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?

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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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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It’s a wet, grey day outside, and rather cool and dark inside. It might seem bleak if it weren’t harvest day. Yep, today my wee little sprouts became food, and their crisp greenness offered a nice reminder that spring’s lying just beneath that melting snow out there.

The mung beans went into cilantro tabbouleh. Even though I’ve been nibbling those for days and throwing some in everything I’ve cooked, I still had a good two loose cups for the salad. Not bad considering I started with just two tablespoons of seed! They turned out a little bitter, apparently because I didn’t hide them away in the dark while they were sprouting. That’s okay, though — I still found them tasty, and the flavour went well with the salad, so it all worked out well.

The broccoli sprouts I used as a garnish. They’re light and fluffy compared to the mung sprouts, and taste like, well, little fiery broccoli bursts. Go figure. I didn’t touch them until today, and what you see in the photos is the entire ‘crop’ — a single spoonful! From an entire seed pack! (I’m not sure how much the packet contained, but definitely less than 2 T.) Must see if I can find a bulk source of seed so that I can sprout more, because otherwise I just won’t be able to grow enough.

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Today I found myself craving pasta and so, inspired by the Raw Food Wednesday posts on one of my favourite blogs, I tried my hand at making raw zucchini fettucine with a basil-kale pesto.

It was surprisingly tasty. I wasn’t sure I’d like the raw zucchini ‘noodles,’ but they had a nice texture and added flavour to the whole. To make them I just peeled and trimmed a zucchini, then used my vegetable peeler to whittle off noodles until I reached the core.

Basil-kale pesto

• 1 1/2 cups kale, destemmed and chopped coarsely
• 1 cup basil leaves, torn up
• 2 T nutritional yeast
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 T dried sundried tomatoes, minced (mine come that way, which makes life easier)
• 1/3 cup pine nuts
• 1/4 cup walnut pieces
• 3/4 tsp sea salt (or to taste)
• 1/2 cup oil (I used my rosemary-thyme oil, which made the results extra tasty)

How to:

1. Pulse the kale, basil, and nutritional yeast in a food processor until gooey.
2. Add the pine nuts, walnuts, and garlic, processing until fully ground and blended with the kale.
3. Add the sundried tomatoes then, while the processor is running, drizzle the oil in gradually.
4. Taste, add salt if and as needed.

This tastes very good with tomatoes.

At long last, I took a shot at making a beet-mango salsa. It’s pretty tasty for a first try. My only regret is that I used half my mango to make apple-mango crisp last night, so I only made about half as much salsa as I’d actually like to eat.

Regarding the beets — I roasted those rather than boiling or steaming them, in order to bring out their sweetness and preserve their colour. Their skins proved thin and tender enough that I didn’t even bother peeling them.

Beet-mango salsa

• 1/2 mango, chopped smallish (~3/4 cup)
• 2 small roasted beets, cooled to room temperature and chopped similarly smallish (~1 cup)
• 2 green onions, sliced
• 1 small lime, juiced
• 2 T fresh coriander, minced
• 1 tsp brown sugar [optional; you may not need this if your beets and/or mango are particularly sweet]

How to:

1. Chop up the mango, beets, and green onions, then toss together in a glass bowl.
2. Add the coriander and lime juice, toss again.
3. Taste. Add sugar if necessary.
4. Let sit for a little while to let flavours blend, then eat!

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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Some days call for comfort food, and for that it’s hard to beat macaroni and cheese. I found myself in the mood last week, had a block of Sheese in the fridge, and so took a stab at ‘veganizing’ my old macaroni and cheese recipe. It turned out better than the original dairy version.

And just because I’m clearing the camera of photos, here’s a pic of my slow cooker from last week, all set to make lentil and wild rice stew…

And now if you’ll ’scuse me, I’m off to make lentil cookies. Yes, you read that right.  =)

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Yesterday I finally got around to making the herbed oil I’ve been planning for over a week. I used AB’s basic technique , but with my own ingredients. (Summary: Fill mason jar with ingredients, heat oil to 200F, then pour into jar. Cover with cloth, let cool overnight, then strain into new, clean jar.) Last week I found some wonderful fresh rosemary and thyme at the market, so I filled the jar with those, a couple palmfuls of dried savoury, zest from one lemon, probably a half tablespoon of peppercorns, and a single dried red chili pepper. For oil I used grapeseed. It made more than I’d anticipated, but both smells and tastes wonderful. Can’t wait to try it with some fresh bread.