The Lustful Vegan

The awesome folks over at What the hell does a vegan eat anyway? got me lusting last week, when they posted pics of a rib recipe (veganized, bien sur) from Gourmet magazine. Mmmmmm. But lacking the key ingredients (black vinegar, seitan, and the ability to deep fry things), I figured I’d take a stab at a baked tempeh version.

OMG. I bet the original version is even better, but these are yummy. The sauce reduces to a rich, savoury-sweet glaze full of ginger and caramelized shallots and garlic. I served them with steamed dandelion greens and garlic-celeriac mashed potatoes the first night, and balsamic mushrooms, cornmeal potato cakes, and a spinach/kale mixture the next. My omnivore housemate liked them a lot — he felt they really did have a certain ‘ribness’ going for them.

Damn, I’ve gone and made myself hungry.

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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?

It’s confession time again — in my pre-vegan days I never liked quiche. The sheer egginess of it always appalled me, even before we discovered that I was allergic to the damned eggy things.

But y’know, virtually everyone I know loves quiche, so I thought maybe it was time to give it another whirl. A vegan whirl. SusanV at FatFree Vegan Kitchen gets all the credit for this. Her crustless quiches looked good enough to tempt even me. How can you go wrong with tofu?

I wanted mine to have crusts, though, so I used the last of a large batch of whole wheat Never Fail Pie Crust to line eight mini tart pans and two pot pie pans. These I filled with the quiche mixture. My own was a leek and mushroom version — I used 2/3rds of a leek, finely chopped, in place of bell pepper. The mushrooms were sliced very thin. I used almond butter in place of tahini, thyme in place of rosemary, a bit of extra oil. Realistically these were all fairly minor alterations. The one change that I think made a real difference was using regular firm tofu instead of silken. A couple commenters mentioned that their mini quiche didn’t firm up completely, so I figured a firmer tofu might be the answer.

The results? Everybody who ate them liked them. Even my omnivore roommate declared them ‘quiche-y.’ The larger quiches (in the pot pie pans) proved to have a better, moister consistency when reheated. The little ones were a nice size for lunches. While tasty to start with, they were all noticeably tastier a couple days later. Mmmmmm. My only problem with them was that the leek greens ‘bled’ a little of their colour, so that the quiches weren’t the soft, buttery yellow I would have liked. Next time I’ll know to use only the whites, or maybe try shallots instead.

Our balcony contains exactly one piece of furniture — a well-worn bamboo table. This table is wasp nirvana. Every spring the stripy little buggers come from who-knows-where to gnaw on it. You can hear them chewing. Seriously! They land, feast, fly off, and repeat ad nauseum. Obviously they’re using it for nest-building material.

Have I mentioned I’m virtually phobic about bees, wasps, and stinging things in general? This is not a good combination. Normally this means I run inside a lot, but this year I decided to try something new. Lee Valley and Home Hardware sell this thing called a Waspinator. No, it’s not a Transformer, though a wasp-fighting robot would be kinda cool, if needlessly violent. This thing is basically a blow-up nest. The idea is that wasps are territorial*, so if you make it look like your area is already occupied, they’ll stay clear. Excellent, a solution that harms none of us.

Today I was outside planting some seeds. Sure enough, *gnawgnawgnaw*, there was one of my stripy friends on the table beside me, whittling it down as I watched. Aha, I thought, and reached inside for my as-yet-undeployed Waspinator. A few seconds later I returned and deployed The Solution.

The wasp gnawed away. I shuffled closer. The wasp continued gnawing. I shuffled a bit further. The wasp went for a buzzing flight, came at me…and veered off. Then it went back to its original spot and resumed its business, while I stood over it with my fake nest going “ahem…ahem.”

I can’t claim this is a good test of The Solution, but I did find it pretty darned amusing. Next step: find a way to secure el Waspinator someplace semi-permanent outside, and see if that starts having a more general effect.

Today our nice local veggie people dropped off our nice local veggies. I’d ordered basil (mmmm, pesto!), but to my surprise I didn’t find a bunch of cut herbs — I found an entire plant! A nice, bushy little basil plant, complete with roots. It doesn’t get fresher than that. Given that just yesterday I bought seeds to grow my own, I have to admit I’m tempted to plant it and see what happens. It’s so fresh and healthy looking. I can go without pesto for a bit…

On another random note, today I realized just how much my eating patterns have shifted in the past four months. I was cleaning the fridge (*shudder*), and found no less than three unopened packages of tofu, plus another of veggie ground. Three of those were significantly past their best-before date. Apparently I’ve really moved away from eating fake meat and tofu. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them — I’ve just been eating more beans and nuts, and meals more centered around vegetables than meat substitutes. I miss my tofu though — tonight I’m making tofu quiche dammit. There’s still pie dough left over from a massive pie-making foray (veggie and curry pot pies, mmmmmm), so it shouldn’t be too difficult. The pies were supposed to stock the freezer, but there are only two left! I used this recipe for “no fail pie crust”, and it delivered as promised even with my substitution of 1/3 whole wheat flour. The best part was not having to roll the dough (except for the pie tops). Once upon a time I was pretty darned good at making and rolling pie crusts…but then I didn’t do it for years and now I’ve lost the knack.

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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It’s 26C outside at the moment, sunny, with just a hint of a breeze. In other words, nigh perfect weather. I may need to skive off work an hour early and go enjoy it. There’s some vanilla frozen soy yogurt calling my name, and blueberries to go on top.

In the meantime, my garden is already enjoying the sun. There’s not much to see so far — just a single tray of ‘dirt’ on a trolley we can wheel outside when it’s nice like today. And actually it’s full of coco coir, not dirt. Coco coir is a planting medium made from coconut husks — a renewable resource, woohoo, without the environmentally nasty pricetag of more traditional peat moss. It’s also just plain nifty, because it comes in a small-ish block (6×4x4″), but puffs out to fill a 10×20″ tray when you add water. Poof! Instant garden!

So as I was saying, I have just one of these trays started so far, currently occupied by 150 pre-sprouted spinach seeds. My goal is to grow baby spinach, so these seeds are planted fairly close together. They take up the gridded area of the planter. In a couple weeks I’ll fill half of the remaining area, and the last third will go in two weeks after that. I suspect it won’t produce enough for our needs, but that’s okay, I’ll just start another tray.

We’ve decided that all our balcony and indoor gardening projects for this summer will be experiments, to see what we can and can’t grow in containers, to see what works for us as a composting system, and to see what we actually use. The nice thing about that approach is that it’s guaranteed to succeed, because what we’re after is information. Even if something doesn’t grow, we still learn something. Though I admit, I’d rather learn something and get tasty vegetables too — I’m just greedy that way.

That frozen soy yogurt is calling again. Time for some sun.

Pea soup is proof that I’ve grown up. As a kid I hated the stuff — it tasted just awful to me. (Well, except for canned Habitant pea soup, which was really nothing more than lard and salt. ***shudder***) Fortunately my taste buds matured along with the rest of me, and now it’s a Good Thing. Especially since it’s easy to make in a slow cooker, and I love my slow cooker. It asks for virtually no attention from me while it does its thing, and fills the house with mouth-watering smells. Though I eventually learned not to put things on to cook late at night — those mouth-watering smells literally woke me up in the wee hours, starving!

The secret to this recipe is the broth. Soaking sundried tomatoes and smoked chipotle peppers together with the bouillon creates a wonderfully rich liquid. (Can you say ‘umami‘?) I don’t find much heat from the peppers either, as long as you don’t break them up.

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Lately I’ve become a fiend for hot chocolate. More on that later. In the meantime, though, I decided it was time to make up some chocolate ‘mylk’ to give me a slightly healthier version of the drink. As far as I can tell, “mylk” is a term coined by raw foodies, referring specifically to milks created from nuts or seeds. I like it — both the term and the drink.

My favourite mylk comes from an Ani Phyo recipe (from the book Ani’s raw food kitchen), and contains almonds, dates, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, and sometimes a titch of caramel extract. Yum! I find almost all store-bought chocolate milk (whether soy, rice, or almond-based) far too sweet for me, but with this mylk it’s always exactly right, because it’s so easy to tweak the recipe to my tastes. Less sweet, more chocolate! And while it does have yummy sweetness, the sugar all comes from whole dates and thus I don’t feel guilty. (Not that I’d feel guilty anyway.)

Mylk does have a bit of graininess when you drink it — this comes from the ground up almonds. You could probably filter it through cheesecloth or a coffee filter if that bothered you, though you’d lose some of the almond goodness. I notice the graininess less after it’s chilled in the fridge for a day or two though.

If you wanted to try some of your own, this recipe is fairly simple. You could use all water instead of the coconut milk, replace the vanilla bean with extract (1T = 1 bean), and even use almonds. These recipes are great to experiment with.

Going beyond the raw, I’ve used various mylks in baking and they work just fine. The most interesting was Ani’s pumpkin mylk, made from fresh pumpkin seeds. I drank half and used the rest in cupcakes. Tasty! And also handy, since mylk is easy to whip up from scratch when you run out of soy/rice/almond milk during a late-night baking spree. Not that that happened to me…noooooo…

…there can still be food, and photos of food.

I just finished constructing my first ghetto light tent. It cost me a whole dollar to make, because the only thing I needed to buy was a sheet of white posterboard. It’s a cardboard box with most of the sides cut out, and papered over with rice paper (I’ve had a huge roll of the stuff kicking around for years). Parchment paper probably would have worked too. Objects go inside the box/tent, placed on a backdrop that curves from the top-back to bottom-front — curved so that you get no lines in the shot, and the background looks continuous. (Apparently this is called a ’sweep’.) That fancy backdrop is the aforementioned sheet of posterboard, cut to fit the interior width of the box, and held in place by two big magnets stolen from the fridge. For light I’m using a clamp-on full-spectrum light stolen from my painting easel. I can aim it through any of the three papered-over sides of the box to create different lighting. See how the shadows and highlights shift?…

I could even add more lights to cover different sides if I wanted to, but naaaaah. This is good enough for late-night shots of tomatoes, and just the thing for even yummier foods. Ta da!

Apple-sprout-pecan salad
with a maple vinaigrette