Weekly Vegan Menu

FNF - Reuben Meatball Sliders

2012-02-10T08:12:00.000-06:00

Ground meat formed into a patty = burger

Ground meat formed into a loaf = meatloaf

Ground meat formed into a ball = meatball

Ground meat formed into small balls = polpettini

Ground meat stuffed into a casing = sausage

Any other way to name or make something that is essentially just ground meat?

This month's Food Network Friday, brought to us by the very talented Tami Noyes of Vegan Appetite, is, you guessed it, a form of ground meat, Reuben Meatball Sliders. Now, I can totally see the appeal of this recipe - Reuben. Name anything a Reuben and the folks over at Vegan Appetite will hear its calling. I am no exception and have made my fair share of the sauerkraut sandwich. This 'Reuben' is the ground meat version of our beloved dish.

The chef who created this spin on an old classic, Jeff Mauro, is the latest Food Network Star winner. He has us adding the cheese into the ground meat, along with the rye bread in the form of breadcrumbs. So far so good. Naturally, he loses me at the ground flesh and eggs. No problem. We'll just make our own ground plants in lieu of the animal parts and eat a better burger as a result.

As a nod to Jeff, however, he did manage to make tofu delicious during one of the Star challenges, which Paula Dean, who is now diabetic and is pushing pharmaceutical drugs to 'treat' the very same diabetes that her diet no doubt plays a huge part in perpetuating if not outright causing, found delicious. If only she'd adopt tofu instead of bacon as a staple.

Tangent!

The sauerkraut and the 1,000 Island Dressing go on top of his meatballs and the whole thing is between slider buns. To veganize the slider, I made a 'burger,' only smaller. I used black beans and gluten in this one because I wanted to take a break from adding tofu to my burgers. Except for adding some pickle relish to the burger, the only thing I changed was the meat, eggs and used vegan dairy. Otherwise, this is a darned fine sandwich and I am getting some really great experience making vegan burgers.

Reuben Sliders Recipe

(coming)

Vine and Dine - Lentil and Rapini Stew

2012-02-05T21:12:00.002-06:00

This selection of Vine and Dine, courtesy of Tami Noyes, is straight out of Bryanna Clark Grogan's new World Vegan Feast cookbook. The selection, Lentil and Rapini Stew with Vegan Sausage, was excellent! David and I both love rapini and this was no exception. This is a simple recipe with really great flavors. I found it needed more broth than just the 2 cups called for in the recipe, but that might have been because my lentils were a little old (I had to use both French and brown varieties) and they needed a bit longer to cook.

Also, since I love my rapini with tons of garlic, I added a few more cloves to the onions when they were cooking than the four that Bryanna calls for. Since David is not averse to garlic, this works out just fine.

This is the third recipe I've made from this cookbook and it continues to impress. Great choice, Tami.

Here is David with the wine:

Tonight’s Lentil and Rapini Stew turned out to be hearty fare with bold flavors! The fact that the wife added 20 cloves of garlic instead of the 4 that were called for may have capitalized Bold but we both love garlic. We chose an organic La Rocca Vinyards, 2008 Chenin Blanc to pair with the earthy flavor of the lentils and the spiciness of the vegan sausage. We were surprised by how well the complex structure of the wine, combined with it’s light hint of fruit (it made me think of pears as I savored the first glass) truly enhanced the bold and earthy flavors of the stew. We don’t usually partake of white wines but, on this occasion, I’m glad we did because it turned out to be a delightful accompaniment for the evening’s meal.

Dan Dan Noodles

2012-02-05T13:06:00.001-06:00

Dan Dan Noodles is a Chinese Sichuan dish consisting of noodles, preserved vegetables, pork, green onions, chili oil and Sichuan peppers in a spicy broth.

As I researched this very traditional dish, I found that the Sichuan peppers are a must and a highly sought after ingredient. It is supposed to be a 'peppercorn' so spicy that it numbs the mouth and tickles the tummy. So, off I went eagerly in search of this supposedly elusive, and at times banned, "peppercorn." The peppercorn is really the outer part of a tiny fruit. I was able to find it at a small Oriental Market in our town (I believe the ban on importing it is no longer in effect, but don't quote me.).

I made the Dan Dan Noodles using seitan and a vegetable broth souped up with chili oil and flavored with ginger, garlic and sherry. I went in for the winning shot and added plenty of Sichuan peppers, and eagerly awaited the promised elation that accompanies these peppercorns slamming against the palate. I awaited the fire that consumes your mouth and leaves it tingling ...and then....

Not much. Tingle, yes. But no fire. I figured I hadn't added enough peppercorns, so I added more and more until my plate had more ground peppercorns than seitan.

What a let down. I suppose this happens when the reality doesn't live up to the expectations. Therein lies your lesson; be on the lookout for the Sichuan peppers and if you find them, add them to your Dan Dan Noodles. However, in my opinion, the peppers, while being truly exotic, detracted from the flavor of the dish, so don't hold off making this in hopes of attaining some miraculous flavor component; you might be as disappointed as I was.

I made the noodles without the peppers and very little chili oil for the kids so I know the dish without it is really tasty, but if you can get your hands on them, go for it - there really is nothing like tasting a traditional ethnic dish with all the unique flavors it is supposed to posses. Just don't set yourself up for failure - keep your expectations in check.

Cost Breakdown

stock, tamari, peanut butter, vinegar: $3

chili oil, sesame oil, sugar, Sichuan peppers: $1

garlic, ginger, preserved veg: $1

seitan, sherry: $2

noodles: $2

Total to make 5 servings:

$9.00

Dan Dan Noodles Recipe

Steamed Buns

2012-02-02T13:51:00.000-06:00

Chinese New Year is here! Kate has been very excited. This is her year - the Year of the Dragon. Although we missed the massive cleaning that is supposed to take place fifteen days before the start of the New Year, we can still celebrate with some traditional Chinese fare, as well as, perhaps, some not so traditional ones.

If you do not have Bryanna Clark Grogan's Authentic Chinese Cuisine, I trust by next Chinese New Year it will be on your shelf. It makes vegan Chinese cooking versatile and complete.

My kids love Steamed Buns and so this was on top of their list. Well, I wound up not steaming them because ... uh, I didn't want to. Bryanna said it was okay to bake them, so I did. They were filled with a curry 'chicken', for which the recipe is also in her book. Although I had made dozen and a half of the buns the day before so I wouldn't have to cook the following day's lunch, by morning two-thirds of the buns were gone. It must have been that Dragon, I am sure, who had been quite hungry after 12 years of slumber.
Or my kids.

Enchitaco and Enchinacho

2012-02-01T19:48:00.004-06:00

Enchiladas are another one of those meals that everyone always wants at our house. I know if they get it as often as they wish for it, they'll get tired of it - and then there goes a tried-and-true.

So I put another spin on the enchilada, while making it easier to make, to boot. For some reason my family has not been so hot about tacos; another of those over-made meals, I suppose. Or maybe I just haven't jazzed it up enough. I blame this on them, too. Whenever I have the slightest variation in an old favorite, I get called on the carpet, "It's not the same!"

Not that that ever stops me.

This variation of the enchilada is to make it into a taco, hence Enchitaco. I cooked the beans with the enchilada sauce, melted some cheese (Daiya) into it at the end, layered it into a hard taco shell, added lettuce, tomato, olives, sour cream (Tofutti) and a bit more sauce.

This was so well received that when we ran out of hard shells, we made Enchinachos - same idea, but layered onto warmed tortilla chips. By the time I got the camera set up again to take a pic of it, it was all gone. I should have photographed the empty plate, but that would have been just plain mean.

Oh! man was this good!

Isn't there some football thing coming up? This is a great version of the nachos if you're thinking of feeding anyone.

Cost Breakdown

oil, onion, flour, spices: $1

tomato sauce: $2

beans, corn: $5

Daiya, tofutti: $3

nacho chips or shells: $3

olives, lettuce, peppers: $2

Total to make 16 tacos:

$16.00

Enchitaco or Enchinacho Recipe

Pesto Lasagna

2012-01-23T23:34:00.001-06:00

Since the family requests lasagna so often, I try to get creative with this layered pasta dish. I've made the traditional American Lasagna, Kate's favorite, the traditional Italian Lasagna Bolognese, Catt's favorite, and a Grilled Vegetable Lasagna, my favorite. It is now Mikel's turn. He adores Pesto and requested a Pesto Lasagna. Well, maybe not in so many words, but I interpreted that way.

I decided to make this lasagna with traditional pesto sauce (no spinach or tofu added, as I like to do), but instead using olive oil, basil, garlic and pine nuts. Very straightforward. He would have been happy with just the noodles, pesto and cheese, but I wanted to add something more. I made the tofu-spinach ricotta that I normally make for the American Lasagna and layered that in there as well. To add a touch of sweetness, I also layered in grilled onions and roasted pepper. This way the dish wouldn't be "pesto pasta with cheese," but an actual Lasagna dish.

He was enchanted with how it turned out. I was worried the pesto would be too much and overwhelm the dish, but the other components of the recipe balanced the pesto nicely.

Cost Breakdown

Daiya: $4.50

noodles: $4

basil: $8

red pepper, onion, garlic, spinach: $4

lemon, pine nuts, olive oil: $2

tomato sauce: $2

Total to make 10 servings:

$24.50

Pesto Lasagna Recipe

Osso Buco

2012-01-22T16:07:00.002-06:00

Part of the goal of this blog is to reinvent 'traditional' recipes, renew conventional ideas and let people see that the omnivore rut that they have been stuck in is easy to get out of.

This traditional Milanese recipe of braised veal shanks, Osso Buco, is literally translated to mean 'Bone with a Hole." Not really sure how accurate the name is in this vegan context, but for the sake of tradition we'll keep it as is.

This is what I mean about altering conventional thinking; normally 'Bone with a Hole' has no right to be in cooking distance of a vegan kitchen, but since the recipe itself means both the dish and the cut of animal, I couldn't really call it "Seitan Buco" or "Osso Seitan," could I? Maybe "Seitan Osso Buco," but I try to keep as close to the original name as possible, for simplicity sake. It is difficult to know what someone will name a veganized version of a dish - it is much easier to search for the omni version of a name (and hence the one most recognized) than to try to guess what an author chooses to call something. As much as I would like to rename dishes to reflect a more vegan world, I try to stay as true to the original as possible.

I made "veal" seitan cutlets, thick-cut, and braised them with carrots, celery, onion, herbs and wine. This dish is usually served over a risotto, but Catt has been asking for mashed potatoes. She must be getting kick-backs from the potato board, and since I knew this dish would have some great sauce for the requested spuds, mashed it turned out to be.

It has been a few years since I've made this, but it was just as great as the first time. It is garnished with gremolata, a condiment of parsley, garlic and lemon zest. The garnish gives it a nice punch that cuts through the richness of the sauce and seitan. I wouldn't skip it if I were you.

Cost Breakdown

seitan: $3

carrot, celery, onion, garlic: $2

spices, herbs, tomato paste, wine, broth: $3

potatoes: $3

gremolata: $2

Total to make 6 servings:

$13.00

Veal Seitan Recipe

(coming - I'm still tweaking it)

Osso Buco Recipe

Cream of Mushroom Soup

2012-01-18T20:48:00.001-06:00

Cream of Mushroom Soup, from the can, used to be my hubby's favorite...well, everything! He'd have it as a soup and, it seems the company did their PR well, he'd 'cook' Green Bean Casserole, pork chops and a sundry of other casseroles with it.

He has been asking me for the longest time to try to replicate this and I'd always fall short. Or tall? Depending on how you look at it; it is difficult to compete with a canned, condensed version - mine was always too fresh.

Logistically, part of the problem had been to chop the 'shrooms finely enough to be 'worthy' of the can. I think I've finally managed to get close enough to the original, while not sacrificing flavor.

If you are looking to have it more like the canned version after being reconstituted, add enough milk to thin it out to the consistency you like, but be sure to re-season it with salt.

Cost Breakdown

mushrooms: $3

vegan butter, flour: $.75

VA Chicken-Style Broth Mix, vegan milk: $2

onion, celery: $1

Total to make 6 cups:

$6.75

Cream of Mushroom Soup Recipe

Bayou Eggplant and Cauliflower Pasta

2012-01-14T23:50:00.006-06:00

Food Network Friday, hosted by Tami Noyes, author of American Vegan Kitchen, is veganizing Emeril Lagasse's Bayou Chicken Pasta this month. In case you are new here, FNF is open to anyone! All you have to do is veganize the chosen Food TV recipe. Tami posts the cookalong on her site well in advance and you cook and post. That's all there is to it.

Emeril's recipe is a creamy, spicy pasta dish with chicken and tomatoes. The spice comes in the form of his Essence, which contains cayenne, and habanero peppers. Not only will this clear up all sinuses in the house and make everyone cough like mad while it is being cooked because of the fumes, it also gets a bunch of kids to ask for an alternative dinner option.

That is not to say they didn't like it, though - in fact, they did quite a bit. But the heat was a little too much for them. Be warned, but don't skip it entirely since the flavor of the habanero is delicious and it tends to mellow a bit after cooking.

A few veganized ingredients in the dish are the chicken and the cream. I replaced the chicken with eggplant and cauliflower and the cream with vegan milk mixed with some arrowroot. The arrowroot thickened the sauce up a bit (as cream would) and added body to the dish. The flavors of the habanero, tomato and green onions, along with his Essence, were delicious. This was a quick and easy way to make a nice creamy sauce. As for the veggies, you could substitute something else, zucchini, squash, green beans, or use only cauliflower or only eggplant.

This was a deliciously spicy and pleasant meal to have - nothing too difficult about it. Just watch the spice and have water and bread handy.

Cost Breakdown

pasta: $3

eggplant, cauliflower: $5

habanero, garlic, onion, olive oil: $1.50

almond milk, arrowroot, green onion: $3

Total to make 6 servings:

$12.50

Bayou Eggplant and Cauliflower Pasta Recipe

"Grills Gone Vegan"

2012-01-12T21:49:00.000-06:00

I have been doing a bit of testing for Tami Noyes' upcoming "Grills Gone Vegan" cookbook. Since Chicago has just had its first snowfall of the season today, what better way to look forward to the summer than by showing everyone the upcoming summer festivities we will have to enjoy: Grilling! Vegan Grilling!

This book will be a must have. This is the only decent vegan cookbook on the subject and I cannot even see summer grilling without out.

First up is Poblano Bruschetta. Lightly spicy.

Then Roasted Corn Chowder. Sweet with a little smokiness.

And finally, Pesto Tomatoes. She will also have a pasta option for this classic.

And just because I care about your feelings and don't want to see anyone hurting for something that they just can't have yet, here is a not-such-a-tease recipe: Cajun Pot Pie from her American Vegan Kitchen cookbook - which I know you all have.

If not, here is another reason to get it.

Enjoy!

Manhattan Chowder

2012-01-10T22:51:00.002-06:00

It keeps astounding me that my daughter, who is an absolute mushroom-phobe, continues to ask for this soup - a soup that is laden with oyster mushrooms.

Unlike its counterpart, New England Clam Chowder, Manhattan Chowder, the 'red one,' as it was commonly referred to at "Captain's Nook," a seafood restaurant my parents owned in Hollywood, FL, is not cream based, but tomato based.

Mikel loves the New England Chowder and Catt digs this one. Not difficult to make and quite delicious, especially with some saltine crackers. Old Bay, a popular seafood seasoning, and seaweed make another appearance in this soup, as it is my habit of including them in anything that requires seafood - sans the animals.

The mushrooms are a great touch, giving the soup a more 'clam-y' texture, but it can be ignored or another mushroom subbed. We adore oyster mushrooms at our house (well, at least those who actually eat any mushrooms at all), and if it isn't Manhattan Chowder that gets 'em, then it'd be the Po' Boys. Lucky for Catt we recently had Po Boys and it was her turn at the coveted 'shroom.

Cost Breakdown

oyster mushrooms: $6

oil, garlic: $.75

onion, celery, carrot, green pepper: $2

roasted tomatoes: $2.50

spices, Tabasco, seasoning: $.75

seaweed: $.75

potatoes: $1

Total to make 8 servings:

$13.75

Manhattan Chowder Recipe

Seitan Parmigiana

2012-01-08T13:39:00.005-06:00

First off, I would like to extend my heartfelt appreciation to Post Punk Kitchen for naming this blog, yes, the one you are reading!!, Weekly Vegan Menu, on their 100 List. We are so darned amazed, flattered and any other word that aptly describes being slammed to the floor in awe. I love the list and its other contents and look forward to perusing it myself in the coming weeks. Beautiful job, PPK! And not just because we are on it. The list is great and if you haven't seen it, yet, you certainly should.

Chicken Parmigiana is a classic Italian dish of breaded and fried chicken, baked with layers of tomato sauce and cheese. Interesting to note is that Eggplant Parmigiana was the predecessor of the meat version, not the other way around.

Way to go aubergine!

Since I have already created the eggplant recipe, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about the meat version. I had a bunch of non-veg teenagers over for dinner and thought this might be a nice vegan dish to make for them. This was also the perfect way to introduce to you all my brand-spanking-new Simple Chicken Seitan Recipe.

The Simple Chicken Seitan Recipe uses only 7 ingredients, can be made in any machine or by hand (if you have to) and has no seitan flavor if cooked properly.

What's the catch?

(1) You have to cook it at a very low temperature. The lower the better, but 225 F works very well. This means that you cook it longer. If you do not care about seitan-y flavor, then by all means, continue cooking it at the regular temperature of 350 F for an hour ~~or using your slow cooker.~~

UPDATE:

The slow cooker method has turned out to be a success, and I am so excited because of it! It is actually turning out to be the better of the two methods (oven or slow cooker). The trick is to leave the lid ajar, by about a quarter inch, and only cook the cutlets for 3 hours and 45 minutes. Huge thanks to Nonna for getting me to try it even after I abandoned the idea.

(2) You have to sift your gluten flour. No getting around this. In order to pull off the recipe to an exact tee, maintain proper texture and flavor, you have to measure the correct amount of gluten. The best way to do that is to either sift the flour before you measure it or stir it up before you measure it. This is the same procedure that you use for baking with regular flour; the flour granules settle down and make measuring inaccurate by as much as FOUR Tablespoons per cup of flour! That makes a big difference in the final product.

***A little note about the cost of vital wheat gluten flour.***

I've seen some comments on different sites about the expense of gluten flour. If you purchase a small box of it from your local health food store, sure, you are going to pay an arm and a leg for the stuff. Been there, done that. But, if you buy it from the bulk section of, say Whole Foods, you are way better off. I buy 25 pounds at a time from WF for around $80. That is around $3.25 per pound. A pound of gluten flour yields more than 3 cups. 1 cup of gluten makes 8 cutlets.

Therefore, 1 pound of gluten, at $3.50, makes around 30 cutlets of Simple Chicken Seitan.

No Whole Foods or other super-awesome store like that near you? No problem. Hitting Amazon, you would still be paying a lot, around $5/pound for Bob's Red Mill or $6/pound for Arrowhead Mill. But that is still not even close to the $9/pound that you pay at a local health food store.

(There are other companies that sell on Amazon, but I don't have buying experience with them.)

On the brighter side, Barry Farm , a place I have shopped from, sells vital wheat gluten for $3.50/pound. Discounts for larger (5 pounds or 25 pounds) orders. Great place to get it. I purchased 30 pounds and the total, including shipping, was $85. That is less than $3/pound, including shipping.

The other ingredients for the Simple Chicken Seitan are chickpea flour (very important), salt, VA Chicken-Style Broth Mix, garlic and tahini. If you don't have tahini, add 1/2 Tablespoon of a neutral flavored oil.

_______________________________

A note about eggs and binding. What makes the Parmigiana family of classics especially off the menu for vegans (even if you ask for it without cheese) is the egg batter. The consensus still remains that you need eggs for binding crumbs onto things, when all you need is wet flour. It doesn't matter if you use soy milk, nut milk, water, broth or eggs to make your flour wet - it all does the same thing - turn flour into glue (papier mache anyone?) The one difference is that vegan milk, water and broth won't cost you a million karma points.

There it is. Get cooking.

Cost Breakdown

seitan: $3

panko, breadcrumbs, flour: $1

spices, garlic: $.50

pasta: $3

tomato sauce: $3

Total to make 5 servings:

$10.50

Simple Chicken Seitan Recipe

VA Chicken-Style Broth Mix Recipe

Lángos

2012-01-05T15:23:00.001-06:00

My dad's dream was to live in New York City and introduce Lángos to the people of America. In fact, he always said that if he could just let people taste this Hungarian street food, he could make millions! I'm pretty sure it was this and his desire for a BMW that kept him going for so many years. My parents owned and operated more than a dozen restaurants throughout our lifetime, even one in New York, but, unfortunately my dad never did get his Big Wish granted. Which is a shame, since Lángos is so amazing.

It is a savory doughnut, so to speak. The dough is made with flour and a little mashed potato. After being fried, it is seasoned with salt, rubbed with raw garlic and eaten with a drizzle or dollop of sour cream. This is not everyday food, but one that I remember having on New Year's Day and maybe at another time during the year.

And so it goes at our house as well. The kids will begin mentioning their desire for it months before it is actually made. Not that it is hard to make; on the contrary, after the dough rises, it is stretched into a thin disk and deep fried. Nothing complicated about it. Since it isn't health food, however, it has become an annual or semi-annual indulgence.

Worth every delicious, garlicky bite.

Lángos Recipe

Island Burger

2012-01-03T18:44:00.001-06:00

Liz, a terrific lady over at Cooking the Vegan Books, and a fellow cookbook tester, suggested I get Caribbean Vegan by Taymer Mason, since we share the love of island food and the love of Habaneros (or is that Scotch Bonnets?)

I open up my adventure of this cookbook with a burger. Mikel asked for a burger to be on the menu and this satisfied both of us.

The Island Burger uses TVP for the burger base. Nice and easy, I thought, that is unless you are one of those people who cannot stand a huge list of ingredients; this one recipe has over 20 ingredients. I do not mind the list of ingredients since I know it can sometimes take a bunch seasonings to make a dish great. As an additional work-load, you are asked to make one of the ingredients in the ingredients list - Bajan Seasoning. There is also a recipe for the Barbecue Sauce that goes on the burger and a recipe for the bun - Salt Bread - that the burger goes on.

Naturally, the only way to tackle a recipe with this much to do is to:

(1) come to terms with it - it isn't going to get shorter unless you cut something out, but, then how do you know what to cut out without affecting the result?

(2) plan to make it at the right time. Don't make a recipe like this in the middle of the week while the kids are crying for food and you've just come home from work. Which includes planning a Weekly Menu (name of this blog- check out the tab "Weekly Menu" to get some complete weekly menu ideas. Once you are good with both (1) and (2), the task isn't work, but instead becomes fun.

The recipes in this book feed my yearning for the fiery little pepper, but since I can't get Scotch Bonnet peppers as readily as Habanero peppers (and I can't really discern the difference between the two anyway- even Ghost Peppers have that same flavor profile to me), I use them interchangeably.

It seems to be an authentic cookbook worthy of the islands and worth the effort. Many times cooking something out of your comfort zone can seem challenging. However, consider that once you have met the challenge the first time, you can easily do it again.

If you are jonesing for a burger, but you don't have this book, try this one.

Ethiopian

2012-01-03T12:33:00.000-06:00

When Tami, over at Vegan Appetite and author of American Vegan Kitchen, posted a contest for PaPa Tofu Loves Ethiopian Food, I knew there was no way I was going to wait to just lose in the contest, so I hurried over to Kittee's blog to grab her zine. Besides, I knew I was going to have to have it, so I didn't want to take the chance away from someone else.

I love, love, love Ethiopian food and the complete lack of a vegan cookbook on the topic was depressing. Until this little zine came along.

She covers how to throw your own Ethiopia food party and gives you all the essential recipes to start cooking your Badookie off.

She has a gluten-free injera, (flat-bread), recipe, the niter kibbeh, (flavorful cooking fat), recipe and a berbere paste recipe. It's all here to get you started.

I made the injera, niter kibbeh (you can't skip it), dinich siquar allecha (sweet potatoes), ye'miser w'et (red lentils in spicy stew), and ye'takelt w'et (mixed vegetables in spicy stew). It was all amazing! The two w'ets used the same red spicy gravy, but they were still distinct enough that they were able to stand on their own.

All vegan, all Ethiopian and all gluten-free. And leftovers? Just as amazing. But, like Kittee says, don't even entertain for a second to have it with rice. Although I've erred in the past regarding this, I now concur.

Dinich Siquar Allecha (Sweet Potatoes)

Ye'Takelt W'et (Mixed Veg in Spicy Gravy)

Ye'miser W'et (Red Lentils in Spicy Gravy) with Selata (Salad)

Peruvian Stew with Walnut and Pepper Sauce

2011-12-30T14:29:00.002-06:00

With the New Year so close, I thought I would dig into my new cookbook collection and give a sample of a few of them, especially if you are new to veganism.

As you must know, one of my absolute favorite authors is Bryanna Clark Grogan. No surprise, I am sure that she is a favorite among many of you as well, being such a pioneer in vegan cooking as far as I am concerned. She was one of the first ones who made vegan delicious for me and introduced me to many techniques to make vegan successful.

A few of my first books were:

Simply Heavenly by George Burke - yes, I still own my one copy that I was lucky enough to buy before it went out of print again. Simply Heavenly was my first successful introduction to seitan.

New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook by Hagler and Bates, with their simple and rustic recipes. It is a perfect segue into veganism.

Then came Bryanna, and I knew for the first time that year that our family was going to be okay.

Since then, Robin Robertson, Tami Noyes and Isa Chandra are among my super stars of cooking. You really can't go wrong with any of them.

New Year, New You, and no excuses.

My first cookbook in my international week line-up is Bryanna's new one - World Vegan Feast. The first thing I noticed about this book is that she has ingeniously included some (most?) of the recipes from her Vegan Feast Newsletter. Love it!

I made the first international (aren't they all that, though??) recipe that jumped out at me, Peruvian Stew with Pepper and Walnut Sauce, mainly because it uses aji pepper paste. I have 25 pounds of dried aji peppers and love using them simply anyway it is remotely appropriate.

This dish was delicious and unusual! It makes a lot of sauce and I advise you to double the potatoes in the recipe. We still have some of the sauce left over - which isn't a problem if you can make more potatoes right away, however, at the dinner table, it is not so optimal. Trust me, make extra.

The sauce is beautifully thickened, flavorful with walnuts and parm cheese (recipe is in the book). This is poured over Crispy Tofu and boiled potatoes. I roasted my potatoes, but that is totally optional and more than likely not at all authentic.

This and 197 other recipes await you.

March of the Grenadiers

2011-12-28T21:38:00.002-06:00

Catt's birthday week menu reaps a bounty of potato and pasta dishes it seems. Tonight's meal, March of the Grenadiers, was one, except it magically incorporates both potato and pasta. It also happens to be one of her favorite dishes.

This is a classic Hungarian dish using Paprika Potatoes as the base. It is mashed with a light hand and mixed with cooked pasta, after which it is fried in a little oil to make crisp some of the potatoes and some of the pasta. It is creamy and crunchy all at the same time.

The Paprika Potatoes are an easy and quick dish to prepare and is delicious all on its own with the creamy potatoes in a rich sauce. You could stop right there. But, if you wanted to take it to the next level of decadence, this is where you would end up.

The picture does not do the flavors justice.

Cost Breakdown:

potatoes: $3

pasta: $2

onion, pepper, tomato: $1

spices, oil: $1

Total to make 6 servings:

$7.00

March of the Grenadiers Recipe

Paprika Potato Recipe

Birthday!

2011-12-25T01:45:00.004-06:00

Have I mentioned a gazillion times that time is flying by at irrational speeds? Have I also mentioned my theory that time is, indeed, speeding up and I am not, conversely getting so old that I believe the impossible over the logical, that I am not just getting older and therefore more aware of the lapsing time? Do you feel as though you have warped into philosophical cooking? My bad.

For her 15th (15!th) birthday, my daughter, for the first time since leaving Maryland many years ago, not only celebrated her birthday with friends, but she had 10 girlfriends to "sleep" over and make sure no one actually slept. What a relief for a worried mother! Yes, hairs were colored purple, faces were made into fantasy creatures, Dad was kept up all night, My Little Pony episodes watched (why?) and no girl was immune to sleep deprivation. Including me.

Again, I share way too much. Food... food blog...

We had Two important food components for this special day... Dinner and Cake.

Dinner was Chicago Deep Dish Pizza from our go-to-if-you-need-reliable-and-delicious-food, Tami Noyes' Chicago Deep Dish Pizza from American Vegan Kitchen. The ten girls SCARFED three deep dish pies. Yes. Kid you not! These pies were HUGE - I loooooovvvveee pizza and I have one slice of this and I may want another one, but physically it is not possible for me to eat another one, however, these wonderful, beautiful, caring young ladies managed to put three of these pies somewhere :) Love you, Tami!!

Cake was, by request, a Rainbow Cake. My daughter is an advocate for not only animal welfare, being a conscious vegan, but is deeply involved with LGBT civil rights, hence the special request for the cake.

A rainbow cake to me does not only represent the different colors, but should also represent different flavors. At first I was concerned that ROYGBIV would offer too many flavors and therefore muddle the flavor of the cake itself. Then I realized that not only am I serving this cake to teens, but homeschooled teens, who are used to 'weird' things, such as a 6-flavored cake representing a variety of loves, freedoms and feelings.

I was good.

I wound up making Red (strawberry), Orange (orange), Yellow (lemon), Green (mint), Blue (butterscotch), Purple (chocolate) layers with a cream cheese/vanilla icing and explaining to them that each one was a different flavor. They could mix and match or eat each layer separately. It was a hit. My daughter not only has great taste in cake but exquisite taste in friends.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart.

Caramelized Onion Pasta

2011-12-24T17:20:00.002-06:00

Caramelized Onion Pasta sounds pretty basic, but don't let the notion of its simplicity prevent you from trying it. This is another dish that is easy to put together, but the caramelized onions pack a flavorful wallop.

It is true that you need to babysit the onions a bit, especially toward the end of the cooking time, but mostly it is a hands-off dish, where the most time is spent waiting...waiting for the water to boil, the pasta to cook, the onions to sweat and the onions to caramelize. After that it is a simple matter of tossing the two together and chowing down. Give it an hour to cook properly, but your waiting can be spent being engaged in more important activities, such as blog-surfing.

You might be tempted to add something to the dish, but resist if you can. Some cracked pepper is okay, but don't muddle the flavor of it with too many other ingredients.

Cost Breakdown

pasta: $3

onions: $2

Total to make 5 servings:

$5.00

Caramelized Onion Pasta Recipe

Noodle Curry

2011-12-23T10:34:00.001-06:00

I'm not exactly sure what my son was thinking when we were making the menu. He said he'd like to see Noodle Curry on the menu. I don't think I've ever made it and I didn't know exactly what he wanted, but I wrote it down and decided I 'd come up with something when the time came.

This is what I ended up making:

I baked some tofu (after a 30 minute press) in tamari and oil - pretty simple, nothing extravagant. Since I was firing up the oven, I also tossed some kabocha squash with a little oil and baked that as well. I used rice noodles and cooked an assortment of vegetables I had on hand. In fact, most of the veggies were frozen from a stir-fry mix - broccoli, chestnuts, green beans. I also added fresh celery and bell pepper.

For the curry part, I made a sauce using red curry paste (there are also commercial brands that are vegan), tamarind (for the tartness - use lemon juice as an alternative), and coconut milk. I tossed all the ingredients - tofu, vegetables, noodles, sauce and squash - together and cooked them for a few minutes at the end to meld the flavors. If you skip the squash add a little more sugar to the sauce since the squash added a delicious sweetness. This is a fantastic way to use winter squash.

This was delicious and not all that complicated to make. A few steps: (1) Baking the tofu and squash. (2) Soaking the noodles. (3) Cooking the vegetables and (4) making the sauce. That's about it. And worth it. The pot of food disappeared in no time.

Cost Breakdown

noodles: $1

coconut milk: $1

vegetables and fruits: $5

curry and tamarind: $.50

tofu and spices: $3

Total to make 5 servings:

$10.50

Noodle Curry Recipe

Hungarina Potato Soup with Bay Leaves

2011-12-21T23:23:00.001-06:00

I remember this soup vividly growing up. My mother would make it after getting off of her work shift of 12 hours. Having nothing in the house to cook but potatoes and apples, this was one of her go-tos. Have I mentioned what a fantastic woman she was? While the taste of this soup is just as clear to me as if I was still that little girl supping on it, unfortunately, thanks to my stubbornness and refusing to learn how to cook until it was way too late to ask the chef herself how it was done, I never learned the intricacies of this soup. Which left me with having to piece together this dish using a combination of memory, blogs and cookbooks. None of the written words I read spoke the exact recipe to me, but according to my palate, this here recipe that I came up with is as close as I will likely get.

My mom did not have nutritional yeast, and it is not an authentic part of the soup, but it does help to add another dimension that the original soup acquires using sour cream.

The kids love this soup. I love this soup. You, too, will love this soup as long as you don't overdo the vinegar. While the subtle flavor of it is essential, along with the bay leaves, overdoing either one will lead to disaster. Add a little vinegar at a time, but make sure not to taste the soup too often. Tasting the same dish more than 4 or 5 times will overwhelm your taste buds and render them useless.

Cost Breakdown
potatoes: $2.50
bay, pepper, parsley: $.75
celery, onion, nutritional yeast: $2.50
vinegar, sour cream: $2
Total to make 8 servings:
$7.75

Hungarian Potato Soup with Bay Leaves Recipe

Flautas and Taquitos

2011-12-19T16:41:00.001-06:00

Is it a Flauta or a Taquito?

The two Mexican food dishes can be mixed up at times since they are both rolled, fried, stuffed tortillas. The difference, and hence the names, are due to the type of tortilla used. Flautas are made using flour tortillas and Taquitos are made using corn tortillas.

Making the filling and rolling them in the tortillas can be time consuming parts of this meal, but even then it is one of the simplest to make. I made a filling using textured vegetable protein, but seitan, beans or vegetables are outstanding choices, with refried beans being the simplest of the bunch.

Make sure to first heat the tortillas in the microwave in a stack (wrapped in damp paper towels) or individually right on stove top to get them warm. Warm tortillas bend and don't break. Roll them in the filling and either pan-fry them in oil or bake them as I did.

Serve these with guacamole, salsa and vegan sour cream.

They are crispy and filling.

Cost Breakdown

tortillas: $3

TVP: $1

Daiya: $1

broth, onion, garlic, spices, flour: $1.50

sour cream, avocado, salsa: $2

Total to make 16 with garnishes:

$8.50

Flautas or Taquitos Recipe

Tofu Escabeche over Escarole

2011-12-15T08:38:00.001-06:00

How many times have we heard of some Top Chef or Iron Chef describe his dish as an Escabeche? Doesn't it sound exotic and unattainable for us on the side-lines of the kitchen? As with most culinary terms, this too is deceptive in its simplicity. It is a fried or cooked meat or vegetable that is then marinated in a liquid containing such acids as citrus juice or vinegar. It is typically served cold, right from the marinade.

I used tofu in this dish, but seitan, eggplant or zucchini would be ideal choices as well. Although marinating helps tofu (and please correct me if I am wrong), I have never found it to be like the proverbial sponge. I have used the Tofu Express on a slab, cut it into cutlets and marinated it for days, and still the inside turned out just as white as the day it was first pressed. That isn't to say that it is all for naught, but I have personally given up on infusing the tofu completely. The tofu picks up enough of the soaking liquid to add the flavor dimension you are trying for, but for me at least, a day of marinating is all the time I am willing to devote to food down-time. Serve the darned thing already!

I did wind up reheating my Tofu Escabeche, mainly because David would have most likely asked me to, but this is totally optional. I served it over brown rice tossed with sauteed escarole and garlic. The escarole was nicely bitter, the brown rice delightfully sweet and the escabeche wonderfully acidic.

It was decidedly a grown-up meal.

Cost Breakdown

tofu: $4

escarole: $3

brown rice: $1

garlic, vinegar, wine, flour, olive oil: $2
garlic, herbs, stock: $2

Total to make 6 servings:
$12.00

Tofu Escabeche Recipe

Cream of Spinach Soup

2011-12-14T19:24:00.002-06:00

Amazing how time flies! It has already been a week since my last post, so I better catch up.

I've always loved spinach creamed. My fondest food memories involve Sunday family suppers, right before our restaurant would open for business. My dad would always insist on us kids having chicken soup before we were allowed to dig into the Good Stuff. One of my favorites was, and still is, Spinach Fozelek, a sort-of creamed spinach. As Hungarians, we had a fried egg on top and served it with boiled potatoes and sauteed purple cabbage. For me, that was the epitome of a gourmet meal. So good!

But I get side-tracked. I only meant to impress on you how I love spinach. Cream of Spinach Soup evokes that same feeling of spinach love. Easy to make and very tasty. Hungarians - or at least my family - never added nutmeg to any green leafy vegetables. In fact, the time I did suggest such a thing to my mother, she thought I had left my faculties somewhere far behind, but you can give it a few grinds. Mikel picked up on the 'odd' flavor of the nutmeg right away and pronounced it not his favorite. I actually enjoyed it, but most likely will go at it with a lighter hand in the future for the sake of the family. As with all new things, baby steps.

Cost Breakdown

spinach: $5

milk: $.75

stock: $1

onion, flour: $.50

cream cheese: $.75

Total to make 4 servings:

$8.00

Cream of Spinach Soup Recipe

Po' Boys

2011-12-08T14:12:00.001-06:00

Whenever I come across oyster mushrooms for a good price, I know that they will appear on the week's menu as Po' Boys. Although oyster mushrooms weren't to be had, chanterelles were on sale. And since David happened to be shopping with me, he decided that they were good enough to be on Po' Boys. In fact, we picked them up for $8 a pound. That is very nice for chanterelles.

A Po' Boy is a traditional Louisianan sandwich. It is made of fried seafood (shrimp, oyster, crab) stuffed into a French baguette with lettuce, tomato and mayo. Way back in my youth, I dined at a restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale that offered Po' Boys. Now I am not sure how the place got there or how authentic their version of a Po' Boy was, but it stuck with me over the decades and that is how we eat our Po' Boys to this very day. After some research, I found other recipes made this way as well, so I can now be relieved to know that my variation isn't that far off the course. In any case, we love it and recommend it!

The type of mushroom is up to you, but oysters are the bomb. You can pan saute them and then toast some panko crumbs to add to the mushrooms (the method Robin Robertson employs in Quick Fix Vegetarian) OR you can deep fry them. We typically make them using the former method, but since these were chanterelles, we wanted to give them the ol' Paula Deen treatment - we fried them.

After the mushrooms are done, put them on a garlic-toasted hoagie or French baguette with tartar sauce and coleslaw. OMG. This does not last long at our place. In fact, we bought and consumed three pounds of mushrooms (not in one sitting).
Gluttons that we are. And you too, can be one. Join us.

Cost Breakdown

mushrooms: $8
bread: $3
cabbage, carrot, lemon: $3
vegenaise, sugar, pickles, onion: $2
flour, cornmeal, oil: $3
Total to make 4 sandwiches:
$19.00

Fried Mushroom Po' Boys Recipe

Seitan a la King

2011-12-07T14:38:00.002-06:00

Why stop seitan-and-cream-sauce dishes at the Divan? Another American-born classic dish is Seitan a la King. This is a recipe of chopped seitan (in the olden days, chicken), with mushrooms and pimientos, in a creamy sauce, over pasta, rice, bread or puff pastry. I went all out and used puff pastry. There are vegan versions out there, and of the easiest to find is the most popular. Go look in your grocer's freezer section. Score!

You can get very elaborate with said puff pastry, but I just cut them into squares of about 4X4 inches, took half the squares and, using a 3.5 inch round lid, cut the middle out of them. Then I put the cut-out ones over a whole square ones and baked them. If you prick the inside of the square with a fork (so it doesn't rise along with the rest of the pastry), you will wind up with a bowl after the baking time (around 15 min.)

As for the a la King part, you can use chickpeas (I've heard of these being used many times), tofu (especially baked), seitan (first sauteed to get golden), or a mixture of vegetables (like for a pot pie). It all depens on what you have or how fancy you want to get. For the cream sauce I used homemade roasted almond cream, but regular vegan milk will do very well.

Verdict: It was amazing over the puff pastry. The filling was just as delicious, but in my opinion, anything thrown over puff pastry already has an advantage. Winner.

Cost Breakdown

seitan: $2
vegan milk, broth: $3
pimiento, flour, onion, mushroom, garlic: $4
puff pastry: $5
Total to make 4 servings:
$14.00

Seitan a la King Recipe

Seitan Divan

2011-12-06T14:25:00.002-06:00

Seitan Divan is a classic American casserole consisting of bread, meat, broccoli or asparagus and then topped with Mornay Sauce.

Mornay Sauce sounds exotic, but it is actually just a cheese sauce made using a simple Bachamel Sauce (a white sauce of thickened milk) with cheese melted into it. Nothing complicated but the name there.

Toast is typically used for the Divan, but I used English Muffins. I sauteed the seitan cutlets until they turned golden brown and layered the casserole: English Muffin, seitan thinly sliced, cooked broccoli florets and Mornay Sauce.

While you could simply make the Mornay Sauce with the Bechamel and melt 1/2 cup of vegan cheese in it to create the sauce, I also made the Mornay using Bechamel with no commercial (or difficult to make) cheese.

We all loved it! It really was easy to make and not at all a conventional casserole.

The pragmatic in me thought this was a great dish not just because it was good and easy to assemble, but because I was able to clean up after the initial cooking while the casserole baked for the required twenty minutes. Had the baking required a longer time I might have left the kitchen, and the mess, behind. Bonus.

Cost Breakdown

broccoli: $2

seitan: $1

English Muffin: $2

tahini, nutritional yeast, flour, lemon, milk: $1.50

Total to make 4 servings:

$6.50

Seitan Divan Recipe

Potato Vegan-Omelet

2011-12-05T15:55:00.001-06:00

Vegan Omelets are a hit at our house. It is a simple dish to prepare and the variety is outlandish - Southern Omelets, Asian Omelets, Mushroom and Pepper Omelets, Cheesy Omelets, the list goes on. There are a few tricks to it, but once you've made them a few times, they are a breeze and are loved served one way or another, depending on the diner.

I've made these into Fried Vegan Omelet Sandwiches and now here they are wrapped around roasted potatoes as Potato Vegan-Omelet. The potatoes need about 30-40 minutes to get nice and crispy in the oven, but after that blend your tofu into an omelet and set the table. Easy brunch.

Cost Breakdown

tofu: $2

almond milk, nutritional yeast: $1

cheese: $3

potatoes, onion, garlic, spices: $3

Total to make 4 omelets:

$9.00

Potato Vegan-Omelet Recipe

Spicy Tomato and Asparagus with Linguine

2011-12-04T11:06:00.006-06:00

Pasta dishes have a tendency to be quick, easy and tasty - as long as you have a good recipe. This recipe fits the bill on all counts. I have been noticing that I have this intense need for quick meals that at least three-fifth of the household at least likes. See.. I don't have unrealistic expectations.

This meal, Spicy Tomato and Asparagus with Linguine, takes around 30 minutes to make .. for real. The sauce is made using some olive oil, onion, garlic, grape or cherry tomatoes, red pepper and a bit of sherry or broth. Some chili flakes add a spicy touch and the additional vegetable creates variety. I used asparagus as the addition, but other vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, green beans or zucchini, would all be ideal choices.

I love using linguine in this, but again, the shape is up to the cook. Spaghetti would be great or any pasta with little nooks and crannies, where the sauce can cling to, work well.

Basil or fresh parsley finishes the dish.

Delicious and very versatile. Four of us loved it and found ourselves getting another and another bowl of the pasta. Luckily, we use small bowls.

Cost Breakdown

pasta: $2
tomatoes: $4
parsley: $.50
asparagus: $4
pepper: $1
onion, garlic, olive oil, spices: $1
Total to make 6 servings:
$12.50

Spicy Tomato and Asparagus with Linguine Recipe

FNF - Bacon Corn Muffins with Savory Cream Cheese Frosting

2011-12-01T15:04:00.003-06:00

Hey, y'all!

Hope everyone has had a fabulous holiday season so far - there is more to come, with Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Yule tidings, Christmas and many others I am sure I am ignorant of, to my detriment. Here's wishing everyone a joyous season. Winter has always been a favorite time for celebrations, given that the days are shortening, they are colder and bleaker and not much of anything happening out of doors, unless the proper preparations are taken and everyone gets bundled up. So what better time throughout the ages to throw a party? I hope to have much more coming up on this topic.

For now, I am more focused on returning to this well-known, time-honored tradition of blogging, and what better way to get back in the blog-mood than with a Food Network Friday, hosted by our very own lovely Tamasin Noyes of American Vegan Kitchen fame, over at Vegan Appetite.

[And if you don't have a copy, this is the best season ever to get one!]

{And again, if you are craving some blog love from said Tami, get on board Food Network Friday yourself - she has tons of it give out.}

What do my eyes behold, when I finally mosey on over to VA, but Bacon Corn Muffins. In my opinion, you could just call them Bacon Muffins and leave it at that. As anyone who has been a slave to Food TV knows, meat + cake is all the sickening rage nowadays, especially using bacon. Naturally, this is the perfect recipe to duplicate, not only for the morbid curiosity it evokes (think: car crash rubberneckers) but for the sheer need to veganize the stupid thing!

Two things need attention in this recipe: the egg and the bacon.

(1) The Egg: Super easy, folks! Ignore it. Forget about it. Useless and unneeded addition P.R.ed by the Egg Board. The starch in the muffin is enough to bind it. Think of it this way-- as long as you have starch in a dish, one egg = 1/4 cup of liquid. I upped the 3/4 cup of milk to 1 cup and called it a day. Enough of this nonsense!

(2) The Bacon: Lots of fun here! You can use my Tofu Bacon recipe and then crispen it in some oil, use Fakin' Bacon tempeh, or what I did... used 2 links of Tofurkey Italian Sausage. I diced 2 links up, fried them until crisp in olive oil and, after I removed them from the heat, added some liquid smoke.

Now came time for the most important decision making part: what hot sauce to use. Oh, the possibilities.. the recipe author, Brian Boitano, gives no direction here! Louisianan hot sauce, Tabasco, Harrisa, Chipotle, Habanero, Frank's or..... Sriracha? Yeah, well, I figured I'd go with the vegan masses and used Sriracha. In fact, I have never seen a condiment more embraced than Sriracha by the vegan community. I wonder if any of the other bloggers used the same?

Verdict: Loved the muffins. Weird. But true. The frosting was way too much, and the family was scrapping it off the little tykes. Just a thin covering would have been enough, not the called for 8 ounces for the 24 mini or 12 regular sized muffins.

Since a muffin does not make a meal, I also made Senate Bean Soup, with navy beans, some of the same Italian Sausage and a few veggies. According to legend, this soup has been on the menu at the U.S. Senate restaurant for over 30 years. It's been a long time coming in become vegan itself.

Vegan Bacon Muffins Recipe

US Senate Bean Soup Recipe

Boston Market (MoFo 29)

2011-10-19T19:41:00.002-05:00

Boston Chicken has gone through its ups and down. In the early 90's they were at the top of their game, so much so that they began offering other menu items. In fact, they became so popular for it, that they decided the name Boston Chicken was no longer apt for the business and so changed to Boston Market. Woo-hoo! Until, that is, they so over-extended themselves that by 1998 they filed Chapter 11. Who do you think came to their rescue? I'll give you one McClue...

The company was purchased in 2000 by the McDonald's Corporation with the intention to get their hands on the real estate and dump the name and menu. However, after McD's cleaned house of the constipated BM's (I have a joke here that I will not indulge in...too late), the Market began to flourish again (rats!) and McD's decided to leave well enough alone. If it makes money...ya know.

Apparently things weren't quite as rosy in McLand though, because by 2007, the Market once again changed ownership.

The Boston Market Meatloaf was one of the menu additions from the original folks, and here I have reinvented it in all its vegan glory. While theirs is made of a cow, mine is made of veggie burgers. Pretty sure any veggie burger will work, but I made mine with Boca. The burgers are mashed up and mixed with onions, seasonings and barbecue sauce. The sauce is added at mid-cooking, as well.

The sides at Boston Market are something that vegetarians, at least, can indulge in, but why should vegans be excluded? And why not make it vegan, anyway, for that matter?

Here I have made three of the side dishes, Creamed Spinach, Macaroni and Cheese, Sweet Potato Casserole and Poultry Gravy. The mashed potatoes are my creation and not one of their "Gourmet Sides."

All of them are fantastic, but as far as it goes, this place should be called Boston Butter, not Market. They use a ton of butter, cream and cheese in almost every side dish - at least the ones I chose to make. A note: To make this as good as it can be, you must use unsweetened, plain non-dairy milk. Anything else will make things taste way too sweet.

Vegan Meatloaf with Gravy

Creamed Spinach. Macaroni and Cheese, Sweet Potato Casserole

Meatloaf Recipe

Macaroni and Cheese Recipe

Creamed Spinach Recipe

Sweet Potato Casserole Recipe

(coming)

Cracker Barrel (MoFo 28)

2011-10-15T15:43:00.003-05:00

The ol' country store. While driving on any highway, you cannot drive more than 30 miles without one of these crossing your billboard radar - they are everywhere! Cracker Barrel has only (and I mean that in comparison to the other mega-stores like McDonald's) 600 some-odd stores to its name, but they are ubiquitous on the road.

The original concept was created to pull people off the road to buy, not food or country junk, but gasoline. Dan Evans thought folks would pull over to eat and shop and, before heading back on the trails, fill up. Good call; that's just what they did. Nowadays there are no more gas stations in front of Cracker Barrel, but there are plenty of rocking chairs!

The Southern-comfort food of the Barrel is pretty off-putting to their vegetarian (do they have any?) clients since most everything has some part of an animal cooked in it. When I worked there about 16 years ago, the apples were the only thing (I think) that was clear to eat, but then perhaps even that had lard. Hard to tell. You know how the mind blocks out unhappy memories.

Hashbrown Casserole was a super popular menu item and their Chicken Casserole was also way up there. The Hashbrown Casserole is country hashbrowns with loads of cheese. The Chicken Casserole has cream of chicken soup with chicken and is topped with crumbled cornbread. I made a baked chicken-style tofu for this dish.

There is something highly annoying about a restaurant where even their vegetables have meat in it. The Barrel's Country Green Beans are cooked with bacon. Great. Grrr.

Veganize!

I distinctly remember the Barrel making their green beans in the southern-style.. cooked until almost grey in color. To get this dish to be as close to the original as possible, I used frozen green beans (you can be more authentic and use canned green beans or more healthful and use fresh green beans. Oh! the choices.). Surprisingly good. Don't ask me why or how. Cook up a batch and try them. They make a great accompaniment to the Chicken Casserole.

Country Green Beans and Hashbrown Casserole

Chicken-y Setian Casserole

Hashbrown Casserole Recipe

Chicken-y Seitan Recipe

Country Green Beans Recipe

(coming)

Cheesecake Factory (MoFo 27)

2011-10-14T22:08:00.003-05:00

The first Cheesecake Factory restaurant was opened in Beverly Hills by Evelyn and Oscar Overton's son, David, because he wanted a place to sell his mother's beloved cheesecakes. Although she had been selling her cheesecakes to local restaurants already, most of her customer's weren't thrilled with the prices they were being charged. David thought he could help her out, and that he did. By 2010, there were 150 Cheesecake Factories in operation.

Hands down, the most popular dish on their menu, besides cheesecake, of course, is the Chicken Madeira, a sauteed chicken breast, topped with asparagus spears, mozzarella cheese and mushroom Madeira sauce. Veganize! Our mantra of the month!

Tender chicken-like seitan cutlets serve well here, asparagus is already vegan, mozzarella has many delicious non-dairy options and the mushroom Madeira sauce is as easy as finding a suitable Madeira wine. Serve these with mashed potatoes to soak up the sweet, tangy sauce. Vegetables already included. In fact, if I were you, I'd double and even triple the measly 2 spears of asparagus the restaurant offers per serving.

Certainly cheesecake cannot be ignored. Obviously. And here is where a lot can go wrong, and I am not referring only to the quantity of cheesecake that can be consumed in a single sitting.

This was one of the many dishes that needed a redo. Surprisingly, when the correct chemical concoction for cheesecake perfection is achieved, the process is quite easy and quick. My first attempt was the Key Lime Cheesecake. While it came out tasting awesome, it was not firm and needed a redo. For the second time (not having the heart to ask the family to eat two of the same flavors of cheesecake in a row..what kind of mother would I have been?), I attempted to make the White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cheesecake, this time successfully.

I do not like tofu in my cheesecake, so this one is sans tofu, but does use about 3 tubs of Better Than Cream Cheese. Another alteration was needed since I did not have white chocolate and therefore used regular chocolate chips.

To complete the whole Cheesecake Factory experience, get yourself a can of Soy Whip or some other whip substitute and squirt to your heart's content.. the Factory certainly does.

Seitan Madeira

Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

Dairy Queen (MoFo 26)

2011-10-14T00:09:00.002-05:00

Dairy Queen was a total favorite of mine - before it sunk in that the cows 'giving' the milk aren't doing it so I can have the joy of eating ice cream. And they aren't doing it so I, a grown adult, can continue to consume something that I had been weened of years before by the only person who should be nursing me in the first place. Even if we totally disregard the fact that adult humans should not be suckling at anyone's teats, a mother cow is still raped and then her child murdered. Those are the cold hard facts and if you still consume dairy milk, you are still contributing to the violence.

To make your swallowing all of this harsh (albeit true) info easier, how about a nice vegan Blizzard?

DQ first opened in the 1940's. Their innovative concept was the soft serve ice cream. That made DQ famous and what made them popular was their pioneering of restaurant franchising. In fact, by the end of 1947, they had grown to 100 stores. By 2010, they well exceeded over 5,000 stores world-wide.

In 1985, the year I had my first interaction with DQ, they introduced the Blizzard, soft serve ice cream with add-ins such as Heath Candy Bar, Snickers, Oreos, M&M's, etc. My favorite was the Heath Bar Blizzard. Because of all the wonderful folks at Turtle Mountain, Chicago Soy Dairy, Rice Dream, etc., there is no need to turn to dairy for any of your cold, sweet needs. Grab your favorite vegan ice cream and head to your blender to make your Blizzard!...oh, Heath isn't vegan, you say?

No worries! Heath Candy Bar is as easy as 5 ingredients (brown sugar, Earth Balance, nuts and chocolate chips) and 10 minutes away to make. Plus cooling time, but at least no babysitting is involved.

The bars are totally delicious all by themselves...just leave enough for the Blizzard :)

Heath Bar and Blizzard Recipe

Hard Rock Cafe (MoFo 25)

2011-10-11T23:27:00.001-05:00

Hard Rock Cafe was the first theme-based restaurant. Although when it opened in 1971 in London, England, narry a guitar or gold record graced the walls of the hamburger place By the time it's first American restaurant opened in Los Angeles in 1982, it had made not just a name for itself, but gave birth to a trend that has been duplicated since then.

It all began when Eric Clapton donated Hard Rock Cafe one of his guitars. Not to be outdone, Pete Townsend offered one up soon after, with a note saying "Mine's as good as his! Love, Pete." Thus began the collective legacy. Today, Hard Rock Cafe, complete with 130 or so stores, 4 hotels, 2 casinos and 2 concert venues, and a museum, is owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida... quite a history!

One of their most popular menu items is the Hickory-Smoked Pulled-Pork (or Chicken) Sandwich. It comes with marinated cabbage and creamy cole slaw. I made a tofu-gluten seitan for this. It is served on a ciabatta roll with extra sauce on the side. It is, in fact, quite good and not all that difficult to make, even with the making of the seitan. The only catch is that you have to make the seitan, the marinated cabbage and the creamy cole slaw the day before serving it, as all three have to sit over night. If you ask me, it just makes the day of the meal that much easier for the cook since most of the work will have been done already.

When you are ready to eat, spin some tunes and stock up on the napkins. It's worth it, even if you have never been to a Hard Rock Cafe.

It's not like they have a monopoly on music.

Hickory-Smoked Pulled Seitan Sandwich

Creamy Cole Slaw

(coming)

MoFo Update

2011-10-09T22:49:00.000-05:00

Update of failure. I blame it on my husband. When you tell someone they will fail, they just might. I asked him to check on the contents of the oven and as he walked upstairs to report his findings, he flat-out told me it was a bust. The dish wasn't even done, yet, but when someone portends its demise, it is a foregone conclusion that the end has been foretold. Thus, after another two hours of cooking, it was evident that he was right.

I will retry with this particular restaurant replication later since I have a feeling I know what went wrong, but I don't wish to divulge the name of the place in case I ... well, fail again.

I typically would not blog about something like this, since I hate terribly to admit defeat, but I don't wish to be removed from the MoFo feed and I know they insist that we continually post, otherwise what is the point of Vegan Month of Food? I am sure, however, that the good folks at MoFo HQ had other blog posts in mind besides failed recipe ones.

Will write soon; it has been a long day.

Bennigan's (MoFo 24)

2011-10-07T22:07:00.001-05:00

Before Norman Brinker took over Chili's, he was the founder of Bennigan's, an Irish-inspired restaurant and pub. They serve American food with an Irish twist. Some of the most popular end enduring menu items have been the Monte Cristo and Broccoli Bites.

The company was later abandoned by Brinker for greener pastures. Pillsbury, the original owners, passed the restaurant chain onto other conglomerations, among them a huge liquor distributor. Over the years, the company has degraded due in part to a lack of rolling with the times and following trends. Basically they remained stagnant in a fluid restaurant environment. The company declared bankruptcy in July 2008 and wound up closing hundreds of stores. Among the only remaining stores that stayed open were franchise-owned ones. In October 2008, the dregs of the parent company, Steak and Ale, was bought up and the new owners are now trying to turn the tides and revamp Bennigan's image, food and the establishments themselves.

I was a server and bartender at Bennigan's for about a year in the early 2000's because hubby was laid off, but the mortgage company still insisted on their monthly payments. You could tell that things were forced and apathetic for the company, even though it was a new store I was hired for.

As for the food, the Monte Cristo was the signature dish, if you don't count the double burger that had a knife sticking out of it in an effort to hold the monstrosity upright. The Monte Cristo is a three-layered sandwich of ham, cheese and turkey, coated in an egg batter and deep fried. Now I am not exactly sure who looked at a sandwich and thought it would be a good idea to deep fry it, but then I am often confounded at the ludicrous things people choose to deep fry, including a stick of butter. Why?

However, I am not here to ask 'why?' just here to make the food. As anyone knows who has tried to recreate deep fried egg batters, it is not an easy endeavor. And since I figure there might be someone who does NOT choose to deep-fry their sandwich, I have offered a grilled version of it. Not the same, but not bad either...and not as bad for you. The batter is made with tofu and once a light dusting of flour is on the battered sandwich, the batter does not dissolve in the hot oil.

Broccoli Bites is one of those appetizers that I served a lot of, but one that isn't even vegetarian, with the inclusion of bacon bits. I omitted the bacon bits completely, but if you'd like to add some vegan tvp bacon bits or crumbled Fakin Bakin or something like that, the option is there. The broccoli, once pulsed fine in a food processor, is mixed with finely grated vegan cheese and formed into balls. The balls are then frozen to help them stay together during frying. They are coated in milk-flour-bread crumbs and fried. Baking is an option also. The balls flatten a bit with this process, but the broccoli cooks more and they are still crispy and golden.

Yup, more brewskie is recommended here and perhaps a strong stomach if you dare to try the Monte Cristo as it was originally intended to be eaten by the good folks at Bennigan's.

Monte Cristo

Monte Cristo - grilled

Broccoli Bites

Monte Cristo Sandwich

(coming)

Broccoli Bites

Chili's (MoFo 23)

2011-10-06T18:57:00.004-05:00

Chili's was started in Dallas in 1975 as basically a hamburger place. It was bought by Norman Brinker in 1983, by which time it had expanded to thirty stores. After Norman acquired the place, he added Fajitas to the menu, a finger food of southwestern-marinated and grilled meats served sizzling on a cast-iron skillet. The meat and vegetables are arranged in a soft flour tortilla or corn tortilla, with the addition of pico de gallo, sour cream, cheese or guacamole. Most people have by now heard of or have eaten fajitas, thanks in large part to Chili's who made it part of our culture.

I have made my fajitas with tofu, seitan and portobellos, but, really, any combination of delicious vegetables will work wonderfully, including squash, other mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli and carrots. Skip potatoes in this. It is too starchy.

Along with burgers, fajitas, soups and pastas, salads are a large part of Chili's - in this generation, any way. One of their best selling salad is the Caribbean Salad, a melange of greens, onion, pineapple, dried cherries and Honey-Lime Dressing, topped with marinated, grilled meat. It isn't difficult at all to substitute the honey with maple syrup in the dressing and use grilled tofu or grilled seitan for the chicken.

Lastly, I replicated their Chicken Enchilada Soup, which uses masa harina as the thickener and has a few ounces short of a ton of cheese. Substituting the chicken is easy - I used chickpeas, but omitting it totally is great as well, or using tofu cubes or seitan. As for the cheese, you need something creamy and tangy - I used Better Than Cream Cheese and Better Than Sour Cream. Not too much, but just enough to take it into Chili's realm. This was a winner by a mile and I encourage you to try it - it is super easy and quick - on top of being delicious.

Enchilada Soup

Caribbean Salad

Fajitas - Tofu, Portobello, Seitan

Enchilada Soup

Fajitas

Buffalo Wild Wings (MoFo 22)

2011-10-04T23:13:00.002-05:00

Buffalo, New York must have been too far for the founders of Buffalo Wild Wings in 1981, based out of Ohio, which must have been the impetus to open a restaurant built around chicken wings. The restaurant makes wings... and about a dozen or so different sauces to coat them. Not only are the chicken wings formerly those of..chickens... the sauces are 'thickened' and 'stabilized' using eggs. Neither is necessary.

Last MoFo I attempted to duplicate chicken wings since they have become such a huge staple in our culture; sort of a bonus for the meat-packers ... they get to sell the chicken meat/carcass and now, thanks to the popular Buffalo Wings, not lose money on the previously not-good-for-anything-but-to-make-stock chicken wings. Fantastic. Except for the chickens.

My last attempt to make wings was a little complicated and I wanted to have another go at it. This recipe uses both seitan and pressed tofu very successfully... and easily. The pieces are coated with a little flour and fried. That's it.

The sauces are pretty great. Buffalo Wild Wing's most popular sauce is the Spicy Garlic one, but if the teaspoon of garlic powder is not enough for you (as for me), add three cloves of minced garlic to the bowl you will be tossing the wings in. They will cook well enough with the residual heat from the frying of the pieces.

The second sauce, Parmesan Garlic, makes use of roasted garlic and mayo. You can omit the parmesan if you can't find any good vegan ones (Hint: Tami and Celine's new sandwich cookbook will have a fantastic recipe for one in it! Yes!) just up the roasted garlic and add a teaspoon or two of nutritional yeast.

Serve with fries, celery sticks, a brewskie and ranch dressing. Is it football season, yet?

Wings with Spicy Garlic Sauce

Wings with Parmesan Garlic Sauce

Spicy Garlic Wings Recipe

Parmesan Garlic Wings Recipe

Denny's (MoFo 21)

2011-10-03T22:15:00.004-05:00

Hard to believe that Denny's Restaurant started out as Danny's Donuts, a simple donuts and coffee shop open 24 hours a day. Once their customers began asking for other types of food besides sweet ones, Danny added sandwiches to the menu and changed the name to Danny's Coffee Shop. The joint went through one more name transformation to the now well known Denny's. Still open 24 hours a day and still selling coffee and sandwiches, among many other diner fare. It is hard to find a city without at least one Denny's.

I had my first taste of Denny's in college, working the graveyard. Lots of interesting characters visit the place once the regular folks call it a night. Lots. And not all of them were aware of the tipping system customary after being served.

I remember The Super Bird, a glorified grilled cheese with turkey, tomato and bacon, being very popular. The sandwich was cut into three parts, being so big. For the turkey I used Tofurkey slices. Any style of Tofurkey slices will do fine. For the bacon, I used my Tofu Bacon recipe, using three slices. For the cheese, anything that melts well will be great - Daiya, Rice cheese, Follow Your Heart...

The second sandwich from America's Diner is Moons Over My Hammy. This sandwich has ham, scrambled eggs and cheese on a sourdough bread. Yves makes a great ham-alternative and the cheese choices are the same as above. As for the scrambled eggs, pressed tofu with black salt and a bit of vegenaise is all that is needed to make it just as creamy and delicious as the Denny's version.

Grab a skillet, fry up some hash-browns, make some coffee, and enjoy a Denny's sandwich the vegan way.

Super Bird

Moons Over My Hammy

Super Bird Recipe

Moons Over My Hammy Recipe

PPK - American Vegan Kitchen III

2011-09-29T23:35:00.000-05:00

Take Three.

PPK and AVK. Great pair!

Tonight's American Vegan Kitchen (by Tami Noyes) meal was the Southern Fried Seitan with Mashed Potatoes and Homestyle Gravy. It is so much fun to watch the kids' reactions when we are having something they love! And they loved this. I doubled the recipe (which calls for a measly 4 seitan cutlets) and doubled the mashed potatoes and gravy while I was at it. David had just enough to take to work the next day. It's like the kids fill up on the good stuff in anticipation of all the vegetables that will be coming their way sometime in the future. Like I said, so much fun to watch.

There really is nothing much to report with this recipe. Awesome. That covers it. I made the seitan the day before and then the rest was easy to put together. Peeling the potatoes was the biggest pain. I did add more than twice the milk called for for the mashed potatoes, but I'm pretty sure that is a personal preference and is optional. The gravy kicked some potato rear - super tasty.

I usually make the gravy last and then I am scrambling to put it all on the table before the food gets cold. This time I made the gravy while the potatoes were cooking and covered it with a plastic wrap to keep it from developing a 'skin.' Worked out very well. I just reheated it a bit when the seitan were nearing their final cooking.

The only thing I forgot this time, and the kids cheered, was a vegetable dish. Potatoes count in some countries, right?

I did manage to get a dessert made, though! Priorities, folks. Cherry Turnovers. Tami's recipe uses a pie crust, but being lazy by this point, I used puff pastry. The store had it on sale and I wanted more of a turnover than a hand-pie. Not to mention I didn't have to make the crust. So good! And so quick to make. Get the filling made well ahead of time, though, since it needs to cool thoroughly.

We felt like we were celebrating something with this meal. Isn't Hug A Vegetarian Day coming up?

PPK - American Vegan Kitchen Apps

2011-09-29T00:14:00.001-05:00

Post Punk Kitchen continued with American Vegan Kitchen.

Tonight we enjoyed a trio of appetizers from AVK, by Tamasin Noyes. We have a Halloween Party coming up and I figured since Tami has some great apps in AVK I would use my family as humane test-subjects. The kids asked if indeed this was dinner, but, my all-powerful-and-knowing-self knew they wouldn't need more food after these.

Baked Poppers with Lime Cream, Deli Reubenettes and Stick-to-Your-Ribs Pot-Sticker.

Quite a line up!

The Poppers are supposed to be jalapenos, but I wanted the kids to try them, so I used small sweet peppers. David and I really liked these and even some of the non-pepper-hating-kids (Cat) liked them. They turned out crispy and crunchy from the oven - just make sure to broil them a bit at the end if the panko seems to be too light.

AVK Correction: The oil in the 7-in-1 Seasoning Recipe (p. 53) is not supposed to be in there, so omit it.
(This has been confirmed with Tami.)

Next, the Pot-sticker. The filling was a breeze to assemble! That is when the wind was knocked out of me ... those little wrappers take a village to assemble, forget raising any kids... unless you raise them to help assemble their dinner. No wonder people who are in the know gather in groups to assemble these diminutive packages of food...tamales, stuffed cabbage, pot-stickers, raviolis, egg-rolls, steamed buns, etc. Good thinking, folks! Nevertheless, they are worth it! Stuff and seal..stuff and seal..stuff and...

Last, the Deli Reubenettes stole the dinner by a long shot. NONE of these were left over and I even made about 1/2 a recipe more than the book allocated. Call it a mother's intuition. I changed up the presentation (and therefore the assembly) of these since I was so tired of encasing food in small packages. Instead of stuffing the filling into a triangular package of puff pastry, I cut the pastry into rectangles, baked them, separated each square into two parts, topped each part with a tablespoon of filling and a dollop of the dipping sauce. The puff pastry goes a long way with this method, and my back is saved from a proportional amount of packing-pain. Win-win. And totally a do-again. Nice job, Tami. This is on the Halloween Party platter, but Cat suggested we add green food-coloring to the dipping sauce to make it festive. Ye-ah!

From left: Jalapeno Poppers, Reubennettes, Potstickers

PPK - American Vegan Kitchen

2011-09-27T23:09:00.000-05:00

Post Punk Kitchen has begun their Cookbook Challenge! For the next 11 weeks, they are challenging the veg community to dive into their vegan cookbooks (assigned weekly) and post to their heart's content. Last year I participated in the week that Tami's American Vegan Kitchen was up, and I am doing so again this year. It is a challenge in itself to not duplicate recipes I've already made and posted about, but I will do my best.

Leafing through the book, Spaghetti Pie with Arrabbiata Sauce jumped out at me, mainly because it looked easy to make. If you turn to the page, perhaps that might not be your first thought upon scanning the ingredients list as it spans the left side of the page. On closer inspection, it becomes a relief that one-third of said ingredients are spices, easily and quickly measured and added to the recipe. The spaghetti is put into a pan, the tofu mixture is added on top and the arrabbiatta sauce (spicy tomato sauce) is spread on top of that. The whole thing is baked and then devoured. At least that's what happened at our table.

We only had a slight problem when it became obvious that the pound of pasta, 2 or so cups of tofu mixture and about a quart of tomato sauce was definitely not going to fit in our baking pan and needed to be divided among two pans. When making it yourself use your judgment. It actually turned out for the better; we scarfed one pan and have the other one waiting in the fridge for the weekend.

Since we are challenging ourselves, the kids challenged me to make dessert. Well, why not? I seldom make sweets and AVK has plenty of it. Chocolate Chip Quick Cake was the natural choice, in keeping with the theme. Very quick (Tami's right!) and delicious. It made just the right amount, too. With five of us, there was nothing left over and no one argued about the last slice since there was none. Perfect.

Spaghetti Pie

Chocolate Chip Quick Cake

Seitan Roast with Sausage and Pear Stuffing and Onion-Cider Gravy

2011-09-21T11:00:00.002-05:00

The holidays are fast approaching - it seems faster and faster each year and I seem to get slower and slower with preparing for it! As I was making the Food Network Friday dish last week, I started thinking of different ways to stuff seitan, different methods to cook said stuffed seitan and the different occasions that would be great to have it at.

Last year I did the Holiday Roast, which most resembles a turkey in texture and stature. This year, I wanted to have another option, equally elegant and yet different enough from the Holiday Roast to be appropriate for the holiday table. In addition, I wanted to get it out on the blog to give folks enough time to plan for it. Hence our family's Holiday Dinner in September. Even the kids asked what we were celebrating.

The gluten contains only 8 ingredients, which I am loving a bunch. It is working out really well and is excellent without any weird seitan-y aftertaste.

The gluten is a modified version of last week's FNF, being pliable enough to stretch well and yet strong enough to not rip. I made a sausage (Tofurkey, but homemade, Field Roast or any other sausage would work equally well) and dried pear stuffing - dried apples, raisins, figs, cranberries would be great as well. The roast is braised in the oven for 3 hours and allowed to cool. On the day of the event, sear it in a pan and reheat it in the oven for about an hour. If you stuff the gluten so that it is thinner on the top than the bottom, it will bake into a thin, crispy sheet on the top, which you can see on the second pic.

I served this with an Onion-Cider Gravy, easy to make and complemented the dried fruit in the stuffing, and a Cauliflower Puree. After watching Hell's Kitchen for the umpteenth time, Cauliflower Puree is a must have for any sophisticated 5-star meal. That and it tastes really good! Steam the cauliflower, drain well, puree in a food processor until it is very creamy, adding a few tablespoons of vegan butter. This will take a few minutes so don't stop short. After pureeing, season with salt, pepper and chives and a little bit of sugar if it is too bitter and let it cool until dinner. Reheat in a pot, stirring often for a few minutes, until hot. After making this, you too will feel a kinship with Ramsey. He can't be that bad - he went on Ellen to cut his finger. The irony.

Seitan Roast Stuffed with Sausage and Pear with Onion-Cider Gravy Recipe

FNF - Stuffed Chicken with Smoked Mozzarella, Rapini and Roasted Tomatoes

2011-09-16T15:11:00.002-05:00

Food Network Friday

FNF, hosted by Tamasin Noyes of American vegan Kitchen, Grills Gone Vegan and an upcoming sandwich cookbook, is recreating Robert Irvine's Stuffed Chicken with Smoked Mozzarella, Rapini and Roasted Tomatoes. Irvine happens to be one of my favorite Food TV chefs mainly because he isn't afraid to cook vegetarian. On the Dinner: Impossible show, he has always made sure to have at least one vegetarian option, as lame as his choice sometimes happen to be. When he was replaced by that clod "Iron Chef," Michael Symon, my blood boiled - only Emeril and Paula beat him out for being more anti-veg.

This recipe was another something-stuffed with something and then baked. I have posted two stuffed seitan recipes: one that was braised and one that was baked. I chose the straightforward approach here and just baked the stuffed gluten with the smokey Daiya and roasted rapini and tomatoes. There are no commercially available smoked vegan cheeses, but it is a simple matter of adding a few drops of liquid smoke to the gluten stuffing. The gluten was very pliable and soft (another gluten recipe that needs more testing, but for which I will post the recipe as is). After stuffing, I rolled the gluten in some panko crumbs and baked them for about an hour. You must make sure to seal up the raw gluten around the filling very well otherwise you will wind up with more melted cheese on your pan than in your seitan.

The potatoes that accompany Irvine's recipe are simply roasted in the oven along with the seitan. I sprinkled ours with smoked salt to echo the smoke in the gluten rolls. They turned out buttery and creamy with just a slight smokey flavor.

The kids, especially Kate, really enjoyed this. In fact, while Mikel and Cat were picking out the strings of rapini stems, Kate casually glanced over as she meticulously cut her stuffed seitan and nonchalantly commented that, "Honestly, you can't even taste the rapini." As an adult, I can testify that you can indeed taste it, but as far as I am concerned, if it isn't discernible to a ten year-old, that's just fine by me.

Cost Breakdown

gluten: $1
olive oil: $1
tomato, rapini: $7
Cribari Tokay: $15
(Opici Marsala is vegan - thanks, Tami!)
shallot, veg stock, thyme: $1.50
Daiya: $5
potato, butter: $2.50
chives: $.25
Total to make 6 servings:
$33.25

Super Pliable Gluten Recipe

(coming)

Chiocciole with Vodka Sauce

2011-09-11T23:11:00.002-05:00

Butter and Cream. Two highly difficult, if not impossible, flavors to veganize well.

Vodka Sauce is a basic tomato sauce, with vodka added, and at the end, cream stirred in. There are many 'creamer' substitutes on the market, Silk, So Delicious Coconut, and Mimic are a few that come to mind. Any of these would be appropriate to use as a creamer substitute (make sure they are unsweetened). For this recipe I used readily available vegan sour cream (I am not sure about this claim globally) and non-dairy milk instead of dairy cream. I normally use homemade almond or cashew cream, but I have noticed that these 'break' when heated, so if using nut creamers made at home (without the laboratory-induced stabilizers), do not heat the sauce after adding the 'cream.'

Since this is a Vodka Sauce, use a vegan vodka (Absolut, Skyy, Stoli are vegan friendly according to Barnivore.com.), but you won't need much, so unless you are also throwing a vegan dinner party, buy small or have an after dinner cocktail.

The pasta I tossed this with is called Chiocciole. Simple sauce on unique macaroni.

I tend not to cook a whole pound of pasta for our family of five as we tend to have too much leftover, but I did this time. Creamy sauces are a favorite at our house and the lack of other vegetables to round out the dish made me sure that the family was going to pile on the starch. As predicted, there was very little leftover, and what remained was secretly eaten by a lucky breakfast-er. If it was solely up to me, this would have been Pasta Primavera with Vodka Sauce - with the addition of lots of sauteed vegetables. I gave in this time and let the majority's voice rule. Just every once in a while.

Cost Breakdown

pasta: $3
tomatoes: $2
vodka: $.50
vegan sour cream and milk: $1.50
onion, garlic, herbs: $1.50
Total to make 5 servings:
$8.50

Pasta with Vodka Sauce

Muffoletta Salad

2011-09-07T19:20:00.002-05:00

Central Grocery store in New Orleans is the site of the first Muffoletta sandwich, said to have been invented by Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian immigrant. In the late 1800's there was an influx of Italian immigrants who found their homes in New Orleans and became sort of Creole-Italians. This sandwich is mainly known for its olive salad, but the bread the sandwich is traditionally served on is itself also known as a mufuletta, a close cousin of the focacccia bread.

Legend has it that Salvatore's grocery customers would buy some meats, cheeses, olive salad and bread and eat them individually, the ingredients balancing perilously on their knees. Salvatore offered to slice the bread and layer everything into it. And so was born the Muffoletta Sandwich.

Since this sandwich has earned quite a bit of popularity and since Tami and Celine have the sandwich world well in hand, I decided to convert this sandwich into a salad. The Olive Salad part of this salad is the main component and well made ones are sought after with gusto. My Olive Salad is bursting with green and black olives, pimientos, sun-dried tomatoes (not authentic), garlic, capers, pickled cauliflower and carrots, pepperocinis, olive oil and herbs. I couldn't let the bread just disappear; I made fresh croutons with some Italian bread, laced with plenty of garlic and oregano.

The Muffoletta Salad is vegan cold cuts, Follow your Heart cheeses, pear tomatoes, grilled onions and the Olive Salad covering shredded lettuce. The dressing is the olive salad itself with the acid coming from the pickled fruits and the olive oil providing the body. Julienne everything, even shredding the lettuce, and you are transported to the Central Grocer, circa 1906, sitting with Salvatore, enjoying a new rendition of his now-infamous sandwich, inhaling a bit of history with each bite.

Cost Breakdown

3/4 of olive salad: $7.50

lettuce, tomatoes: $2

FYH cheese and Yves: $4

pine nuts: $1

bread: $.50

Total to feed 6 people:

$15.00

Muffoletta Salad and Olive Salad Recipe

Vine and Dine - Wild Mushroom Bouillabaisse

2011-09-04T23:36:00.000-05:00

Vine and Dine

Tami Noyes' Vine and Dine is brought to you tonight by the Horizon cookbook. The recipe is Wild Mushroom Bouillabaisse.

As you all know by now, Tami, of American Vegan Kitchen, has TWO upcoming cookbooks, Grills Gone Vegan and the not-yet-named Sandwich cookbook with Celine Steen. Both are exciting additions to any kitchen!

As for now, we are making Horizon's Bouillabaisse. If anyone would like to join Tami for Vine and Dine, it is as simple as choosing a vegan bottle of wine, cooking the chosen recipe and digging into both. I know Tami would love to have tons of readers join.

Our chosen wine was a Pacific Redwood Pinot, which my "Ol' Man" will write more about.

As for the recipe: What exactly is a Bouillabaisse? Basically, it is a seafood soup. The herbs and the variety of fish determine the specialty of this soup. But what really sets this seafood soup apart from the rest of the seafood soups in the world, is how it is served. The broth is served first, with a toasted crouton, spread with a rouille (a thick sauce - in this case a red pepper spread) floating in its midst, not unlike a French Onion Soup with its island of floating bread and cheese. The fish itself is served on a separate platter.

As the name implies, this bouillabaisse is of mushrooms. I used portobello, crimini, oyster, button, and shiitaki 'shrooms. I roasted pear and cherry tomatoes to add to the browned mushrooms, along with a great vegetable stock and white wine. Unfortunately, this recipe does not call for enough broth to serve separately as is traditional, but that is easily remedied by the home cook. There is also thyme, saffron, olive oil and garlic; all collaborating for a wonderful dish.

David found that making a meal solely of mushrooms was intimidating. I challenged that as diners we have been so ingrained to believe that a meal without a "protein" isn't complete, that his prejudice of the meal was more psychological than physical. I stand by that; we are literally fed mis-information of what constitutes a meal so much that we cannot enjoy a perfectly delicious dish simply because we are programmed to believe it is just not enough.

As for me, deprogramming was instated a while back and I thoroughly enjoyed the dish. The Bouillabaisse with another bottle of great vegan wine made me one happy diner.

The meal for this week’s “Vine and Dine” was a rustic and earthy Bouillabaisse made with wild mushrooms, white wine, saffron, garlic and onions and was a hearty alternative to it’s seafood counterpart.

We paired this flavorful culinary morsel with a Pacific Redwood, Organic Pinot Noir (2010) and were pleasantly surprised at the symmetry and cohesion attained. From the wine bottle's label, we were led to expect a vintage that is “delicate and subtle, with hints of strawberries and mint." Frankly, neither the “Ol' Lady” nor I could discern the mint, but the strawberries were prominent in the “Nose” of the wine and we very much enjoyed this particular selection. We usually lean towards Merlots or other reds with more body, but we were both happy that we ventured outside our norm.

Cost Breakdown

Mushrooms: $20

onion, pepper: $3

olive oil, spices: $1

bread: $2

stock, wine: $2

Total for 4 luxurious servings:

$28.00

Walnut and Asparagus Scampi Pasta

2011-09-01T21:33:00.001-05:00

Pasta Night

In another life, seafood and I were partners. Or more to the point, seafood graced many of my plates, as I happily devoured the little creatures, be they swordfish, tuna, shrimp, scrod, halibut, scallops or cod. I was a pescetarian, thinking that sea creatures were not factory farmed and were fair game for the honor of becoming my next meal. In fact, I felt pretty good about my decision to save the lives of their land counterparts - cows, pigs, chickens. It was a sad day for my eating repertoire when I discovered that fish were being factory farmed. The practice wasn't as common back twenty years ago, but it was certainly beginning its snowballing. On top of the fact that fish nowadays are intensely more factory farmed in huge over-populated underwater nets, the animals that are being caught in the wild are dwindling at an alarming rate. Add mercury and other heavy metals and toxic chemicals that leach into the seas from human pollution into the system of these same creatures, and you no longer are eating Omega-3 fatty acids wrapped up in an affordable lean protein, but are stuffing yourselves full of misery, metals and guilt, knowing that you are contributing to the extinction of numerous other species of sea life.
How does your shrimp taste now?

Lovely segue into tonight's meal. Shrimp Scampi was a long time favorite of mine, ever since my father couldn't serve us the delicacy while owning a seafood restaurant because every penny had to be saved. Scampi was something that was expensive and carefully snuck out to the kids by my mom when my dad wasn't around. Some women lie to their spouses about the cost of the new dress they just bought at Macy's; my mom lied about food.

While there are plenty of veggie shrimp substitutes on the market, this meal does not utilize any. I was wanting to make a dish that was a memory jolt to shrimp scampi and not a lightning bolt to the gut - in a good or a bad way. The seafood substitutes we've tried over the years have either totally missed the mark or were overwhelmingly 'fishy,' trying too hard to be something that they weren't.

Scampi, whether shrimp, scallops, or asparagus, all contain tons of garlic, olive oil and lemon. The garlic is slowly infused into the oil over low heat, while the lemon juice gives an extra needed tang right before service. I chose to use asparagus, walnuts, dulse seaweed and parsley. Perhaps the empty serving bowl with the few lone strands of pasta sticking to the sides, sitting in the middle of the dining table gives an indication of how well received it was. Even hours after the dinner dishes have been dried and put away, the house is still perfumed with the garlic and olive oil. A gentle reminder of a meal well enjoyed.

Cost Breakdown

pasta: $1
asparagus: $4
olive oil, lemon juice, garlic: $1
parsley, dulse: $2
walnuts: $2
Total for 4 servings:
$10.00

Walnut and Asparagus Scampi Pasta Recipe

Gypsy Goulash

2011-08-30T21:39:00.001-05:00

European Night

Gypsy Goulash, or Szeged Gulyas, originates in Hungary in, you guessed it, the city of Szeged. While the name literally means, 'gypsy,' it actually has not much to do with gypsies, except that maybe nomadic peoples might have been more apt to cook it over a roaring fire, ...or might have been the founders of the city for which the dish is named after.

The dish contains pork, sauerkraut, onions, paprika and sour cream. Except for a little salt and pepper, that is all that the authentic version contains. In order to veganize it, and therefore improve on it, I used pressed, marinated and then baked tofu.

Starting with an onion and vegan butter, sauteing it will signal to everyone in the house that dinner is on its way. When the onions have caramelized somewhat, adding garlic, paprika and the saurkraut to the pot will continue the assault on the senses of those same unfortunate hungry. Since the tofu renders no 'natural juices' during the braising process, it is easy to add a few cups of excellent vegetable stock (broth will be fine as well) and then letting the dish simmer uncovered for an hour. By this time you should have plenty of nosy visitors begging to know when dinner will be ready.

To finish off the Goulash, add a cup of vegan sour cream and fold it into the tofu and sauerkraut gently. Serve this with something simple, like boiled potatoes or cooked pasta. These will reward you by soaking up the creamy gravy. IF there is any leftovers, be sure to save them because while most meals are best left to the original meal, this one improves while it sits in the fridge overnight. Be sure to hide it behind the kale so it doesn't get pilfered.

Cost Breakdown

tofu: $4

sauerkraut: $4

onion, garlic, tomato: $2

spices: $1

vegetable stock: $2

potatoes: $3

Total to feed 6 people:

$16.00

Gypsy Goulash Recipe

Sandwiches Everywhere!

2011-08-28T23:56:00.001-05:00

Let's say you owned every vegan cookbook ever written. What vegan cookbook were you still without? How about one exclusively of sandwiches? As a mom, especially of homeschoolers who require lunch at home, a sandwich cookbook was something I was always on the lookout for. It seems that every day around 11:30 AM, my brain goes to mush as soon as the kids utter those magic words, "What's for lunch?" There are only so many peanut butter and jelly or processed veg-meat sandwiches that kids (or adults) can tolerate. It gets old.

When Tami Noyes, American Vegan Kitchen and the soon-to-come Grills Gone Vegan, asked me if I was interested in testing for her new - yes, another new! - cookbook, this one of sandwiches, I jumped at the chance.

Sandwiches? Yeah, I'm in!

She is co-authoring this upcoming book with Celine Steen of 500 Vegan Recipes. They don't have a title for it, yet, but I'm sure they are working on it.

To give you an idea of the variety of sandwiches that I have been bombarded with testing, here are a few:

Mac-Shroom

Here is a unique one! This happens to be Kate's new favorite. Mushrooms and Mac-n-cheese are hardly ever invited to the barbecue party - until now; and, boy, is it one helluva bash!

California Roll

The California Roll has exactly what any health-conscious cook would love to put into a sandwich: quinoa, avocado, tomato and it is all tied together with a zingy dressing. No need to be Californian to love this simple, satisfying roll.

Jamaican Dip

As anyone knows who reads this blog, I am all about heat; this sandwich delivers and does not disappointing in that department. Think of a French Dip that detoured to the Islands while hijacking a boat load of habaneros.

Pittsburgh Steak

Pittsburgh Steak is all about transforming the whole of Pennsylvania. The seitan is marinated, baked and topped.

Wingwich

Wingwich. Just what it sounds like - wings on a sandwich - except it's seitan not chicken. Spicy on the bottom, with the cooling light slaw on the top. Great combination.

Curried Lentil

Lentils and coconut are a match like no other. The coconut aroma tingles your nose right before the flavor hits your tongue. Creamy lentils over the crunchy toast. It was so easy to make and so good to eat.

Retro-KFC

I'm not sure if KFC ever made this since I wasn't a KFC fan, but if they did they couldn't have made it this good! There was silence at the dinner table as this sandwich was being devoured - nothing but a bunch of crunching and deep sighs of satisfaction.

And there you have a bit of what we've been eating for the past few months.

After testing for Tami the last time, I thought I would be back cooking my own stuff as soon as Grills Gone Vegan was good to go - and then she sprang this on me. The only sandwich books on the market are vegetarian at best and heavily laden with animals at better. There really is a need for this and that need began with me. Tami and Celine are thinking way outside of the bun with this book and I was excited when they asked me to test for it. Life was getting a little hectic at our house; it was great to have lunch off my hands for at least a little bit.

FNF - Slow Roasted Pork with Coconut Curry and Fresh Slasa

2011-08-26T00:22:00.001-05:00

Food Network Friday

This month's Food Network Friday, hosted by Tamasin Noyes of Vegan Appetite, American Vegan Kitchen, Grills Gone Vegan (soon) and another surprise coming up next post, is Slow Roasted Pork with Coconut Curry Sauce, Corn Tortillas, Fresh Tomato Salsa over Basmati Rice. Try saying that ten times!

Once you read over the recipe, you will note that at the end the disclaimer tells us that this is a restaurant recipe that has been readjusted to the home cook and that they take no responsibility for the quantities specified in said recipe, so don't blame them. Seven pounds of pork butt and 50 ounces of coconut milk sent up red flags. Nevertheless, I persevered and calculated how much TVP I would need to substitute said pork butt. Why anyone would want to cook the rear of anyone else is beyond me. Anyway, according to my Dixie Diners' instructions, 1 pound of Chicken (Not!) makes 3.5 pounds of meat. Not pig, I know, but neither is it chicken. Therefore, I would need 2 pounds of TVP to replace the 7 pounds of meat. Adjust for fat, and perhaps we are talking 5 pounds of meat. Maybe less.

In any case, to make the same amount of protein that the recipe calls for, I wound have needed to cook EIGHT cups of dry TVP. First off, we are not feeding an army or extended family overstaying their welcome, second, the cost would be outlandish. No thanks. I used 3 cups of Dixie's Chicken(Not!) to rehydrate to 2 pounds of the equivalent in meat. This amount was more reasonable for a family of five.

The funny thing is, I did use the 50 ounces of coconut milk because the recipe didn't cut the milk with any broth or water and I didn't want to lose any 'authenticity.' I didn't even cut the massive 1/4c of sesame oil it called for. I have hardly ever used more than a tablespoon of the stuff since it is so strong. Now that I have been your tester, you may very securely lessen the overage. It is intense.

After rehydrating the TVP, I ripped each individual 2" piece apart by hand, to mimic the pulling. I braised, as suggested, the pieces in the 50 ounces (about 4 cans) of coconut milk, used a massive amount of curry paste (around 2/3 cup) and did not balk at the 5 tablespoons of minced garlic. The ginger is where I drew the line and took only a 2 inch piece and sliced it thick. I have my limits.

I braised the stuff for 2 hours, during which time the TVP softened considerably, the sauce thickened and the flavors were great.

As for reviews from the family, they were mixed:

"I don't like coconut. I'm not hungry"

"This tastes just like Panang."

"I don't like this."

"This is nothing like Panang, except that they both have coconut milk."

"Boys, don't fight!" (Directed at Dad and Son by Mom.)

Now is where the recipe gets interesting!

On top of all this, make a fresh jalapeno salsa (huh?) and roll it all up in a corn tortilla. Did we detour to Mexico? Sound like one of those challenges on the Next Food Network Star where they had to fuse the foods of two ethnicities that had gone very wrong? ... it could have been, but strangely... it was...good. Maybe all the coconut fumes got to me, but if you wrap it all up in the tortilla, it is bueno.

(Before I forget, that salsa was enough to feed a restaurant!)

Cost Breakdown:

TVP: $3

coconut milk: $7

seasonings and spices: $3

curry paste: $1

ginger, garlic, fermented beans, sesame oil: $2

cilantro, peppers, onion: $2

tomatoes: free (garden)

rice, tortillas: $2

Total to feed five people?

$20:00

VEG-Aside:

We have moved! In blog, in life, in location, in most everything!

Over the past month our family has moved to a new house and as anyone who has ever moved before knows that, it, well, sucks, ...as good as it is. It is like Spring cleaning, but you have no choice. It is amazing how much stuff accumulates in less than a few years. If you don't move much, I encourage you to purge every Spring and Fall - great times to clean your house and yourself.

The new (home)school year is starting and I have two teens in college! They are very excited - one is taking Japanese and the other Japanese and English. They are 14 and 16 respectively. Yes, I am proud of them, but it is important for everyone to know that your high schooler can take college credit courses - don't make them wait if they don't have to; it is a wonderful, encouraging and self-satisfying reaffirmation of themselves. Great confidence booster!

The blog has had a face-lift because I want to emphasize that there is a new turn of events. I have noticed my lack of drive, lack of time and lack of direction over the past few months. There are many recipes I want to put out here, especially my revised seitan recipes. Overall, a new time for it all.

Since my kids have adopted a college, it is my turn to Adopt A College as well, and you should too! I will be leafleting while they are in class and hope that you will jump on the college-train, too~ if you would like to join me, just email me.

See you next post -when I will be unveiling new secrets~

FNF - Koftas with Pomegranate Glaze and Indian Potatoes

2011-08-05T09:39:00.002-05:00

Food Network Friday

Our next challenge for Tami's Food Network Friday is Aarti's Ground Lamb Kofta Kebabas with Pomegranate Glaze. If you haven't jumped on the FNF wagon, you should give them a try - they are loads of fun!

Making vegan ground meat concoctions gluten-free can be a challenge because I love to use vital wheat gluten to bind the mixture. Aarti's recipe is basically ground lamb meat-lollipops. She glazes them with pomegranate molasses and grills them. Her accompaniment is a mashed potato cake with Indian spices.

Since we are in the middle of a move and have a gluten-sensitive daughter, I needed to make this dish simple and without seitan. I made a mushroom-nut-black-eyed-pea mixture for the lamb kebabas. All I needed to do was saute the mushrooms with onion, nuts and garlic, deglazed it with Marsala wine and added loads of fresh herbs. Since we are leaving a huge garden behind, this recipe received a bunch of those herbs: basil, mint, parsley, oregano. I then roasted the kebab-balls glazed with the pomegranate molasses.

I skipped the riata completely but subbed a Fig-Pomegranate Salad.

These alterations were the simplest way to convert this dish to fast and gluten-free. This is our interpretation of Aarti, who is herself interpreting Indian.

This worked out very well and we enjoyed the dish. The kids found the potatoes the tastiest. I toasted some fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, and garlic in a few tablespoons of oil. I then added some smoked paprika and tossed it with the potatoes. I roasted them and the kids gobbled them all up.

Indian Roasted Potatoes!

A hint for roasting potatoes: Add some veg broth on the bottom of the pan with the sliced potatoes, cover it with a foil, and bake on 450 until the potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes. When the potatoes are tender, uncover and broil, turning a few times, until they are crispy.

Vine and Dine - Horseradish Crusted Tofu

2011-07-25T09:49:00.001-05:00

Vine and Dine

This week's Vine and Dine by Tami is being reported from a hotel in Maryland! We are on vacation and made the Vine and Dine last week before we left. As vacations tend to be, our leaving was too hectic to do the write up earlier so, we are now wracking our brains to remember what the meal was like and how the wine complemented it.

We'll do our best.

The cookbook chosen this time was the first Horizon book and the recipe out of that was the Horseradish Crusted Tofu with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce. While I believe part of the idea of V&D is to get us to dig out forgotten cookbooks and explore new recipes, this happened to have been one of the only recipes we actually tried and loved. I wonder how many out there who have this book also made this very recipe since it simply sounds great. One thing is for sure, this book doesn't get the attention in our kitchen that it richly deserves. Nice to have dusted it off.

Out of the same cookbook the Spinach with Pine Nuts was recommended; garlic, olive oil, spinach and pine nuts. I'm there. Do not omit the pine nuts from this - it adds so much flavor and texture. You don't even have to add a lot of pine nuts, but don't substitute it since it is so worth it.

The tofu dish we made gluten free. Kate is at least gluten or wheat sensitive, so we subbed Glution Breading Crumbs for the bread crumbs. I also made our own baked tofu by first pressing (Tofu Express) it and then baking it in a chicken-like marinade. My daughter was complaining that tofu tastes like nothing. All this time I thought I had been making tofu well, and then all it takes is a reality check from my eleven-year-old who should be avoiding seitan now. She set me straight and now I am working on getting flavor (more flavor?) into a slab of tofu. I guess I was onto something since she really liked this horseradish tofu - and of course, the recipe from the book didn't hurt either.

As for the V&D itself, the tofu with mashed potatoes, the spinach and the red pepper sauce was phenomenal. Oh, and the wine was darned good as well! I'm going to spoil it for David by saying it first, but it was a delightful screw-top Merlot. But then I'm a sucker for a good red wine anytime. This one made me happy.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

This wine was good,

With this tofu.

-- David (or his wife)

Stellar Organics

FNF - Deconstructed Eggplant-Sausage Pasta in Tomato-Basil Cream Sauce

2011-07-15T23:04:00.002-05:00

Food Network Friday

Tami Noyes, author of American Vegan Kitchen, is again hosting her Food Network Friday. We have recently acquired this fabulous logo for FNF, designed by Kip, and would love you all to join us in recreating Food TV recipes - but veganized! This time around Kip joins Tami as well as the fantastic Liz from across the ocean. Tami hopes that with our newfangled logo more of you will participate in an FNF!

Here is my rendition of Emeril's Sausage and Eggplant-Stuffed Shells in Tomato-Basil Cream Sauce.

My version is a Deconstructed Eggplant-Sausage Pasta in Tomato-Basil Cream Sauce. Emeril created an eggplant-sausage-ricotta filling stuffed into shells and covered with Tomato Cream Sauce and cheese. I've been busy with recipe testing, hectic with life, getting ready to move, preparing to take the kids on vacation to visit their friends in Maryland, hosting a Harry Potter sleepover, and preparing for a Teen Night; in other words, stuffing pasta was not high on my list. As late as I am with this dish, I didn't want to miss it, so I decided to take the easy way out and deconstruct it.

I started with multitasking: I put three pots on the stove (1) pot of water for the pasta (2) pot for the sauce and (3) pan for the filling. I sauteed the eggplant, onions, and plain seitan in the pan with lots of Italian spices - fennel, basil, oregano - and in the other pan made my tomato-cream sauce. I used regular almond milk (2 c) and a can of diced tomatoes with lots of garlic for the sauce. I reduced the sauce while the eggplant was cooking. When the eggplant was done I set it aside and poured the pasta sauce in that same pan, adding some Daiya. I then tossed the cooked pasta into the simmering sauce. Having more surface area to cook helped reduce the sauce more and tossing the pasta with the sauce helped to thicken it in a jiffy. I served the pasta with the filling on top.

Very delicious. And much easier. I used pappardelle pasta because I needed something thicker and hardier to substitute for the shells.

Thanks, Kip, for a great recipe to try!

Jerk Seitan

2011-07-04T06:57:00.002-05:00

Continental

After all these grill recipe testings for Tami Noyes for her upcoming cookbook, Grills Gone Vegan, I guess the grilling bug has bit me. I have always been a jerk fan - whether it was because of the heat of the dish or the call of the islands; jerking has been something I've been wanting to make as authentically as possible.

I've tried my hand at jerking potatoes and chickpeas, but this time I wanted to up the ante. I am working on creating much simpler seitan recipes and this dish uses a variation of Tender Seitan. This seitan turned out really well and I will post it as soon as I am sure about it. The recipe uses only 5 ingredients. Gotta like that!

I have been researching Jamaican jerking recipes and techniques and they have a few things in common: scotch bonnet peppers, allspice and grilling or low baking. Since seitan is already cooked, I figured the low-and-slow approach did not apply here. So I went for grilling, which, thanks to Tami, has become second nature. I think I even grill in my sleep. Nothing like having tasty dreams.

Allspice (or pimento) is necessary. In fact, get whole dried berries, not the ground, and grind it yourself. And add a few berries to the charcoal or wood chips as well. Jerking used to be done over pimento wood, so this might add some more authenticity.

I couldn't find scotch bonnet peppers, so I used habaneros (again, thanks to Tami, for making habaneros not as intimidating as they used to be). There is some argument that habaneros are not close enough to scotch bonnets and you NEED the scotch bonnets!! By golly. I'm not sure about that and I will need to find scotch bonnet peppers to confirm or refute these claims, but for now the only thing that IS certain is that you cannot use jalapenos or other peppers. First off, jalapenos (which seem to be the go-to hot pepper) are not as hot as habaneros or scotch bonnets, but more importantly it is a different kind of heat - jalapenos are sharp, intense and instant, habaneros are a lingering, slow heat in the back of the mouth. Very different. At least use habaneros. And wear gloves if you have sensitive skin.

Overall, this was an excellent rendition of jerk seitan and my next stop on the way to Jamaican Jerking will be with the scotch bonnets. In the meantime, use the Jerk Marinade here (recipe updated to reflect the habanero), marinade your seitan for about an hour and grill away. The more smoke you have (wood chips, allspice berries, and over charcoal), the more authentic. That is, since not too many American homes have an oil drum grill in their backyards. But if you do, make sure to use it.

Cost Breakdown:

seitan: $2

peppers and spices: $1

oil, lime, herbs: $1

Total to make 4 servings:

$4.00

Jerk Marinade

Trio of Appetizers

2011-06-29T20:37:00.002-05:00

Tester Teaser

Let's take a mini-tour of Tami's Grills Gone Vegan appetizers. This should give you a great idea of the variety of grilling recipes in this upcoming book based solely on the appetizer section. As much of a teaser as appetizers are supposed to be, these next three previews should provide the same experience.

I just made this first recipe tonight, Lettuce Wraps, not more than a few hours ago. Don't let the simplicity of the name detract from the complex flavors those beautiful lettuce cups hold. Asian Style Cutlets are grilled, tossed with a special glaze and then gently packed into the crisp leaves with just the right amount of vegetables. As I told Tami when reviewing them, people will be fighting over the last one! Oh, and those Asian Cutlets - so much more than just for this recipe.

This next one I tested last week and is another favorite of mine: Polenta Stacks.

Not a polenta fan? After this recipe you will be. Tofu is marinated in Tami's Habanero Marinade, grilled and stacked on top of grilled polenta and tomato. A dollop of her sauce on top and you are all set to wow some guests. Habanero love.

This recipe, Stuffed Poblanos, I made a while ago, but the flavors still dance on my palate.

The stuffing is amazing and that Avocado Sauce is worth its weight in gold. The combination is like taking a vegan vacation to Mexico.

You won't need to pack your bags to eat this well - it'll all be available soon.

I promise.