Know what I never look at in bookstores? Cooking magazines. At best there are maybe two veg-focused magazines on display, and they rarely excite me. The others…the others are full of things I don’t eat, so why bother?
Or so I thought. Um. I’m an idiot. Yes they’re full of things I don’t eat, but I kinda get a kick out of ‘veganizing’ recipes, so why should that prove an obstacle? And besides, they’re not just full of things I don’t eat…they’re also full of information. *swoon*
I like learning. Nah, I love learning, and cooking is one area where I certainly have a lot to learn. Imagine my delight, then, when yesterday for the first time in many ages I wandered into my local bookstore and checked out the cooking mags. I left with two. The one that got me all excited? Cook’s Illustrated. If you haven’t seen it before, it’s kind of a cross between a normal cooking magazine and Consumer Reports. The people who create it run a test kitchen, and they take a methodical, scientific approach to cooking. They tackle culinary questions like “what’s the best way to cook baby spinach” or “what’s the best chocolate cake recipe,” and try every variation imaginable until they find the answers. (It’s almost exhausting to read the descriptions of their labours.) Then they publish the results, complete with recipes. And yes, a lot of those results apply to vegan cookery just as much as to non-vegan cookery.
A five minute read-through of my copy felt like a three-hour cooking lesson, minus dinner at the end. But lunch…lunch I could do. The best way to learn is to apply lessons while they’re still fresh, right? And I can see myself trying and adapting a lot of the things in this issue.
But back to lunch. There was an article on making the best oven fries, and there were a couple of articles involving baked chicken. I went with those, because yum, fries! And also because I’ve tried making crispy faux chicken a few times in the past few months and haven’t been happy with any of the results — the coating always turns out a bit soggy, and I don’t care how tasty it is — soggy just isn’t acceptable.
Here’s the gist of the oven fries article: For the absolute best results, [1] Cut russet potatoes into wedges, [2] soak the wedges in hot water for 10 minutes and then drain and dry them, [3] in a baking pan season 4T of oil with salt and pepper, [4] spread potatoes evenly, [5] bake covered tightly with foil at 475F for 5 minutes, [6] remove the foil and continue baking 20 to 30 minutes, turning once.
Honestly? I burned mine. My bad — I cut my potato into too many wedges, so that they were too thin and cooked super-fast. Also my baking sheet is thin and crappy and doesn’t heat evenly, so that some fries did okay while others burned. C’est la vie. (Besides, I have thirteen more potatoes to play with!) The soaking and steaming did create a noticably better texture than I’ve managed with my usual oven fries recipe though; there were no ‘hollow’ fries. And seasoning the oil rather than the cut potatoes? Sheer genius. I was skeptical, but it worked perfectly.
Now for the chik’n. I used a PC meatless chik’n breast. It occurred to me that maybe past attempts hadn’t done as well because I hadn’t thawed the faux meat fully before prepping the meal, so this time I let the cut thaw overnight and made sure it was dry to the touch before starting. I think fake meats tend to hold more moisture than real meat, which may add to the challenge of creating a crispy coat. Anyway, I sliced mine in half to create two thinner cutlets, and then I breaded them. To do this I prepared one flax egg (1 T ground flax whisked into 1/4 cup hot water), and dipped both sides of each cutlet. Then I pressed these into panko (japanese breadcrumbs) seasoned with 1 T of nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper. The two tricks I picked up from Cook’s Illustrated were these: [1] Cook the chik’n on a rack set over a baking pan, and [2] spray the breaded cutlets lightly with oil before baking.
The results? Best breaded chik’n so far — crispy and lightly browned. The rack made a big difference in ensuring that both sides crisped up. My only excuse for not thinking this up myself is that my normal baking pans don’t have racks. Fortunately my housemate pointed out that my wee toaster oven pan does have such an insert, so I used that and it worked perfectly. I did forget two things while making these — I didn’t dredge the cutlets with flour before breading them, and I didn’t spray the baking rack. Neither proved major issues, and the finished product tasted wonderful topped with a raw tomato sauce (half a tomato, diced; a few basil leaves, minced; one garlic clove and one teaspoon capers, squeezed through a garlic press; salt and pepper to taste).
As lunches go, yum. As learning experiences go, likewise yum. And I still have a bunch more recipes and techniques eyemarked for trying. Is it dinner time yet?
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I keep meaning to start a table listing easy substitutions for when you’re trying to ‘veganize’ a recipe. I’ve made notes in a half dozen places, but can I ever find them when I want them? Nooooo. Anyway, here’s a first take, and I’ll keep revisiting this as I think of new things to add.
| Ingredient: |
Substitute: |
| Milk |
Easy — try an equal amount of soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, oat milk, potato milk, coconut milk, raw mylk, etc.Bear in mind that different milks have different qualities. For example, rice and almond milk tend to be quite sweet, so might not do the trick in a savoury dish. Soy milk is roughly the same ‘thickness’ as regular milk, but rice milk is very thin — more like a skim milk. Most soy milks are sweetened — you may want to hunt for an unsweetened version (particularly if you have something like mashed potatoes on the menu). All versions have their own benefits, and you can even make some of them yourself, from scratch. |
| Cream |
There are commercial soy-based ‘creams,’ but I haven’t tried any yet. When I need to replace cream, I tend to use:
- Powdered soy milk — mix with water to reconstitute, but keep whisking in extra powder until you reach the right consistency for the type of cream you’re replacing. One caveat — I find that the powdered soy milks I’ve tried tend to have a strong bean flavour that really stands out when you make a soy cream, so this works best when used in small amounts or in highly-flavoured dishes.
- Thick coconut milk — it’s not as thick as a whipping cream, but just fine for replacing half-and-half. It’s wonderful in curries and soups.
- Cashew cream — this works very well for creamy sauces, soups, desserts…pretty much anything. Blend approximately 1 part raw cashews with 3 parts liquid until well blended, then add more liquid or cashews as necessary to get the right consistency.
|
| Buttermilk |
Add 1T lemon juice or white/cider vinegar to a cup of soy milk. I find this does wonders in many baked treats. |
| Eggs |
Pureed or mashed fruit. Apples, prunes, and banana all work. To replace one egg, try half a banana, or a quarter cup of apple or prune sauce. Best for baked goods, or anywhere the added sweetness and fruit flavour will prove tasty. I use pureed prunes in baked chocolate goods, though generally to replace oil rather than eggs. The flavour compliments the chocolate taste very nicely.
Tofu. (1/4 cup silken tofu = 1 egg.) This is fairly neutral, taste-wise. Puree it with other wet ingredients before adding to the rest of the dish.
Egg replacer. This is a commercial product — a cornstarch-like powder. There are a few varieties; the one I use is Kingsway, and calls for 1 tsp mixed with 2 T liquid to replace one egg. Others may vary. I’ve had excellent luck with the stuff in baking — it’s very convenient. I do tend to add a bit extra. This is also a neutral taste addition.
Cornstarch. Another neutral taste. To replace one egg, mix 2 T of cornstarch with an equal amount of water.
Flax. “Flax eggs” seem to be one of the most common egg replacers out there. To replace one egg, grind some flax seed (coffee grinders are great for this, but clean them well before and after!). Beat 1 T into 1/4 cup of water, until the mixture thickens a bit. Flax eggs add a slight nutty flavour to dishes. |
| Butter |
I find I can use oil in place of butter in many cases; my oil of choice is grapeseed, because it’s fairly neutral taste-wise and handles high heat very well.If you really want a buttery flavour, try Earth Balance — a very tasty vegan margarine. (And no, most margarines aren’t vegan — the majority contain whey powder or casein, which are milk products.) I’ve found that in baked recipes I can cut back a bit on the amount of fat required when using Earth Balance; substituting 1:1 makes things a bit oily. |
| Lard |
Use vegetable shortening. |
| Yogurt |
Try soy yogurt — there are at least two varieties available out there. If you don’t have soy yogurt, you still have a couple options:
- Silken tofu, pureed with lemon juice or white/cider vinegar. I’ve done this, but can’t remember the exact proportions I used — I think it was 1T of the lemon/vinegar to 1 cup of tofu.
- Thickened soy buttermilk. I haven’t tried this myself yet, but bookmarked celineyum’s formula for the next time I’m out: Combine 6 oz soy milk with 1.5 T cornstarch. Microwave for 30 seconds, stir, microwave for another 15-20 seconds. Add a squeeze of lemon juice or splash of vinegar, let sit 3 minutes.
|
| Cream cheese |
Definitely try Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, which I’ve found in most health food stores and seen in some grocery stores. I always loved bagels and cream cheese, and no longer miss them. The stuff really is as good as they claim…and it makes heavenly cheesecake. |
| Sour cream |
There are a couple commercial faux sour creams. I’ve tried the Tofutti one, but remain fairly unenthusiastic about it.
Personally I prefer the raw sour cream I learned to make last month:Soak 1 ½ cups cashews for a few hours or overnight. In a blender, combine the cashews with ½ teaspoon salt, 2+ T lemon juice, and ¾ cup water. Blend until smooth, then taste. Adjust the seasonings as necessary (you will probably need more lemon juice), and then add water a bit at a time until you reach the right consistency. |
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Saturday morning saw me awake at around 5am, and up by 5:30. Ug. Have I mentioned that I’m so not a morning person? But there are advantages to seeing the sun come up — like realizing there’s time to make fresh muffins for everyone, to start a crazy-busy day. And lo, there were fresh, warm blueberry muffins for breakfast, and they disappeared so fast I didn’t get a single picture. But that’s okay, that just gave me an excuse to make more today. 
Today’s version was, if anything, even better than Saturday’s. These muffins are surprisingly light and fluffy — so much so that my gf thought I’d adapted a cupcake recipe!
I love the fruitiness of these, particularly with today’s cranberry-blueberry mix. They’re not nearly as full of fat as everyone thinks either. For Saturday’s version I used Earth Balance, and they had a definite buttery taste. For today’s version I switched to oil, which gives a more neutral flavour that lets the fruit really come through. Mmmmm, fruit. Can’t wait for berry season!
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Sorry, vegan zombie joke. 
Anyway, last night was Earth Hour, and so at 8pm we shut off all the lights and non-essential electronics. Most of our complex went dark — there was only a single light on outside one house. My housemate flaked on the couch and read an ebook on his palm pilot. I lit a half dozen candles (mmmmm, beeswax) and spent some time looking through cookbooks. Paper cookbooks. (gasp!) Ultimately I found a bread recipe close to what I’ve been wanting, and started bread by candlelight.
Many hours later, after Earth Hour ended and we’d (eventually) put some lights back on, a very tired me pulled these out of the oven. The original recipe was for Mollie Katzen’s sunflower-millet bread from Enchanted Broccoli Forest (a Moosewood cookbook), but I veganized the recipe and converted it to a 12-grain loaf by the very simple expedient of substituting a multigrain cereal mixture for the millet. It’s hands-down the healthiest bread I’ve ever made, and also the best ’sandwich bread’ — it slices perfectly, and has a good, non-crumbly texture. Probably won’t last long. Half a loaf is on its way to a sick friend, and the other half is almost gone too. Good thing I made two loaves.
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For some strange reason there’s a conspiracy of lentils this week. I certainly didn’t set out to make an all-lentil dinner, but that’s what I ended up with. How can you go wrong with lentils, though?
First there was lentil soup. Lemony lentil soup. I had a small heap of lemons in the crisper, and a shiny new bag of beluga lentils (which at 24% apparently boast the highest amount of protein of all the lentils). I figured these had to go together. The results? Zingy! Fabulously zingy. I won’t be getting scurvy anytime soon. Served with sweet potato fries, it was very hearty. This might be my new favourite soup; the recipe’s below.
And after dinner? Lentil cookies. As soon as I knew such a thing existed, I had to make them. And omg, yum! Fresh from the oven they were light and crispy on the outside, and full of cranberry-cherry tastiness. Instant love. The original recipe is easily veganized (sub Earth Balance for butter, egg replacer for the egg). For extra flavour I simmered my lentils in light coconut milk with a goodly pinch of nutmeg and maybe a half teaspoon of mace. (Vanilla rice milk would probably be equally good.) I also toasted my oats in the toaster oven while doing other things. (325F, stirred twice, maybe 6 minutes?) For some reason my cookies took an extra couple minutes to bake, but that might just be an oven variation. Regardless, these are fabulous, particularly when toasted for a few minutes to crisp them up. I suspect they’ll make my top-3 list of cookies long before I finish eating them all. Besides, they have protein and fruit in them, so they’re healthy, right?
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Happy Pi Day! Those crazy mathematicians may claim they need pi to do complicated things to circles, but I know it’s just an excuse for a day filled with the other pie.
In honour of the day we’re just starting a round-themed dinner. Two pizzas (topped among other things with round little roasted cherry tomatoes and rounds of veggie sausage), a cherry pie, and a couple dozen wee little lemon tarts. Everything round!
The lemon tarts are an adaptation of the lemon squares in the Veganomicon. Square didn’t fit with the day, so I adapted the recipe to make tarts instead. If you have the book, I highly recommend the recipe — they make perfect little lemon meringueless pies, utterly divine. Just a note: If making tarts, bake the crusts for only 12 to 15 minutes, not the full time in the original recipe. Also, I followed a long-ago tip and filled each tart with about a tablespoon of dry beans to keep the tart crusts from shrinking and ‘puffing’ when I baked them. (But do remember to take all the beans out before filling the tarts with lemony goo.) Yum!
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Somehow today went south — Deep South. A craving for cornbread (and a hot pepper going spare) led me to this Alton Brown recipe for cast iron cornbread. I had to have it. And besides, I realized that I had that episode of Good Eats, so bonus! First it was groceries, then a half hour of watching the show and chilling, then into the kitchen to make the bread myself. Mmmmm. His version was super-easily veganized (see below), and the only addition I made was the aforementioned hot pepper, which proved to be remarkably mild. My housemate actually suggested adding cayenne next time, so that shows just how unspicy it was. Good though, especially with a little Earth Balance. The cast iron method gave it a nice, moist consistency, but with a crispy crust. Yum.
The rest of the meal? Spicy pinto bean sausages, and a side of what may be the absolute best kale recipe ever. Seriously, I’m stunned by just how good the kale was. Over the moon impressed. That said, it needs a couple important tweaks to make it perfect, and I’m out of kale, so y’all have to wait a bit before I reveal it further. (See, all this Southern food is giving me a drawl.)
The sausages were super easy to make, surprisingly light, and definitely sausagey in taste. Better than most store bought vegan sausages. I’d have to do a side by side comparison with some of the Tofurky sausages to decide. Let’s be honest though — homemade is almost always better. I’ll make these again, though I’d probably make them smaller for double the quantity. That would make them more like breakfast links. I definitely want to try the original spicy Italian version too, though I’ll just use those seasonings with Isa’s bean-based version when I make them, because I’d rather have real beans in my sausages than chickpea flour.
Incidentally, why did nobody point out Everyday Dish to me? A YouTube veg cooking series? *squee!* (Those crepes must be mine, and soon.)
On a completely unrelated note, I’ve discovered that strawberries sliced onto homemade bread and blackcurrant jam is a special treat. Omg, yum. I honestly meant to take pictures, if only to show off the bread, but I was hungry, and then there was none left.
That’s enough for now. Friday is Pi Day, so the theme will be ’round.’ I’m already plotting. And already on the round theme…
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Back from Cuba, but why, oh why did I come back? It’s -11C with windchill today, and we got enough snow and freezing rain overnight that I can’t see the walkways between houses anymore. And to think that a week ago I was frolicking in the ocean. 
More on Cuba later. It wasn’t all sun and beach and rum — we spent most of our time in Havana, exploring and learning and experiencing culture shock. I’ll write something up later this week, when my thoughts have settled a bit.
In the meantime, yay for being home! Yay for running amok in my own kitchen again! For some reason I got hit with a massive craving for chocolate cake yesterday, and after lusting for the stuff for several hours I finally got off my *@@ and looked up how to make one. (No, I’d never made chocolate cake from scratch before — behold my shame.) Based on some googling I settled on a PPK recipe, but then another search led me to a most fascinating article. It turns out that a few years ago Cook’s Illustrated took on the challenge to create the perfect vegan chocolate cake. *gasp!* I really wanted to try it, but didn’t have everything I needed. In the end I created a hybrid of the two recipes, and thus was born Devil Ducky Cake…
(Devil Ducky is actually functional — it keeps the saran wrap off the icing.
It’s very, very dense. Sweet chocolate, you are my density. Also, my breakfast.
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I engaged in a few Sooper Sekret projects for Valentine’s Day, including these peanut butter cookies for my housemate:
Y’know, I don’t think I’d ever baked vegan cookies before last week. Fortunately the PB cookies turned out perfectly. They’re dense and peanut buttery and juuuuuust sweet enough.
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A friend of mine made cinnamon buns on the weekend, and the mere thought drove me mad with desire. But it’s not like I could just run out and buy a vegan sticky bun. Not around here anyway. So I spent a little time looking at her recipe, and eventually crafted a vegan version. They’re not as complicated as they look.
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