Recipe of the Month: Vegan Caprese Salad

As part of our efforts to reduce our dairy consumption, Brian and I have bought almost no cheese for the past several months. Instead, we've experimented with various nondairy cheeses, as well as substituting other ingredients in recipes that call for cheese. We successfully replaced the parmesan in this Arugula and Mushroom Pasta with a mixture of salt and nutritional yeast, and we've ditched the cheese in our favorite burrito recipe from The Clueless Vegetarian in favor of sliced avocado, which provided a similarly creamy texture without the dairy.

Earlier this month, however, we finally gave in and bought a pound of shredded mozzarella at Aldi. The reason: the tomatoes and peppers in the garden were growing ripe, which meant that it was the perfect time of year to make our favorite pasta dish, pasta à la Caprese. And pasta à la Caprese simply isn't the same without the melting mozzarella cheese commingling with the warm pasta and zesty fresh tomato sauce. No substitute we've found could really produce the same effect.

So we made one batch of pasta à la Caprese, cheese and all, and saved the rest of the cheese for a second batch later in the summer. But I found myself thinking that if we eat this fabulous pasta as often as we'd like to while the tomato crop lasts, we'll be going through quite a lot of cheese. So if we really want to keep our dairy consumption down, we'll have to either forego our favorite pasta or figure out some way to make it cheese-free.

To that end, I typed "vegan Caprese" into Google. And while I didn't find any suggestions for a vegan version of pasta à la Caprese, I did find several recipes for vegan versions of Caprese salad, typically using some sort of seasoned tofu in place of the sliced mozzarella. This sounded like an intriguing idea, so I selected the easiest-looking recipe, from Whole Foods, and we gave it a whirl this Friday.

The preparation for this is pretty simple, but it has a long lead time. First, you slice your block of tofu into thin slices and sprinkle them with balsamic vinegar and salt. (The recipe calls for white balsamic vinegar, but we weren't about to buy a whole bottle of that just to use two tablespoons in this recipe, so we used regular.) Then you lay them out on a baking sheet and then let them sit uncovered in the fridge for at least eight hours. This allows them to dry out and absorb the flavor of the marinade.

Brian had taken the day off on Friday, so he set up the tofu in the morning and then turned it into Caprese salad in the evening. This part of the recipe is pretty quick: just add slices of fresh tomato and basil leaves to the tofu slices. You're supposed to arrange it all in layers on a serving platter, but since we had so little of it, Brian just left the tofu slices on the rack and added tomato and basil on top. He also decided to leave the balsamic vinegar on the side, so we could sprinkle it on to taste, rather than dressing the entire dish with it. So we just had individual slices of tofu, topped with basil and tomato, and a loaf of Italian bread from the local bakery to go with it.

And the result was...almost like Caprese salad. The texture of the tofu, after eight hours of curing, seemed almost exactly right to me: soft, but not squishy. My teeth sank into it just as they would into a slice of real mozzarella. But the flavor wasn't quite there. Tofu, of course, has no real flavor of its own, but it readily absorbs the flavor of anything you soak it in, which in this case meant that it tasted mainly of balsamic vinegar. And to my taste buds, balsamic-soaked tofu does not at all have the same flavor as a salty, creamy, ever-so-faintly tangy mozzarella cheese. Brian said underneath the balsamic, he couldn't really tell the difference, but to me it was noticeable.

However, I do think it wouldn't take that much tweaking to the recipe to give the tofu a more mozzarella-like flavor. I think the main problem was that it hadn't absorbed much salt, so it didn't have the saltiness of mozzarella. My idea would be to drizzle the tofu not with vinegar and just a sprinkle of salt, but with a salty brine that would have the full eight hours to soak in. You could add just a touch of vinegar to give it the appropriate tang, or possibly something like a dash of liquid aminos or a touch of the nutritional yeast. Then you could save the balsamic for sprinkling on at the very end of the process. (In fact, that seems to be the basic approach used in this vegan Caprese salad recipe from PBS. It's similar to the Whole Foods one, but it substitutes milder lemon juice for the balsamic vinegar and uses only half as much, while tripling the amount of salt. So maybe we'll just try that one next time.)

Overall, I think we've found a reasonable substitute for mozzarella that works very well in a Caprese salad. Unfortunately, though, this doesn't really bring us any closer to having a good substitute for our pasta à la Caprese recipe. The tofu has the right texture and almost the right flavor—but it doesn't melt. And the melting of the cheese amongst the pasta and tomatoes is pretty much the cornerstone of the dish.

So if we want to get serious about veganizing our favorite pasta, I guess we'll have to ramp up our search for a vegan cheese substitute—commercial or homemade. Possibly the DIY recipe from It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken would work well for this application, since the amount it makes—about two cups' worth—is just right for a batch of pasta à la Caprese. So the continuing influx of beautiful, ripe tomatoes could be just the impetus we need to finally give this recipe a try.