Well we did it again. Veganizing Rachael Ray that is. I won't do the spiel this time but we flipped over to the Food Network one evening last week and Rayray was making gnocchi with a celery salad. Darlene loves celery in her salads and you know how much we love gnocchi so we had to do it. Ms. Ray's
recipe for the gnocchi used chicken meatballs; we just did the chicken-style seitan from
La Dolce Vegan and divided it into very small pieces before boiling it then baking it. I also added some leftover sun-dried tomato pesto to the seitan dough to perk up the meatballs a little. They weren't quite nice and round but still yummy.
For the celery salad, we mostly followed her
recipe but obviously left out the anchovies. (Don't you hate it when you see someone on the Food Network making something that's otherwise vegan but then they ruin it by adding something stupid like anchovies?)
Something else Darlene and I did together this weekend was make pretzels - a first for both of us. We found the recipe in a glossy bread cookbook I got for Christmas last year and they came out really nice. They didn't quite brown up nice and glossy without the egg wash but still they tasted great. At first they weren't so good the next day but we found that putting them in the toaster revived them quite nicely.
I also made some rosemary-olive oil bread this weekend and for dinner tonight we finally tried
Dreena's Lemon-Herb Tofu and it was excellent. We had it with steamed green beans and some of the aforementioned bread but we were in too much of a hurry to eat so no picture of that.
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For the celery salad, we mostly followed her recipe but obviously left out the anchovies. (Don't you hate it when you see someone on the Food Network making something that's otherwise vegan but then they ruin it by adding something stupid like anchovies?)
Something else Darlene and I did together this weekend was make pretzels - a first for both of us. We found the recipe in a glossy bread cookbook I got for Christmas last year and they came out really nice. They didn't quite brown up nice and glossy without the egg wash but still they tasted great. At first they weren't so good the next day but we found that putting them in the toaster revived them quite nicely.
I also made some rosemary-olive oil bread this weekend and for dinner tonight we finally tried Dreena's Lemon-Herb Tofu and it was excellent. We had it with steamed green beans and some of the aforementioned bread but we were in too much of a hurry to eat so no picture of that.
13 comments:
I hear you on the food network complaint. I can't tell you how many times I've yelled at the telly when they muck up a veggie soup with chicken broth. Still, i do pull a lot of inspiration from their programming...
fun fun!
The homemade pretzels are so exciting!!!
also, i think the celery salad looks very good. i'm a big celery fan. Have you ever noticed how much tastier organic celery is? It has a much stronger flavor.
lastly, I made a bunch of chicken seitan from LDV yesterday too... mmmm. I'm in a big seitan mood these days.
Wow, you two have been busy :) The pretzels look yummy - and fun!
Cool- I've never made homemade pretzels, but I bet they'd be comforting and yum-o!
I am also a hopeless gnocchi devotee. The texture is just amazing.
I grumble frequently about the prevalence of chicken stock on the food network too notmai. But at least it's easy to veganize such a recipe.
I've never thought about the taste of organic vs. regular celery Amey but we go back and forth on which kind we get so I'll think about it next time. This particular salad was made with organic and it was quite tasty.
Thanks Mikaela! They were fun. Yum-o in deed bazu ;-) We do love our gnocchi!
Does anyone know if there are any vegetarian cooking shows on the Food Network? I haven't noticed any over here--but then I rarely watch, probably because they muck everything up with meat!
Everything looks amazing! I love how you guys always make such inspiring dishes!
Okay, I think there are enough vegans linked to blogs to demand a vegetarian food show on the food network!
Let's start a petition!
There aren't any veg. shows on Food Network that I know of and I have my doubts about whether there will be any time soon. There's totally enough interest but if you think about their advertising, they're very heavily supported by the meat and dairy industries and they probably don't want to risk offending their advertisers by having a veg. show. I suppose vegetarian could fly but not vegan. My cynical 2¢...
Just to add, their one token "healthy" cooking show (w/Elie Krieger) is all about how steak and pork etc. can be healthy, if just prepared properly!
I agree with Chris that a veg. show on the Food Network would be anathema to everything that network stands for.
mmm I've been meaning to make pretzels for a few weeks now...
Hi Chris,
It all looks great! Regarding your pretzels not browning up - before putting them in the oven, did you dip them in a baking soda liquid-y mixture? I don't know if that is logically why they didn't brown, but when I made pretzels the recipe called for that as the final step and they were really nice and brown.
Hmmm... didn't do that but maybe we'll give it a try next time. Thanks for the tip.
Yep, to dipping pretzels in soda solution before adding any toppings and then baking; when I started doing that, the pretzels came out brown. I learned that from an Amish (not-vegan) cooking pamphlet I have; the four-line recipe makes good pretzels, but I use half whole-grain flour. The recipe's solution proportions are 1/4 cup water mixed with 1 tsp baking soda.
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