Vicarious Valentine

So as it turns out, I didn't have anyone special to cook for on St. Valentine's day. I mean, there is always my roommate, but since her and I will likely spend the rest of our days together until we drop dead and get eaten by our 25 cats, every day is like V-day for us.

I turned to my beloved vegan food blogs to take solace in some crunchy, anti-"corporate holiday" rhetoric, but my RSS feeder looked like the inside of a goddamn Hallmark store by about February 6th. Recipe contests for romantic foods, tofu colored with beet juice and cut into heart shapes, good lord, it appears we're not even safe on the commune anymore.

Good thing there was a fantastic recipe for these Parsnip Dumplings. I love parsnips, and could not let my generalized dissatisfaction with all things valentine get in the way of making these beauties. Lucky for my dinner guests, even a jaded, rapidly-aging single woman on Valentine's day can acknowledge the power of pan fried dumplings made from caramelized onions and parsnips.


The sauce I made was a bit simpler than the one made by Becky Timbers. It was two red peppers pureed in my food processor, two cloves of pressed garlic, a can of tomatoes and some olive oil. I reduced it for a few minutes on the stove and called it good. The flavor had just enough punch and sweetness to nicely complement the flavor of the dumplings. I also grilled some romaine that had been marinated in olive oil and balsamic. Who knew cooking lettuce would be so delicious?

After the pan-fried dumplings were so amazing, I was inspired to make dumpling soup. It's been years since I've eaten dumpling soup, and I'm sure it contained chicken (as is traditional). The idea of tender dough with the parsnip/caramelized onion flavor cooked in rich, delicious vegetable broth was incredibly appealing.

I made a mirepoix in one pan, and sauteed my "chef's sampler" of mushrooms along with some sliced fennel in another, like so:


The dumpling dough was the same as in the recipe posted above, the only difference that I made the balls of dough much smaller and dropped them into boiling soup in lieu of frying. As for the soup, It really doesn't matter. Mine was comprised of all the vegetables in my crisper drawer (onions, carrots, celery, fennel, mushrooms, garlic) a cube of Rapunzel broth, some salt and pepper, a can of tomatoes, and enough water to fill the pot full enough to make lots of soup but not so full that it boiled over. I tasted the broth and seasoned it until it was to my liking. The soup was delicious, though not especially photogenic. It looked like this:


P.S.... The dumplings are done when they float to the top, akin to cooking fresh gnocchi or something similar.

For a fun rainy Sunday project, I made focaccia. The oil to pour on top was infused with garlic, sun dried tomatoes and rosemary, and I brushed on a very thin layer of the red pepper sauce for some sweetness. I kept the stuff i strained out of the oil (softened garlic, slightly crunchy rosemary, soft sun-dried tomatoes) and added it on after baking.

This stuff was like crack. If we finished it all in one day, you wouldn't judge us... right? Look at the picture before you answer...



Last but not least, in the category of "cleaning the fridge," this is cashew curry made with Vadouvan according to Susan's recipe over at the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen. This spice is BRILLIANT. I'm pretty sure my onions were more "burned" than "dehydrated," but it still makes things taste really awesome, not the least of which was this curry. I think I did a bit of "globetrotting" here, but if it's ok with Nigella, it's ok with me.


About 3/4 cup of the vadouvan went into the food processor with about 1/2 cup of cashews. Those were spun around together, almost until the cashews formed a paste but not quite. I then streamed in soy milk until the texture was somewhat like a thin syrup. I added this to a pan full of onions, red peppers, cauliflower and cashews that were cooking up in a smidgeon of olive oil. I added a can of coconut milk to that, a few dashes of soy sauce to taste, and let it simmer until the vegetables got soft. I'll be trying this with more vegetables in the future, as it was positively delicious and really hit the spot during all the cold weather we've been having. Until next time...

Stories from the last few weeks, Part III- Assorted Food Randomness

This is my first attempt at bread. I wanted to put sun dried tomatoes, olives, and garlic in the loaf. So I did. It looked so darn good, I ignored the part of the recipe that said "let it cool before you cut into it." Then I forgot that instruction altogether and couldn't figure out why my bread never seemed cooked. Turns out the cooling process is important. I'm pleased to report I finally figured it out, more on that later.



I bought lots of avocados the last time I went to the grocery store. In an effort to find something that I could justify serving guacamole on top of, I made a variation on the chickpea cutlets using black beans, lime juice, and taco seasoning. I also had a big pile of root vegetables I wanted to roast.



I guess all this equals out to a pretty weird juxtaposition in a meal, but if all elements are delicious, doesn't that mean the meal is delicious?


The best part was the next day, when I took the leftover patties and guacamole over to my mom's place and made tacos by slicing up the patties and crisping them up a bit with a handful of pepitas. They were heavenly!


Also, wow... how great does natural light make that look? I can't wait until summer!



For my lunches, I made a very basic lentil soup- Black (very dark green?) lentils, Rapunzel broth, a can of tomatoes, onions, garlic, potatoes, chard and black pepper. Topped with pepitas, french onions and avocado, it was delicious and satisfying and great for lunches.



...Which brings us to last night. Mari and I saw a huge, perfect rainbow as we were leaving the grocery store, and the sky was unbelievable on the way home, inspiring me to take pictures of the sky and the beautiful Italian pine right by our house.



Also, I figured out the bread thing, crisped up some whole wheat/sweet potato gnocchi in olive oil, and gave my new cast iron grill a spin for a romaine salad. The salad is topped with crisp shallots and a sweet balsamic reduction, and the gnocchi is tossed in a pesto made from about 2 cups of arugula, a half cup of toasted walnuts, 3 cloves of garlic, 1/4 olive oil, 3 Tbsp capers, 2 Tbsp lemon juice, and black pepper. The addition of capers to my normal pesto was so fantastic... The flavor is sharp and no need to add extra salt given how briny they are.



As always, thanks for reading!

The stories of the last few weeks, Part II, Avocado "Buttermilk" Dressing and Spinach Salad

I like thumbing through Mari's vegetarian cookbooks. There's lots of great ideas in them, and things that i feel challenged to veganize. One that caught my attention in particular was Avocado Buttermilk Dressing.

My god, that sounded so good. Immediately I thought of something rich and creamy and a pretty shade of green... I wanted to make it, but not with actual buttermilk. So, I poked around the internet for a while about how to make vegan mayo. The answers were pretty uniform, involving soy milk, safflower oil (for some reason, it's the only one that properly thickens), acid of some kind, a pinch of salt, and a tiny bit of sweetener, be it agave or brown rice syrup, or in my case just a pinch of organic sugar.

And into the food processor went about 3/4 cup of soy milk, about 1/2 cup of safflower oil, 2 Tbsp of cashews, 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast, a pinch of sugar, salt to taste, 2 Tbsp lemon juice, garlic powder and an avocado. It was exactly as I thought it would be, rich, delicious, and the most perfect shade of green!


Avocado and spinach leaves (the only leafy green in my crisper drawer) got me thinking about bacon, and the things that are good about it- namely the smoky, salty goodness. I recreated said goodness with white onions and walnuts sauteéd in olive oil with salt and lots of smoked paprika. Here the onions get a turn in the pan:


I topped off the salad with a few little bits from our rowdy green onion garden we have going on the windowsill above the sink:


It came out pretty delicious, though the dressing (as previously mentioned) is very rich! I think it would make an awesome spread on a sandwich, maybe with tomatoes and some crisp tempeh or tofu. The photo of the salad is regrettably blurry and for that, I apologize.

Reminiscing the Ultimate Hangover Breakfast

Chicken Fried Steak, in case you were wondering. I was talking to Mari about how wonderful I remember it being, and she said she had never had it before. "Oh man. Best breakfast EVER. Lousy cut of red meat, batter-dipped and deep-fried, gravy, hash browns..." Mari wrinkled her nose and said she didn't think she could eat something so heavy in the morning. I told her that, to be fair, I wasn't eating it before I trundled off to work... I was eating it at the crack of noon after a night of hard drinking. HUGE difference.

Anyway. I don't eat that sort of thing anymore, but I was reading one of Mari's cookbooks and saw a couple recipes for fennel that were recommended to serve with pork, which got me thinking about chickpea cutlets. I've read about them since I started reading about vegan cooking, and have wanted to make them for some time. It's very kind of Isa Chandra Moskowitz to make the recipe public, and is something I will definitely make again.

When I googled "chickpea cutlets recipe," one of the first results was from a blog called "Bigmouth Strikes Again," and it included a serving suggestion for the cutlets with vegan gravy and colcannon. Done, and done. The colcannon came from Lolo (who else?), and the vegan gravy came from good ol' Recipe Zaar.

Also, I would like to pause to mention here that no one should ever buy seitan at the health food store. It's a million dollars there, and frankly not that delicious. Make it yourself. There's pages and pages of recipes for it on the web, all of which allow you to season it however you like and save a little dough in the process.

Anyway, since the recipes are all available for your perusal elsewhere (the only difference is that I used a head of cauliflower in the colcannon in addition to some potatoes), I'll skip any lengthy process descriptions and get straight to the pictures.

Here I am, mashing the chickpeas for the cutlets:


Here's what the seitan for the colcannon looked like after baking and a bit of chopping:


So here I am, running around doing a bunch of things at once... Chopping kale, peeling potatoes, steaming cauliflower, kneading chickpea cutlets, chopping onions, asking Mari to peel and press garlic, stirring gravy constantly, making cutlets, frying cutlets, sauteeing kale and onions, mashing potatoes and cauliflower... You get the idea. I was having a hell of a time getting the cutlets to finish- they're supposed to be firm to the touch and I think the heat on my pan was too high, as the outsides browned immediately and the middles were still soft. I stuck them in the oven, set the timer, and went out to smoke, intending to get the gravy back up to heat when I went back in to serve dinner.

Then the power went out, which would have been utterly miserable, except we had wine.

To take our minds off of our hunger, we played rummy with Mari's "Dr. Who" cards.

It was only a half hour or so before it came back on, which was long enough for me to beat Mari three times in a row at rummy. Once it came back on, I sprang into action. I had stuffed everything in the oven immediately to keep it all somewhat warm, and that had mostly worked, and the cutlets were done. I gave everything a quick re-heat:

And dinner was served!!


Delicious. I brought a serving down to my mum yesterday afternoon and she enjoyed it very much, almost as much as I enjoyed it the second time!!

The chickpea cutlets are definitely staying in my repertoire, they were absolute genius. Thanks for reading!

Shepherd's Pie, Pot Stickers, Cleaning out the Crisper Drawer

Last Saturday (1/17) I knew exactly three things when I got up.

1. The weather was positively amazing. Amazing enough to run errands on my lipstick red, 1000cc, pack mule. I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with my bike since my car died. Commuting to work in the morning by motorcycle is at best inconvenient (what with gear and luggage considerations), and at worst a little scary (what with half-asleep, idiot drivers yakking away on cell phones and trying to balance coffee and bagels in their laps). Carpooling with my roommate has been a godsend, but during the winter it leaves my bike alone and lonely, alternating between being under a cover and in the garage. I have felt guilty, even while taking the occasional weekend ride. It was when I looked outside on Saturday that I realized my problem was not with my bike, but with winter in general. Gearing up and strapping on my saddlebags was more pleasure than hassle, and I zipped around my neighborhood running errands and had a grand time.

2. I wanted to invite my mom over for homemade pot stickers. She loves pot stickers, and I love hanging out with her.

3. I wanted to make shepherd's pie and blog about it.

I didn't photograph the pot stickers, unfortunately. I was too busy actually making them, and they are fairly labor intensive. I used Lolo's recipe(ish) from Vegan Yum Yum (can you tell I love her blog?), though I made the filling a little different. I did make the baked seitan, but opted for cabbage, carrots, green onions and garlic for the filling. After all those things took a spin in the food processor, I put the whole lot in a pan and cooked it up a little, just to soften the vegetables. I added soy sauce, sesame oil, seasoned rice vinegar, ginger and black pepper, all to taste.

The best part about making those is that 1 package of potsticker wrappers is never enough to use all the filling, which means I have a delicious pile of well-seasoned, parcooked vegetables mixed with ground seitan in my fridge. This led to a thai-inspired sort of pasta salad.


The cauliflower is just sauteed in olive oil, salt, and chili flakes. The pasta is (of course) whole wheat orzo. The dressing for the salad consisted of about a half cup of peanut butter, a Tbsp of soy sauce, 2 Tbsp of seasoned rice vinegar, and just a tiny knob of red curry paste. This would have been better with cilantro and fresh lime juice, but no way was I making a special trip to the store just to dress up some leftovers.

I guess this has always been my philosopy when I cook. Making what I can with what I have. This is not to say that I don't buy anything special for certain things, but I really try to understand the essence of what I want to eat, and use the things in my pantry to make it happen.

A good example of this is shepherd's pie. The things I know to be absolutely true if I want to call something shepherd's pie are that it must contain vegetables and some kind of protein, it must be a bit like a thick stew, and it must have potatoes on top. Given those guidelines, I can go nuts! I wanted to try treating some seitan like stew meat, frying it up and then adding my veggies during the braising stage. I thought about sprinkling flour in with the seitan as it was frying, but then I felt sort of weird about that given that seitan is more or less made of flour. My filling ended up being a little soupy as a result, but was still delicious.

Here's the seitan, ready to fry:


Also, if I had it to do over again, I would not turn my back on the stuff! Stirring constantly is the order of the day!

Here it is as I added some of the veggies and prepared to let it simmer for a while:


Cabbage is a pretty traditional ingredient for shepherd's pie, and it's also a vegetable I feel i should eat more often, so I pretty much always use it. Don't feel any pressure, however, to use something just because it's common. Again, the most basic components of this dish are vegetables, stew-like consistency, protein of some kind, and a potato topping. It need not be any more structured than that to be absolutely delicious.

Here's the pie with the cabbage in:


You can also see in this shot that the seitan has gotten much paler. It increases in size a bit and gets springy as it gets close to being done. I think the texture is wonderful, but it's probably not going to fool anyone into thinking it's actually meat. Since that is never my goal, it's not really a problem.

A word on the potatoes: normally, it's mashed potatoes that go on top of the pie. I prefer my potatoes skin-on, and with a little bit of crispness. As such, they're chopped into quarters, boiled, and drained.


Then some oil is heated, and they're fried until they're a little brown and crispy on whatever side happens to be touching the pan.

Meanwhile, my vegetables were as soft as I wanted them, the seitan was delicious and springy and chewy, so I added some kale to wilt just a little before the whole thing went in the oven.

The potatoes are smashed while they're frying (no need to go for perfection, rustic is just fine), and then put on top of the pie.


The whole thing is baked for about 30-45 minutes, pretty much until the potatoes get a little more brown on top. I like the challenge of cooking vegan, but there is no reason this couldn't be finished with some shredded cheese like Gruyere over the potatoes.

I made some broccoli to go along, first sauteeing some leeks, onions and garlic until the leeks were translucent.


Then I added lemon juice and a little bit of water and some broccoli florets. I covered the pan to steam it, and probably overdid it a little, as the broccoli didn't have that beautiful green color when all the water had evaporated. Oh well. It was still tasty.


No pictures of the finished product, as this was not a spectacularly photogenic meal. The best part about shepherd's pie is that the leftovers are dynamite for lunches!!

For a special treat on Friday night (1/23), Mari made vegetarian onion soup out of her "Vegetables Every Day" cookbook. It was INCREDIBLE, easily the best french onion soup I've ever had. I just had to get a picture of the cheesy, crouton-y, brothy goodness:

I have to say, it sure is nice to have someone make dinner for me!


There's also been knitting (as usual!), I finished the Bell Curve skirt from Knitty. It turned out beautifully, and I'm very happy with it, even though it could NOT have been more boring to knit!



Holy macro focus, Batman:

And last but not least, my plans for Tony Harrison:

Stay tuned for more, and as always thank you for reading!!

Coconut Tofu Redux, Comfort Food & Knitting

Friday night was the night. Coconut Tofu II: Son of Coconut Tofu was playing in my kitchen. First of all, I think my failed attempt from Thursday merits a couple shots. Here's the tofu cut up and ready to go into the WAY too salty marinade for the first go-round:

I roasted purple potatoes along with the tofu, and they are beautiful. Check it out:



Alright. In an attempt to redeem myself, I decided to give up the idea of baking the tofu. Tofu needs a long time to cook in the oven, and coconut takes a very short time to burn in the oven. You can see the problem.

Per the indications on "What the hell does a vegan eat anyway?" I went with the three-dish process involving dredging, slurrying, and coconutting.

A word on the coconut... It's hard to find unsweetened flake coconut! I had to go to Whole Foods, and the stuff I got was raw, and a little... woody (as my roommate described it). The fibers were really long and it didn't want to stick to anything, and if I had to do it over again, I would either run it through the food processor before using or look for the powdery stuff that I got at the Sac Co-Op a couple years ago. Complications aside, I learned from my aunt Patty long ago that anything breaded and deep-fried (or floured and fried in a half-inch of oil, as it were) is good. As such, dinner was pretty delicious. Instead of the green curry in the recipe, I had red for the slurry/dipping sauce and it was fantastic.

While I was taking care of the vegan side of dinner, my roommate made a beautiful pot of osuimono, complete with mochi, shiitake mushrooms, and some sort of greens that she pulled out of our garden and assured me were edible. So amazing.


Monday night I wanted to make something comforting and casserole-ish. This recipe is endlessly variable and customizeable. The sauce is what sets it apart, and as such I'll give a recipe for that, but the bulk of the casserole can be anything you want. Quinoa, broccoli & white beans? Sure. Bulgur & sun dried tomatoes? Why not. Brown rice, kale & lentils? Get it on!!

Anyway. The sauce. If you've never tried nutritional yeast, I would highly recommend it. It's good to sprinkle over steamed veggies or pasta, and it makes fantastic sauces in dishes where cheese or cream sauce would be the order of the day. It has a sort of nutty, sharp flavor that I've found is best highlighted by some kind of acid, be it lemon juice or rice vinegar or balsamic.

Again, making a recipe is difficult for me, because I'm an incessant culinary fiddler. Start small, taste, add. Lather, rinse, repeat. You get the idea. Give this a try if you're interested, and remember to taste frequently. When it's pleasing to your palette, it's ready!

Mine went as follows:

2 Tbsp Earth Balance
1 Tbsp white whole wheat flour
2 1/2 Tbsp nutrtitional yeast
approx. 1 1/2 cups plain (or unsweetened) soy milk
approx. 2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp nutmeg (or to taste)
salt & pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium high heat and sprinkle in the nutritional yeast and flour. Stir to get everything mixed together and cook, stirring constantly, for a minute or so. This is kind of like a roux, except with less fat. The mixture will likely be a little thick or pasty (as opposed to smooth and cake-battery like a regular roux), but that's ok.

Stream in the soy milk while whisking the mixture. Whisk until smooth and add the vinegar. 2-3 tsp seemed about right, and the balsamic makes it quite sweet. Taste and add more if you like. Add the salt and pepper and the nutmeg. Whisk for about 5-8 minutes longer, the mixture will thicken considerably as a result of the vinegar. It'll look about like this:


This sauce is rich-tasting, velvety, and open to lots of seasonings. It makes this casserole seem especially decadent, even though it's chock full of good-for-you things. Mine was made from about three cups of (mostly) cooked short grain brown rice, three onions, about eight cloves of garlic, the pine nuts and sliced almonds left over in my pantry, a container of extra firm tofu crumbled very fine, a can of red kidney beans rinsed & drained and a package of frozen peas (added with about 5 minutes left to bake).

Another suggestion I have for making these types of things is to season every layer of the dish. The water the rice cooks in is salted. I add salt, pepper and smoked paprika while cooking the oninos/garlic. I taste it all again when I add the tofu and add more seasonings if necessary. Ditto the beans. Anyway, this is the onion, garlic, nuts, tofu & rice:

And here it is with the kidney beans added, ready to stick in the oven:

Delicious. Stick it in the oven at 350 for about 40 minutes. If you're putting in anything like spinach or frozen peas, add those when the dish has about ten minutes left.

While the casserole was baking, I made some wilted red chard with lemon-garlic-Earth Balance sauce. Isn't red chard beautiful?

And the sauce was amazing... I got the garlic nice and toasty in the Earth Balance before adding some lemon juice and just tossing the wilted chard in it. Simple and VERY flavorful.

Dinner is served!


...Along with some requisite shots of my most recently finished knitting project: a handbag for my roommate that I made for her as a belated Christmas/Birthday gift. Last you all saw it, it was sitting on top of the dryer with plastic bags, air-drying after being felted.

Here it is as I started stitching on the i-cord trim:


And here it is finished:


(The lining was my first attempt at anything of that nature and as such is a little... punk rock.)

The outside:


Thanks for reading!!