While I enjoy a plant-heavy diet, as most of you know, I am not vegan.  There are very few foods that I just blanket won’t eat.  One of my favorite summer indulgences is heirloom tomatoes with burrata.  And holy smokes, do I love a good burrata.  It’s so creamy and decadent but it’s definitely not the sort of thing that I want to eat all the time.  

I wanted to create a healthy riff on the dish, something that I could eat everyday.  And that is how this dish, heirloom tomatoes with cashew ricotta, was born.

You guys, I am so psyched about this, I cannot even tell you.  Prepare to have your mind blown.  I knew it was futile to try to create a vegan burrata.  (I mean, come on, there are limits.)  But it is easy to create something more akin to ricotta and I am certainly not the first one to do it.  

To make the ricotta, I started by soaking a cup of raw cashews for six hours.  Now, if if you have never soaked cashews and you are the one thinking “Six hours!”, please know that there is nothing to this.  I simply plopped the cashews in a bowl of water before I took the boys to day camp this morning and by 2 pm, they were ready to go – easy peasy.  When the cashews were done soaking, I transferred them to a food processor.   I wanted to keep a bit of texture to the cashew cheese, similar to the texture of ricotta made from dairy.  I added a bit of water to the cashews along with a bit of salt, nutritional yeast and garlic.  I processed it all together, popped it in the fridge for about thirty minutes and that was it.  Cashew ricotta, done. 

This is prime tomato season and the heirloom tomatoes at the Union Square Greenmarket are divine!  I honestly can’t get enough.  They are so ripe and flavorful this time of year that you really don’t need to do much to them, do you?  That’s why the prep for these tomatoes is so simple.  

Start with about two and a half pounds of tomatoes in various colors and sizes.  Slice the larger tomatoes into wedges.  The smaller ones, simply cut in half.  Then, slice some radishes paper thin (on the mandoline if you have one) and add them to the mix.  Dress the tomatoes and radish slices with the juice of half a lemon, a bit of olive oil and fleur de sel.  The tomatoes will immediately start giving off their juices, which will help create the most lovely, simple dressing.

Spoon your cashew ricotta at one end of your serving dish.  Dress your ricotta with good olive oil, fleur de sel and freshly cracked black pepper.  Arrange your tomatoes and radishes on the serving dish as well.  Then, spoon some of the juices over the tomatoes and garnish your tomatoes with a bit of flavorful herbs.  

The gorgeous, flowery herb you see here is Delfino cilantro.  I picked up at the farmers market.  It is similar to regular cilantro but it’s a bit more citrus-y and delicate in flavor.  The greens look a lot like dill and the tiny flower blossoms are just beautiful.  If you can’t find Delfino cilantro, try regular cilantro or dill.  Or see what other herbs looks interesting and play around!  (Something like flowering chives could be really fun; I often see them at our farmers market, too.)

Serve the tomatoes and ricotta immediately because the tomatoes will start to lose volume but that is it.  I had this for lunch, today, by the way and it was awesome. 🙂

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