Corn Pudding, Take 2

Way back when, I posted about the Corn Pudding and Chile Cornmeal-Crusted Tofu recipes from Veganomicon. Somehow I remembered that post just recently because I said I couldn't wait until summer to make the corn pudding with fresh corn. And the time is nigh for fresh corn. I picked up half a dozen ears at the farmers market on Saturday and found some time to make the corn pudding on Sunday. I also made another big batch of seitan so instead of the chile-cornmeal tofu we had the same coating on seitan.

The corn pudding was amazing with frozen corn but it was so much better with fresh because it got all sweet and lusciously caramel-y on the bottom. Our time for cooking is scarce these days but we might have to make this again before corn season is over. I'm not totally sold on the cornmeal coating on either the seitan or the tofu though. I fried it this time because I thought it came out a little dry baked, but now I think it's the cornmeal that makes it kind of dry. It was still really good, but next time I might use half cornmeal and half flour for the coating. Or I'll just go for our old standby and use almond flour.

Summer Wraps

I shoot from the hip a lot more when cooking these days. That is to say, I do it all the time. Sure, I used to improvise on occasion, but I also used to spend weekends poring over cookbooks or magazines or blogs trying to find interesting new recipes to try. Nowadays what little "free" time I have on weekends is spent doing errands, paying bills or maybe - heaven forbid - sleeping an extra hour. So when dinner time comes around, if it's not something frozen or just a big salad or sandwich, it's something made up on the fly. Like these wraps. I did find the time to make a quick run to the farmers market over the weekend and we've even gotten a few squash and tomatoes from our small garden.

I started by cooking some rice with crushed tomatoes and a little lime juice and cumin. Then I cooked onions and yellow squash and added fresh corn, white beans, fresh tomatoes and garlic. I don't quite remember how it was seasoned but probably with chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper. The rice and squash mixture went into tortillas and we topped it with lettuce and more fresh tomatoes. Not the best thing I've ever made but it was quick and there were plenty of leftovers which is always a bonus.

Oh, and baby Jonas is doing really well but as you can tell, we don't have time for doing much else now except for taking care of him.

Spicy Seitan Fingers

Here's something fun we made over the July 4th weekend. We've done something similar in the past with TVP chunks and with tempeh but I was inspired by Vegan Dad's wingz recipes to try this again with seitan. I found time on my day off on the 4th to sleep a little and also to make a huge batch of the Real Food Daily seitan recipe so here's what I did with part of it. This was kind of an experiment but it came out really good. We use a milder hot sauce like Frank's Red Hot for this but if you want to use something hotter knock yourself out.

1 lb. seitan, cut into strips
1 Tbs. peanut oil
2 Tbs. maple syrup
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. liquid smoke
1/4 c. Earth Balance margarine
1/4 c. hot sauce

Prehet the oven to 350°. Heat a large oven-proof skillet over medium heat. Add the oil then the seitan and fry the seitan until brown on all sides. Add the maple syrup, soy sauce, cider vinegar, and liquid smoke and cook for a minute or so until the seitan is nice and glazed. Add the margarine and hot sauce and mix everything around until the margarine is melted. Pop the whole thing in the oven to finish for 15 minutes. We had ours with macaroni salad and steamed broccoli on the side.