I love a good dip! But the kicker is, dairy does not love me. So either I indulge and feel the consequences or I skip it, and my food loving heart goes without! (slight exaggeration, but almost true)
One things I have recently come across is the magical wonder that is Nutritional Yeast, I know, I know, I am probably way behind the times, but this stuff is a game changer!
What is Nutritional Yeast?
“Nutritional yeast is a vegetarian dietary supplement with a pleasantly cheesy flavor. It is rich in vitamin B-12, and provides 6 grams of protein per serving.”(sourced from bob’s red mill natural food site)
Seriously, aside from the name, you can’t really go wrong with it! So these wanna be cheesy flavoured goodness, has been making an appearance in a lot of my cooking recently!
And so because today is St. Patrick’s Day, I thought I would whip up a semi-green snack, Spinach and Artichoke Dip!
Here is what you will need:
4 cups of chopped spinach
1 small onion (chopped)
2 cloves of garlic (minced)
2 tbs evoo
splash of white wine
1 small can of water-chestnuts (chopped)
1 small jar of marinated artichokes
1 tsp of apple cider vinegar
3/4cup soaked cashews
400g of tofu
1/3 cup of nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste
1/2 paprika
Directions:
Heat oven to 350f
In a pan, saute onions and garlic in evoo, until the onions are mostly cooked, add in spinach. Saute, add splash of white wine to help wilt, and add extra flavour. Once spinach is wilted, add in chopped water-chestnuts and artichokes. Cook for a couple minutes and remove from heat.
In a food processor, blend soaked cashews, tofu, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper and apple cider vinegar. Blend until smooth.
Add the tofu mix to the spinach mix, warm over low heat, put it into an oven-safe dish, sprinkle with paprika and cook for 5 mins.
Serve with your favourite bread, cracker, veggies or chips and enjoy!