Collard Green "Doritos"

Seriously... another food dehydrator experiment... and somehow they came out tasting stunningly (and a little disturbingly) like I remember Doritos tasting (it's been a few yeas since I had the "genuine" article).

Ingredients:

Collard Greens - raw and cut into squares

raw cashew nut butter

lemon juice and water

nutritional yeast

curry powder

cayenne pepper

black pepper

Method:

put some cashew nut butter into the bottom of a small baking pan, add water and lemon juice and stir to dissolve. You're going for something the consistency of whole milk.

Add the yeast, curry, and peppers and mix well (consistency maybe closer to thinnish brown gravy. Drudge the collard squares through the mixture and then use your fingers to wipe them down so they are barely coated and not soggy at all. This reminded me of working with strips of newspaper and paper-mache. Arrange on dehydrator rack. Dehydrate. Mine went in at ~100 degrees, I put them in after dinner and they were ready after being in there overnight.

Results:

Delicious, light, and crunchy. Even cheesy tasting. If I were going for the Doritos flavor I got a little too much lemon juice and I might adjust some of the spices a little so it's not quite just straight curry. This convinced me of why folks say nutritional yeast tastes like cheese in that this totally reminds me of fake cheese powder coated stuff. While light and crunchy and similarly flavored, they do have a different mouth feel and kind of disintegrate shortly after hitting the tongue. Still, one of the tastiest and most interesting vegan preparations of collards I've ever had (not that I've had many)

yum yum yum!