Testing out vegan cream cheese from Pa'lais

In this blogpost I would like to put a certain brand in the spotlight, namely Pa'lais. Pa'lais is a company founded 2 years ago that makes vegan cream cheeses. It was founded by Laurent Jadot, a man who had never worked in the food industry before, but who was so passionate about veganism that he wanted to make a vegan product of his own. In only 2 years he was able to produce 4 different types of cheese spreads, and sell them in over 4 countries.

As you may or may not know, I am currently studying Advanced Business Management in Leuven, where I am specializing myself in Digital Marketing and Communication. As a part of this study I had to find a company where I could go and work as a junior marketing consultant. Pa'lais was one of the companies that I had sent an e-mail application to, and after our first meeting we instantly had a great connection. So starting from February 2021, I will be part of the Pa'lais team, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

So ultimately, I had to try out these cream cheeses to know what I will be working with. I bought 2 of them, the natural flavour and the one with cucumber and chives. The one with cucumber is the perfect dip for crackers or even vegetables. I have been snacking on some crackers with this cucumber dip every day since I bought it, and I must say, I love it very much.

I also found a great recipe on Pa'lais' Facebook page, so I gave it a little twist and made it for my family and I. It was a curry recipe with a pa'lais based sauce.

The ingredients I used were the following:

- 2 boxes of Pa'lais "Natural"

- 1 red onion

- 2 garlic cloves

- 1 large tin of chickpeas

- 1tsp Garam Masala

- 1tsp Mild Curry

- 1tsp Cumin

- 400 ml of plant based milk (I used coconut)

- 1 cube of vegetable stock

- 1tsp coconut oil

- 2 spring onions

- 2 packs of basmati rice

- salt and pepper

1. To start off I cooked my red onions in the coconut oil until they started to get golden brown.

2. In the meantime I boiled my rice.

3. Then I added my garlic and let this cook for about 1 minute.

4. I added 300 ml of coconut milk, together with the 3 spices and the vegetable stock.

5. I let it simmer for about 5 minutes and then added the chickpeas, the pa'lais and the rest of the coconut milk.

6. I let this sit for about a minute or 2-3 and then served it together with some rice.

7. Finish it of with as many salt and pepper as you want and with the sliced spring onions.

And that's it! Very quick and easy and delicous as hell. We all loved it very much but were missing some type of vegetables, so we added some mushrooms, green beans, broccoli and eggplant when we ate the leftovers the day after.

I have to admit that Laurent did a really great job creating these cream cheeses, as the only vegetarian in the house it is sometimes hard to convince my parents to eat vegetarian (or vegan) with me. But they too loved both cream cheeses. I am very excited to test out all the other flavours.

A bientôt!

Bisous

PS: I am not saying all these amazing things about pa'lais because they offered me a consulting job, I genuinly love these products, and would not have written a post about it if it were the other way around.