The Old Standby

Another night, another sparse fridge. I really need to plan some meals and go shopping, but in the meantime here's an old standby. Darlene posted her take on the Macaroni and Cheeze recipe from Very Vegetarian a while back. Tonight I made it straight from the book (which is very similar); although I don't think we've ever made it with macaroni - tonight it was with pennette. I added some peas like we usually do, plus some seitan that I chopped and fried in olive oil with a little garlic.

Sandwiches and Braised Cabbage

I think the chickpea-hijiki salad sammiches are now our most used recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance (our copy of which was feeling neglected because we haven't opened it in probably well over a week). We've already posted about this recipe (again, again, and again) so I'll spare you the details, but once again our fridge was looking sparse so I took out the 'ol can 'o chickpeas and whipped up the sandwich filling which we had on some whole grain bread that I made a couple weeks ago and had sliced in the freezer.

We did have about half a head of green cabbage in the fridge that really needed to be used, so I chopped it up, cooked it in a cast iron skilled in canola oil with a little salt, pepper and paprika until it was starting to brown, then added about 2 Tbs. water, reduced the heat, covered, and simmered for about 15 minutes. Then I uncovered it, added about 1 Tbs. of cider vinegar and a little more salt and pepper and cooked a few minutes more.

Pasta Salad

Darlene whipped up this pasta salad for lunch before we left yesterday and there was plenty left when we got home this evening, so that made for a quick and easy dinner (with very few dishes to wash!). It started with cooking a pound of organic penne and adding a can of artichoke hearts (chopped), some carrots, celery, frozen peas, and some pineapple. I don't know the exact proportions of all the veggies, but just mix it up to your liking. For the dressing, whisk together 1/3 c. balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp. yellow mustard, 1 tsp. soy sauce (or Bragg's), 2 Tbs. Vegenaise, and 1 clove of crushed garlic. Then slowly whisk in 1/3 c. olive oil. Add salt & pepper to taste then pour it over your pasta and veggies and mix well.

Back in NoVa

We're up in Northern Virginia again (Fairfax to be exact) and while we often eat at Sunflower when we're here, we also have another favorite that we recently discovered from the VegDC web site. Woodlands is an all vegetarian Indian restaurant with an extensive South Indian menu. And it's literally just down the street from Darlene's brother's apartment where we often stay when we're here. Sunflower is awesome, but so are the dosas at Woodlands. The rava masala dosa I had tonight was kicked up with a lot of chiles - to the Indian people there it was probably medium spicy, but for me it was just about at my limit.

We're up here to take a vegan cooking class tomorrow. We were supposed to take the Indian class a couple of weeks ago but it was postponed because of the snow. So now we're taking the class on international cuisine. We'll let you know how it goes.

Red Lentil Dhal

I've been wanting to try the red lentil dhal from the PPK and we finally got around to it tonight. We had it over brown rice and it was quite delicious. Though I was reminded again to always read the whole recipe before starting since we didn't have a couple of the spices on hand. Namely we were out of cinnamon (the horror!) and cloves and also didn't have any cilantro. Oh, and I used canned tomatoes instead of fresh, but even lacking all that it was really good. So go give it a try.

Gnocchi and Kale

There wasn't much in the fridge tonight in the way of fresh veggies except a big bunch of kale. I do like greens from time to time, but I have to admit they're probably not my favorite thing in the world and I often buy them mainly because I know they're good for you. Then I get them home and I'm not sure what to do with them. I'm slowly getting over this though and the kale I made tonight was pretty good. I thinly sliced 3 cloves of garlic and sauteed them in a little olive oil, then I added the bunch of kale that I had rinsed and coarsley chopped along with about 1/4 tsp. salt. I tossed the kale around in the oil a little then added about 2 Tbs. water and covered the pot and reduced the heat a little. I let that simmer for about 10 minutes, then added about 1 tsp. mustard, 1 Tbs. orange champagne vinegar, and 2 tsp. maple syrup. There was still a little water left in the pot so I turned up the heat and cooked off the water while mixing everything around occasionally.

We had that with some gnocchi and seitan cooked with garlic and olive oil. I sauteed a little chopped seitan in a healthy amount of olive oil, added some minced garlic, then the gnocchi, then a splash of white wine. Then I covered the pan and let that cook for a couple minutes until the gnocchi were done. That was just seasoned with salt & pepper. All in all a fairly quick and healthy meal. And pretty tasty too.

Pot Pie

A basic pot pie was good for a cold snowy day (well... most of the snow is gone now but we got over an inch this morning). I mostly followed the pot pie recipe from the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook. The filling was just onions, celery, carrots, yukon gold potatoes, and peas in a sauce of veg. stock and soy milk that was thickened with a little whole wheat flour. It was seasoned with dried parsley, sage, thyme, and salt & pepper. The topping is a basic biscuit crust made with flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, margarine, soy milk, and a little agave nectar.

One relatively new gadget in our kitchen is a pastry blender, and I'm finding that it works really well for cutting the margarine into the flour in a recipe like this. The crust came out really nice and fluffy.

Seitan Fajitas

I really don't know if this is how you're supposed to make fajitas, but I sort of made this up as I went along and it came out quite tasty.

1 Tbs. canola oil
1 medium onion, halved and sliced
1 medium green bell pepper, sliced thin
handful of green beans (about 4 oz.), cut into 1-2" pieces
8 oz. seitan, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 plum tomato, diced (I might've used 2 if I had another)
1 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. salt, or to taste
fresh ground black pepper to taste
2 Tbs. tequila
2 Tbs. lime juice
1 Tbs. agave nectar

In a large skillet, saute onion, bell pepper, and beans in oil with a pinch of salt and a little pepper until they just start to get a little soft, 3-4 minutes. Add seitan and saute for several more minutes until setian starts to get a little brown. Add garlic, tomato, chili powder, cumin, salt & pepper, mix well and cook for a few more minutes. Deglaze the pan with the lime juice and tequila (always be careful when adding alcohol to a hot pan - it's not a bad idea to remove the pan from the heat first). Add the agave and cook for another minute or so. We served this wrapped in a tortilla with fresh guacamole, salsa and hot sauce.

There are many ways to make guacamole, but tonight's recipe was pretty similar to what I most often do. Just mash all this stuff together in a bowl:

1 large avacado
1 Tbs. finely minced onion
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. lime juice
1/2 tsp. Pickapeppa sauce

(If you've not tried Pickapeppa sauce, it's a relatively mild hot sauce made with mangoes and tamarind, among other things. It's pretty readily available at grocery stores in the U.S. It will darken the color of your guac. but it's worth it.)

Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Sauce

We picked up a copy of teany book by Moby and Kelly Tisdale a few months ago, but other than the cashew butter sandwiches we haven't used it much. So I decided to crack it open this weekend and this noodle salad recipe caught my eye. I made a few tweaks, but mostly followed the recipe. Let's start with the sauce - just whisk all this together in a bowl...

1 Tbs. Asian chili sauce
2 Tbs. peanut butter
1 Tbs. grated ginger
2 Tbs. sesame oil
4 tsp. soy sauce
2 tsp. rice vinegar
2 Tbs. lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, finely minced or grated

Now the recipe in the book calls for a lot more chili sauce and more ginger too, but this had just the right amount of kick for me. If you want to spice it up more, knock yourself out. This was actually just a little too kicked up for Darlene so I made her a separate sauce with peanut butter, sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar and agave nectar - that came out quite good also.

For the salad, I cooked some soba noodles, drained them and rinsed with cold water, and added some sesame oil. I put some noodles in a bowl and topped with some julienned carrots and snow peas, shredded green cabbage, and sliced cucumber. I poured some sauce over that and added a little bit of chopped green onion and some black sesame seeds. Oh, and I forgot the garnish of crushed peanuts, but that would've been good.

Brussels Sprouts and a Sandwich

I found some nice brussels sprouts at the store a few days ago and tonight we had them steamed with a very yummy cashew sauce that piqued my interest recently on the Fatfree Vegan blog (the only tweak I made to the sauce was adding a pinch of salt). Brussels sprouts alone do not necessarily make a good dinner, so I put together a great sandwich with some things we had on hand: cibatta bread, Tofurkey deli slices, roasted red pepper tapenade (from a jar), and tomatoes. I also added some olive tapenade that I made by finely mincing some nicoise and kalamata olives and adding a little olive oil and salt & pepper. The cashew sauce was great on the brussels sprouts and I drizzled a little on the sandwiches as well.

Dinner and a Movie

Or a movie and dinner. We had yet to see the Wallace & Gromit movie and it started playing this weekend at our local discount theater so we went to a late afternoon showing. It was dinner time when we got out and we were in the mood for Ethiopian food. When we lived in Tempe, AZ, we used to frequent Cafe Lalibela, but when we moved to Charlottesville we were jonesin' for Ethiopian food since the closest place we could get it was DC. Then Mesob opened here last year and our jones was cured. They have several vegetable entrees, all of which are vegan. My favorite is the Misir Wat, or spicy red lentils, but you can also get a combo for two that includes all the veggie dishes. And that injera is really filling - we usually walk out of Ethiopian restaurants completely stuffed.

Bread Casserole with Puttanesca Sauce

The first vegetarian cookbook we ever bought (way back in 1995) was The Meatless Gourmet - Favorite Recipes from Around the World by Bobbie Hinman. I think it was out of print for a while, but recently I saw a very similar looking book in the book store and I realized that it was the same book, just republished with a different title. It's now called The Vegetarian Gourmet's Easy International Recipes. We make a vegan variation of the Tuscan Bread Casserole from this book from time to time. It's a good way to use up old bread and we had several loaves with just one or two pieces left in our freezer. Tonight I modified the recipe slightly to reflect what we had on hand (the recipe calls for mushrooms but we had none, and I added spinach and seitan). The recipe also calls for a jar of pasta sauce, but we had some leftover canned fire-roasted diced tomatoes from when we made jambalaya, so I used those to make a puttanesca sauce (recipe from Emeril; I halved it and of course left out the anchovies... ewwww....). For the casserole:

~1 Tbs. olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 c. chopped broccoli
1 c. packed fresh spinach
1/2 c. diced seitan
6 slices whole wheat bread, cut into cubes
sauce from above link or other pasta sauce
nutritional yeast

Saute broccoli, onion, and seitan in olive oil for a few minutes, add spinach and cook another minute or so until spinach is wilted. Lightly oil a baking dish or casserole dish and spread half of the bread on the bottom. Top with about a third of the sauce, then add half of the vegetables. Add the other half of the bread cubes, another third of the sauce, and the rest of the veggies. Top with the remaining sauce, sprinkle with nutritional yeast, then cover tightly and bake at 350° for 45-60 minutes.

Spinach Salad

We had a big bag of spinach we needed to use, so I made it into a big, hearty salad. I cubed half a block of tofu and marinated it in a mixture of 2 Tbs. cider vinegar, 2 Tbs. maple syrup, 3 Tbs. Bragg's, 1 tsp. tomato paste, 1/4 tsp. liquid smoke, and 1 clove of crushed garlic (very similar to the Tempeh Bacon in Vegan with a Vengeance). After letting the tofu sit in the marinade a while, I fried it and added it to the spinach along with some shredded carrot, steamed cauliflower, and a small bit of shredded cabbage. I made a maple-mustard dressing to top it off. I didn't measure anything, but it was just prepared yellow mustard, cider vinegar, maple syrup, olive oil, and salt & pepper all whisked together.

Spring Rolls and Fried Rice

We wrote about spring rolls once before, and I'm sure we will again. I suppose Valentine's Day meals are supposed to be on the lighter side, but these spring rolls are so tasty we couldn't resist a little fried food. Plus this meal gets us both working in the kitchen together since Darlene is a master at assembling the spring rolls. Tonight the filling for these was green cabbage, carrot, shiitake mushroom, seitan, and a little garlic and fresh ginger. The fried rice was a throw-in-every-fresh-veggie-in-the-fridge sort of thing. I stir-fried some onion, carrot, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, shiitake mushroom, and seitan, added some garlic and ginger, then added some cooked brown rice and about 3 Tbs. soy sauce and a little sesame oil.

We didn't even eat half of what we made tonight (we had to save room for cake after all), plus there's still quite a bit of last night's potato soup left (and even a bit of lentil soup). So if you don't hear from us tomorrow it's because we're just using up leftovers and not doing anything new.

Cake!

For dinner tonight I made potato soup, which we had with some bread. Very tasty, but this cake is probably a little more exciting. I made the layers similar to the cherry cake recipe in Sinfully Vegan, but for the fruit I used thawed frozen strawberries. I also used strawberries to make a filling between the 2 layers, then I made a cream cheese frosting with some Tofutti cream cheese. I couldn't resist adding a drop or two of red food coloring in honor of Valentine's Day. We ate a little soup then stuffed ourselves with a big piece of cake.

Peanut Butter Banana French Toast

Make a peanut butter sandwich. Soak it in a mixture of 1 1/2 c. soy milk, 2 ripe bananas, 1 tsp. cinnamon, pinch nutmeg, and 1 Tbs. canola oil that you've whirred up in the blender. Fry it up in a skillet. Pour a little maple syrup on top and enjoy a yummy breakfast.

This is a small milestone since it's our 100th post. I suppose it'll be more exciting when we reach 1,000. There may not be a dinner post tonight because we'll be playing at our local ski resort and will likely just have some leftover soup or some other quick thing for dinner. We didn't get the 8-12" of snow some were forecasting, but there's about 6" on the ground here and there probably is 10" up at Wintergreen so that's quite enough to play in.

Well I was going to share a picture of the snow, but Blogger won't let me upload it. Stupid Blogger.

Lentil Soup with Chard

We were supposed to be traveling to Northern Virginia tonight and taking an Indian cooking class tomorrow. Mother Nature was having none of that though. It's been snowing here all day and we're supposed to have heavier snow tonight so the class has been postponed - to a time next month when we can't make it no less. But all is not lost because we'll be going to a different class offering in 2 weeks instead. Assuming it doesn't snow again.

So what to eat on a cold snowy day? Soup. I made a lentil soup similar to one I've already written about, but with the addition of some nice rainbow chard I picked up at the store a couple of days ago. I chopped up the chard stems and sauteed them with the onions, celery and carrots. The green parts I chopped up and added during the last 5 minutes or so of cooking. Add some nice bread and it was a filling meal.

Uppma

Here's something we haven't done for a while, but it's a tasty South Indian snack that makes for a good breakfast. An Indian friend of ours showed us how to make this several years ago and I don't know if I've remembered the recipe exactly, but I think it's close enough. It's made with sooji, which is also known as farina or Cream of Wheat (and sometimes known as semolina, though not the same kind of semolina used for pasta). You'll find sooji at Indian markets with the other grains and dals, but you can also use Cream of Wheat that you can find at any grocery store. There's also a little dal in here, which brings a some texture to the party. I soak the dal in a little water overnight, but that's definitely not authentic - I just prefer the dal to be a little softer. (The alternative is to add the dal without soaking it and boil the water for longer before adding the sooji so the dal gets a little soft.) Anyway, here's what I did this morning:

1 Tbs. canola oil
1 tsp. black mustard seeds
1 medium onion, chopped
finely diced jalapeno or serrano chile, to taste
1/4 c. roasted unsalted peanuts
1 Tbs. chana dal (yellow split peas), soaked overnight in a little water then drained
1/2 tsp. salt
10 or so chopped curry leaves (These are available in Indian markets but you could leave them out if you can't find them.)
2 c. water
2/3 c. sooji

Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat and add mustard seeds. Cook until the seeds start to pop, then add onion and chile. Cook until onion is starting to get tender, about 5 minutes, then add peanuts, dal, salt and curry leaves. Cook for another minute or so then add water. Bring water to a boil, then slowly add sooji, stirring constantly. Continue stirring until sooji is well incorporated and the mixture is starting to thicken, then turn off heat. Let stand for a couple minutes before serving.

This makes enough for 2 decent-sized servings but you can easily adjust the quantities - just make sure to use 3 times as much water as sooji.

Leftovers

Sorry, nothing exciting tonight. Often when we make dinner we make enough for lunch the next day, but we went out for lunch today so last night's Jambalaya was also tonight's dinner. We had a small whole wheat baguette that I made into garlic bread to have with our microwaved dinner.

Jambalaya

I used to make something similar to this back in my pre-veg. days and I've occasionally worked on veganizing it since then. I'd hoped to have a good recipe to share, but it didn't quite work out as planned. More on that in a bit. It started with cooking onion, celery, red bell pepper, garlic, and seitan (I used a package of WhiteWave chicken-style seitan tonight). Add some herbage (basil, thyme, paprika, bay leaves), deglaze with a splash of white wine, add brown rice, vegetable stock, diced tomatoes and hot sauce and cook until the rice is tender. That's where the problem came in. Brown rice takes a long time to cook, but I had the heat too low and after 40 minutes the rice was still pretty crunchy. So I added a little water, turned up the heat a little and kept it cooking. I'm not sure how long it eventually took, but it was a lot longer than I hoped. Eventually the rice was done and it tasted great, but the recipe still needs a little work. I've seen jambalaya recipes that use already cooked rice so maybe I'll try that next time - at least if I want to use brown rice. Anyway, when it was finally ready, I served it with some steamed cauliflower.

Meat and Potatoes

We've probably said here before that we try not to rely too much on processed mock meats, but once in a while we do have them. Sometimes it's for convenience sake, or maybe it's because of childhood memories of "comfort" food (since neither of us became vegan until well into adulthood). We both remember eating bratwurst as kids since Darlene's heritage is Austrian and mine is German so when we saw these Tofurkey beer brats in the grocery store the other day we couldn't help buying a package. We decided to try them tonight and we just fried them in a skillet and had them sans bun with mustard. We also roasted some red potatoes in olive oil with salt & pepper and fresh rosemary. We might've rounded out the meal with some cabbage but alas, we didn't have any on hand. We did however start out with a big salad so we got a little variety - and a few more veggies - from that.

Oh, and the brats were pretty good - for something that you can cook up in a few minutes. Nothing spectacular, but good enough so that we'll probably have them again sometime.

Mushroom Barley Soup

There used to be a vegetarian cafe here called Liquid that served excellent sandwiches and soups. When we were selling at the (outdoor) craft market on the downtown mall before Christmas and freezing our tails off, we'd go there and get a fabulous mushroom barley soup. We've thought about trying to make something similar for quite a while and tonight I finally gave it a try. It came out really scrumptous...

3 c. boiling water
1/2 oz. dried porcini mushrooms
3 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 large carrots, cut into coins
2 stalks celery, diced
2 medium portobello mushroom caps, cut into 1/2" dice
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbs. dried parsley
1 tsp. dried thyme
4 c. water + 1 veg. boullion (or 4 c. veg. stock)
1 c. barley
2 Tbs. soy sauce
1/2 c. frozen corn
salt & pepper to taste

Soak dried mushrooms in boiling water for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a medium stock pot, saute onions, carrots, celery, and portobellos in oil with a little salt & pepper until they're starting to get tender. Add garlic, parsley and thyme, and cook another minute or so, then add porcinis and their soaking liquid and all the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat a little and simmer, partially covered, until barley is cooked, about 30 minutes. Season with more salt& pepper to taste. (For a thinner soup you can use less barley - like 1/2 cup.)

You could serve this with some crusty bread, but tonight while the soup was cooking Chris made some guacamole that we snacked on with some tortilla chips so between that and the soup it was plenty of food.

Spinach Curry

Here's one of my favorite recipes which is very loosely based on a similar recipe in Indian Vegetarian Cooking by Michael Pandya. I often make this with some cubed tofu so it's sort of like the palak paneer you get at Indian restaurants, but tonight I used seitan. (We were in an Asian market a while ago browsing for something interesting and we found a can that said "vegetarian curry chicken". We decided to buy a can and give it a try, and tonight I used it in this dish - it was essentially just seitan with some curry spices.)

2 Tbs. vegan margarine
3 Tbs. canola oil
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
1" cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp. garam masala
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. ground corriander
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. strained tomatoes
3 Tbs. soy sour cream (or soy yogurt)
1 c. veggie stock
16 oz. bag frozen spinach
1 c. chopped seitan (or cubed tofu)

Heat margarine and oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add onion and saute for a few minutes, then add garlic and spices and cook a minute or two more. Add remaining ingredients, mix everything together and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it starts to get fairly thick. Remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaf before serving. We served ours with brown rice. Oh, and we started with a salad of red leaf lettuce, carrots, cucumber, and avacado, with a lemon tahini dressing.

Pasta with Veggies

We still had a couple of leftovers from back when we made pizza, namely a little of the red sauce that was the base, and a little of the creamy sauce we used on top. I figured both would be good with pasta. This morning I made the tempeh sausage crumbles from Vegan with a Vengeance and we had about half of that with some home fries for breakfast. The rest I mixed with the pizza sauce and for dinner we had that over some whole wheat spaghetti (which we mentioned here) topped with steamed broccoli, yellow squash, and red bell pepper. The creamy sauce went on top along with some fresh ground black pepper. We also had a simple salad with red leaf lettuce, carrot, cucumber, and chickpeas and a lemon-tahini dressing that started as a sauce for our chickpea kibbeh last week. (Sometimes dinner is motivated by what we need to use up in the fridge.)

Stewed Tofu and Potatoes in Miso Gravy

Back to Vegan with a Vengeance tonight for this yummy stew. The base is veggie broth, white wine and miso, and it has mushrooms, yukon gold potatoes and tofu, with onions, shallots, garlic and a few other seasonings. We served it with a nice crusty baguette. It came out really good, but if we make it again, we might use a little less tofu and cut it into a dice. The recipe calls for a pound of tofu cut into large triangles, and while that was good, I think it's more of a personal preference for both of us to have our tofu in smaller pieces in a dish like this.

Christian's Pizza

Dinner out tonight (Yay! no dishes!). We walked downtown (which is about a 25 min. walk for us) and braved the crowd at Christian's. This is by far the most popular place for pizza in Charlottesville and it's a madhouse on a Friday night, but with good reason. They've got tons of varieties of gourmet pizza by the slice and that usually includes at least one or two kinds with no cheese and piled high with roasted veggies.

It's "first fridays" here when, during the first Friday of every month, all the local art galleries stay open late, so on the way home we stopped at Creature Gallery for an opening. We ran into some friends, saw some awesome wildlife photography, and ate a little more since there were really good snacks there (Red Hot Blues & salsa, veggies & hummus, bread & olive tapenade, and some good local wine and beer). If you like wildlife photography, follow the link above; this guy does some amazing work.

Creamy Pasta and Fried Plantains

A team effort in the kitchen tonight. I got home from work a little later than usual and Darlene was working on the creamy pasta sauce like the one in Very Vegetarian that we have fairly regularly (see this post). We also had a plantain that was very ripe so I sliced that up and fried it in a little oil - I just seasoned it with a little salt and a spice mix kind of like Emeril's essence.

Veggie Burgers and Beer Battered Onion Rings

Mmmmm.... fried food.... Not something that's necessarily healthy all the time, but every once in a while... YUM! I've always been a little intimidated by the thought of deep frying, but after listening to the Vegan Cooking School podcast episode on onion rings I decided to give it a whirl. And they came out awesome - better than most of what I've had in restaurants. I did them in a smaller pot in small batches and I ate so many while I was still cooking more, I hardly had room for my veggie burger. One note - this recipe made way more than the two of us could eat, so if you try it invite some friends over. Or cut the recipe in half and use a small onion (of course then you'll have to find something to do with that other half of the beer...)