Vegan Mashed Potatoes, or Cashew Milk

I think I'll save the details of my Thanksgiving dishes for next year, assuming I'm still keeping up my little blog. If you're just dying to hear about something in particular, let me know, but as most of these dishes are the kinds of things I make once a year, I'm going to save it.

The exception? Mashed potatoes. I love me some potato in pretty much any form. Of course we eat mashed potatoes even when it's not Thanksgiving.



One of the (only) things I learned in my recent cooking class was how to make cashew milk or other nut milks and what they can be used for. Clearly, it seems easy enough to turn mashed potatoes vegan; typically I'll just smash them with a little margarine and not and any milk product or whip them at all, but rather leave little chunks of potato and enjoy the texture. Other times I'll buy a small container of cow's milk to use, a product I don't typically keep in the house. I've tried the soy milk we use on cereal, but it's too sweet. In my class, though, I learned a trick and it was a success!

Take 1 part raw cashews to 4 parts water and blend until it's smooth. Voila!



You can make this better by soaking the cashews overnight, but that's not necessary. This has the texture of whole milk and was frothy and slightly sweet, but it still went really well with the potatoes. I used it just like milk and whipped my potatoes with some cashew milk, Earth Balance, salt and pepper.

For the record, raw cashews aren't really raw. Cashews are seeds that have a double shell surrounding them, which has urushiol, similar to poison ivy. So "raw" cashews are typically steamed to remove the toxic casing. These are called raw because they are not roasted.