Evan's Notes

Tag: party food

  • Vegan Cheese and Mushroom Cob Loaf

    When you’re keen to take a cob to the barbeque, but it’s a vegan affair, this recipe is sure to impress!

    Ingredients

    • 500g white cob loaf (shop around for the best ones)
    • 1 medium onion, minced (or grated, but I use a stick blender with a chopper pot)
    • 500g white mushrooms (or a variety of mushroom to your liking), peeled and finely chopped
    • 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
    • 2 tablespoons chopped chives, plus some extra for garnish
    • 1/2 tablespoon chopped dill
    • 500mL plant-based cream (I use the Flora brand one, which is lentil-based)
    • 1 tablespoon sodium citrate (available on Amazon or from a cooking supplier with molecular gastronomy supplies, or some supplement suppliers)
    • Grated vegan cheeses:
      • 500g cheddar-style (the Made With Plants brand from Woolworths is what I used)
      • 100g sharp vegan cheese such as Vegusto Piquant
    • 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
    • A few generous dashes of a vinegar-based hot sauce like Frank’s Red Hot or Tabasco
    • Large bread stick or other crusty bread, broken or sliced for extra dippers

    Method

    Make the dip

    1. Heat a generous splash of olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion, stirring constantly until slightly softened.
    2. Add the mushroom and cook, stirring, to allow it to give up its moisture. As it cooks, add the paprika, and season with salt, pepper, and MSG (if you have it). It’s done once the onion has some colour and the mushroom sizzles (about 10 minutes). Cooking longer will give a deeper flavour, but be careful not to burn it. Turn the heat to low when done.
    3. Warm the cream slightly in the microwave, then add the sodium citrate. Whisk until dissolved, add to the mushroom and onion mixture, and stir to combine.
    4. Add the grated cheeses, and stir/whisk continuously until the cheese has melted and emulsified.
    5. Add the chives, dill, lemon juice, and hot sauce. Combine, then taste for seasoning. Extra hot sauce goes really well if your guests don’t mind the spice.

    Build the cob

    1. Cut a lid out of the top of the cob loaf – I like to make a ring a few cm down the loaf, and plunge toward the core of the loaf.
    2. Scoop the bread out of the core of the loaf, leaving a shell of 1-2cm. Tear or roughly chop the core bread into pieces for dipping.

    Bake the cob

    I like to do the steps above before hand, and put everything into containers to take to the party, then complete the following there.

    1. Heat oven to 160° fan-forced (180°C conventional) and line a couple of trays with baking paper
    2. Heat dip mixture in microwave until warm (but not necessarily hot) – if not still warm from cooking. Whisk thoroughly to re-emulsify if it’s split.
    3. Pour dip into loaf.
    4. Bake for 20 minutes or until the dip is bubbling a little and the bread is toasted. Put the lid on the loaf for the first 10 minutes, then take it off and place it upside down on the tray for the rest of the time to let everything brown nicely.
    5. While the cob is baking, place all the dipping bits on a tray and drizzle with a little oil. Place in the oven to toast with the cob for the second 10 minutes – more if you want it toastier.
    6. Sprinkle the cob with the extra chives and serve.

    Notes

    • This is an original recipe inspired by my decidedly non-vegan Cheese and Bacon Cob recipe.
    • Sodium citrate is used in this recipe because we need lots of emulsifying power. It creates a nacho cheese style sauce, which will be incredibly smooth when properly comibined.
    • Grate your cheeses fresh from blocks! Pre-grated/shredded cheeses have a powdery coating (usually a mixture of cornstarch and a few other things) to prevent them clumping up and going mouldy, but this can make it hard to get the dip to come together, and even make it gluggy.
    • Baking the dip really brings out its flavour, so don’t skip that if you can help it. Even on a BBQ would be better than nothing. A giant air fryer is even better than an oven if you have one big enough.

  • Cheese and Bacon Cob Loaf

    Revision 3

    An absolute winner for get togethers and BBQs with family and friends.

    Original recipe: https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/cheese-bacon-cob-loaf/4f21cd3e-5cc0-4d80-bcb6-8a2f322987c0

    Vegan alternative: https://evancottle.net/2025/12/26/vegan-cheese-and-mushroom-cob-loaf/

    Ingredients

    • 500g white cob loaf – in Australia I’ve found Woolworths usually have bigger ones than Coles, Bakers Delight, or my local bakery – this may or may not be important to you
    • 1 medium onion, minced (or grated, but I use a stick blender with a chopper pot)
    • 200g fatty streaky bacon rashers (the fattiest you can find), finely chopped
    • 2 tablespoons chopped chives, plus some extra for garnish
    • 250g block cream cheese, softened
    • 300mL cooking cream (this stuff; it has emulsifiers and other things that prevent it from breaking or curdling when using it to deglaze the pan, and help to emulsify our dip)
    • 160mL sour cream
    • Grated cheeses:
      • 200g moderately aged cheddar (“vintage tasty” or “extra tasty” in Australia, I like the Great Ocean Road Extra Tasty)
      • 100g colby cheese
      • 100g mozzarella (the lower moisture kind, not the fresh kind which will be too watery for this)
      • 30g parmesan
    • Large bread stick or other crusty bread, broken or sliced for extra dippers

    Method

    Make the dip

    1. Put the bacon in a large frying pan or skillet (preferably stainless steel) or dutch oven, then place over medium-low heat. Allow the bacon to give up most of its fat – it shouldn’t brown, just render away (covering can help with this).
    2. Increase the heat, and add the onion, stirring through so that it can cook in the bacon fat. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until bacon is browned and onion has cooked. Because the onion is so fine it will form a lot of delicious sticky brown bits (commonly known as fond) which will amp up the flavour a lot.
    3. Remove from heat. Slowly drizzle in the cream, stirring vigorously. The cream should allow you to scrape up (“deglaze”) the brown fond from the pan, and incorporate it into the dip.
    4. Add chives, cream cheese, sour cream and grated cheeses, stirring gently to loosely combine between each ingredient.
    5. Return to a low-medium heat and stir continuously to allow the cheeses to melt and emulsify.
    6. Taste and season with salt (nah probably no salt) and pepper. Add a dash of your favourite spices if you feel like it.

    Build the cob

    1. Cut a lid out of the top of the cob loaf – I like to make a ring a few cm down the loaf, and plunge toward the core of the loaf.
    2. Scoop the bread out of the core of the loaf, leaving a shell of 1-2cm. Tear or roughly chop the core bread into pieces for dipping.

    Bake the cob

    I like to do the steps above before hand, and put everything into containers to take to the party, then complete the following there.

    1. Heat oven to 160° fan-forced (180°C conventional) and line a couple of trays with baking paper
    2. Heat dip mixture in microwave until warm (but not necessarily hot) – if not still warm from cooking
    3. Pour dip into loaf and top with a little extra grated cheese.
    4. Bake for 20 minutes or until the dip is bubbling a little and the bread is toasted. Put the lid on the loaf for the first 10 minutes, then take it off and place it upside down on the tray for the rest of the time to let everything brown nicely.
    5. While the cob is baking, place all the dipping bits on a tray and drizzle with a little oil. Place in the oven to toast with the cob for the second 10 minutes – more if you want it toastier.
    6. Sprinkle the cob with the extra chives and serve.

    Notes

    • An earlier revision of this used processed cheese instead of Colby. Using processed cheese borrows an idea from Adam Ragusea – we want something to help emulsify our dip, and emulsifying salts like sodium citrate (essentially the salt version of citric acid) are ideal for that. But sodium citrate can be a little bit of a pain to get (it’s available online but not in supermarkets in Australia). So it turns out that processed cheese has plenty in it – more than it needs – so if we use it in our dip, we can get a little help from the emulsifiers it brings. The result is a much smoother, more consistent dip. As it turns out, the cooking cream also includes these emulsifiers, so by using plenty of it we get the same effect, and are able to use the tastier unprocessed colby.
    • Grate your cheeses fresh from blocks! Or cut from slices in the case of the processed cheese. Pre-grated/shredded cheeses have a powdery coating (usually a mixture of cornstarch and a few other things) to prevent them clumping up and going mouldy, but this can make it hard to get the dip to come together, and even make it gluggy
    • Baking the dip really brings out its flavour, so don’t skip that if you can help it. Even on a BBQ would be better than nothing.
    • The original recipe is great too, so if you can’t justify so many different kinds of cheese it’s worth trying – but more is better in my book!

    Revisions

    1. As revised from original source
    2. Increased cheese quantities; replaced colby with processed cheese; add cream earlier
    3. Increased cream quantity, back to colby