the noodles.
Courtney: That’s true. Sheila brought up a very good point. We are going to end up with
some moisture from the noodles. So let’s just take a look at this. That’s so–
Shelagh: Yeah, that looks like pimento cheese almost.
Courtney: Now you can keep adding water and make it watery if you want, but we’re
going to take it today and stir it in the noodles that we make. So we’ve got this bowl–
Shelagh: Okay.
Courtney: We’ll just do this right over this bowl. So now I’ve got a great spiralizer
She, but I just wanted– I just wanted to give you this so you can do it so we can see
how easy this is. This is 10 bucks from Amazon, sorry. And you want to just stick the
squash in there and then turn like that. And I’m just going to let you keep it going and do
that whole thing. See how easy that is. Now you can peel the zucchini or the squash if
you want to. You can leave the skin on if you want to. There’s lots of delicious nutrients
in the skin. So I like to buy nice organic, high-quality fruits and veggies, wash them off
and use the skin as much as possible so that I do get those nutrients. So one thing you
want to keep in mind when you’re making zoodles I call them or Squashoodles with
squash I guess; zucchini noodles, squash noodles. Once you make the noodles they
start to release a lot of moisture. And so what you want to do is salt them really well and
the salt’s going to absorb that water. And then you also, after you salt them, you want to
pat them dry with paper towels. You can take it a step further and spin them, which I like
to do in my salad spinner.
Shelagh: Yeah, I have one of those.
Courtney: This is very therapeutic, by the way.
Shelagh: How much is too much salt?
Courtney: That’s good.
Shelagh: Okay.
Courtney: All right, so for now.
Shelagh: Yeah because when you cook pasta you would put salt in the water.
Courtney: So my hands are clean. See that moisture, there’s already moisture that’s
releasing from those, so I’m going to know what you really pat those. You’re going to
love this, but you know, it’s a mac and cheese. It’s just such a comfort food. A lot of
people say I could never go vegan or I could never go raw vegan because I love cheese
and I need cheese. Well, honey, we got cheese. This is going to be, I promise Sheila,
some of the best cheese you have ever tasted in your life made of macadamia nuts. It’s
so good. Macadamia nuts, carrots, and red bell peppers, healthy vegan, gluten-free,
raw, delicious, uncooked, so good. And then we can put a little pepper on top to give
some nice flavor, color and consistency on the top. Look at that. Ooh, Mac and cheese.
Now, if you want to make a nice Alfredo sauce, you just leave out the red bell pepper
and the carrot to do the same thing and it makes a nice white cheese. Oh, man.
Shelagh: This is a lot of cheese to noodle ratio.
Courtney: All right She let’s see what you think about this? And remember I showed
you how to make this, yeah. One thing I didn’t go over. When you’re spiralizing these, a
lot of times it’s good to take a pair of food, grade scissors and cut them when you’re
making them, so the pieces aren’t really long. How is it?
Shelagh: I love it.
Courtney: Yeah. And again, you can do it with cashews. You can do it with almonds,
whatever you have on hand. How do you like the squash as opposed to the zucchini?
Does it taste the same? Does it make a difference to you? What do you think?
Shelagh: Well, I think because you’re trying to recreate a Mac and cheese, it gives it
more of that real Mac and cheese using a yellow squash. So I think that’s kind of a
smart choice for this dish.
Courtney: You know, She, I’m feeling inspired to do a little rap.
Courtney Rapping: Making raw mac and cheese with my girl, Sheila. It’s been such an
adventure, it’s like ridin’ a four-wheeler. I make my cheese out of macadamia. It
doesn’t matter how wild you are; this stuff’s gonna tame ya. I’m make my noodles out of
squash that’s yellow, so come sit next to me you fine fellow. You don’t need a stove
or an oven to cook, just to blend a dehydrator and Courtney Uncooked.