This is not like the usual vegan imitation of dairy cheese which always seems to use tinned coconut milk and agar agar.

My recipe is not really an imitation of dairy cheese but is in a class of it’s own. Sui generis. My recipes always follow 2 principles:

a) to follow the Seignalett diet recommendations
b) to keep ingredients as close to raw and natural as possible

You could add garlic when making it and you can add some nutritional yeast flakes just before eating if you are really missing the taste of cheese. If adding garlic, use fresh garlic. Crush the garlic and leave it for 10 minutes before adding it. The medicinal miracle ingredient in garlic is allicin. This develops after 10 minutes when the protein allin and an enzyme called allinase combine. Note that the garlic may overwhelm the lovely coconut flavour somewhat but the fact of fermenting it makes it much more subtle.

The main interest for me in making the coconut cheese was to make a dairy free version of Budwig cream. (Dairy is forbidden on the Seignalet diet). German professor Johanna Budwig’s recipe is 6 tablespoonfuls of low fat quark blended with 3 tablespoonfuls of flax seed oil and 2 tablespoonfuls of flax seeds ground in a coffee grinder.

Johanna Budwig and her oil/protein diet

The Budwig cream was developed in the 1950’s by German professor Johanna Budwig as a cure for cancer. Dr. Otto Warburg received the Nobel prize in Physiology in 1931 for his discovery that cancer cells have damaged respiration. As the cell becomes cancerous it is less and less able to use oxygen and in it’s final, aggressive form uses only fermentation. Dr. Budwig carried out research to find a solution to this problem and the Budwig cream is it. Her idea is that the damage to cellular respiration is caused by wrong fats in the diet, particularly trans fats and an imbalance of omega 3 and omega 6 oils. Flax seed oil is rich in highly unsaturated omega 3 oils and blending it with the sulphur proteins in the quark makes an emulsion containing lipoproteins that cells can use to quickly repair their damaged outer membranes.

Do the lipoproteins reach the cell membranes intact?

I’ve done some research into this. First I wanted to find out for myself if her theory of how it works is correct. Secondly I wanted to find out if my coco nut cheese could be a stand in for the quark. The answer to the first question is it would be a miracle if the theory is correct given the complexity of the digestive system. But it just might be The answer to the second question is no, probably not. These questions will be discussed in more detail in my upcoming video: “Brain food”.

My idea was to adapt the Budwig cream to make a tonic for neurons which might help reverse Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis using Nigella Sativa oil instead of the flax seed oil, ground Nigella seeds instead of flax seeds and coconut cheese with some added aminos to replace the quark but I’ve decided not to try to make a lipoprotein emulsion (I’m not a physicist like Budwig – this stuff is above my pay grade) but to just to give the digestive system the basic components and let the body work out for itself how to use them. So let’s just enjoy the delicious coco nut cheese for what it is.

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Chris’s Coconut cheese

Recipe

Ingredients:

10 fresh, raw, mature (brown) coconuts
6 medium to large white cabbages
3 large cartons of live culture yoghurt (must say “live culture” on the carton)
Sea salt or rock salt

Optional:

10 or 20 fresh garlic bulbs to taste
Engevita nutritional yeast

Tools:

Juicer (Green star triturating juicer if you can afford it – if not a cheap centrifugal juicer will do the job)
Food processor. I use a magimix.
Vitamix or similar high powered blender

(Note: See video at 11.29 to see how to buy the equipment cheaply.)

coarse flour sieve
chef’s muslin
2 or 3 tablespoons
several glass bowls Pyrex glass bowls are ideal.
1 large stainless steel bowl
a tamper (can be a rolling pin or a tamper from a juicer or the magimix)

How to make it:

1. Chris’s easy way to get the meat and water from your coconut meat. Over a period of 5 or 10 days put 2 coco nuts at a time in the freezer overnight or over 2 nights. Take the cococuts out the next day. Leave the coconuts to thaw for an hour or two. (If you try to open them straight from the freezer the shell will be very brittle and sharp shards can hit you in the eye. Ask me how I know.) Use a Chinese chef’s knife to split the coconut all the way round. 15.26 It should then split easily into 2 halves. 16.15 The water in the middle of the coconut should be still frozen. (If not, your coconut needs to stay longer in the freezer or you have thawed it too long.) Put the frozen water in a bowl. Push a sharp knife between the shell and the meat all the way around. The fact of freezing the coconut loosens it up and makes it much easier to separate. 16.20 If you are lucky the meat will then come out from your half in one piece. If not, smash the shell and continue separating. Once you have the meat out of the shell you now have to get the brown skin off the meat with a sharp knife. This sounds dangerous but it’s quite easy and safe if you do it right. 16.23 Put your coconut water and meat from 2 coconuts in a big freezer bag and put them back in the freezer until you are read to make your coconut cheese.

2. Making your coconut cheese. First make your whey. To do this sit your sieve on top of the bowl and line it with chef’s muslin with enough to make a flap. Pour 3 cartons of live yoghurt onto
the muslin and cover the yoghurt with the flap. Leave overnight. The yogurt will separate into cottage cheese in the muslin and the whey will collect in the bowl.

3. Take off the outer leaves of the cabbage. Put a grating blade in the food processor 17.41. Chop 17.00 and process one cabbage through the processor 17.42 Tip the grated cabbage into the glass into the stainless bowl. Add one tablespoonful of sea salt or table salt. 18.52(Do not use table salt – the additives will ruin the fermentation) . Add 4 or more tablespoonfuls of whey.

4. Beat and mix your cabbage/salt/whey mixture in the stainless steel bowl until lots of cabbage juice is produced. Put the batch aside in a bowl and do the same to the other half of the processor’s content. 19.20 Process all your cabbage like this. (It’s the same process as making sauerkraut)).

5. Mix your sauerkraut mixture with the coconut meat and water in a large bowl.

6. Insert the double cutting blade in the processor. 19.41

7. Fill the processor up to half with coconut meat and water and sauerkraut and whizz. If you are using garlic add one or two crushed bulbs now (Not shown in video) 19.57 Set aside the processed mixture in a large bowl.

8. Make cabbage juice from the remaining 2 cabbages. 24.43

9. Pour around ¾ of a cup of juice into the vitamix jug. Put 4 handfulls of coconutmeat/sauerkraut processed mixture on top of the juice in the vitamix jug. 27.02 Whizz. If you put too much in the mixture will stop being blended because the blade makes a pocket of air. Danger: Do not use the tamper without first putting the rubber top on the jug. .I show it without the top because I’m very careful and I wanted you to see the mixture being blended but if the blade hits the tamper it could cause serious damage to both yourself and the vitamix.

10. Pour your final creamy blend into Kellner jars. Use a tamper to get rid of any air pockets. Leave about half an inch of air at the top.

11. The ideal temperature for the fermenation process is 18 degrees C or 64.4 fahrenheit and the best taste develops after a month but you can start eating it before that.