» Archive for February, 2008

Sauteed Spinach

Thursday, February 28th, 2008 by cyn
spinach.jpg I made this with the blue collar hash because I was craving some sort of green veggie. I sauteed the mushrooms with peanut oil, sesame oil, chile oil, and white wine, and when they were nice and soft I added the spinach. It turned out, uh, a little oily, but other than that tasty. Yay for mushrooms and spinach, my favorite veggies.

Blue Collar Hash

Thursday, February 28th, 2008 by cyn
hash.jpg from Veganomicon I made this and I was all "Hmmm, this is pretty good but kind of bland," and then I realized I had used twice as many potatoes as I should have. (You see, I thought the bag was one pound, but actually it was two. Oops!) In other news, I am an idiot. An idiot with a lot of potato hash. I've been using the leftovers as a ketchup & sriracha vehicle, as I do with potatoes, and they're pretty good that way.

Spicy Tempeh Nori Rolls

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 by cyn
sushi.jpg from Veganomicon I made these with arborio rice, because I couldn't find sushi rice and the internet said arborio would be a good substitution. Thanks, internet! I made the inari using tofu pockets from the asian market, and I stuck some of the spicy tempeh mixture in there too. I also mixed it up a bit by making some rolls with strips of fried tofu from the asian market. I feel like my rolls could have been rolled a little bit tighter & rounder, but everything was still tasty. Next time I want to make more veggie based rolls and really rock out with the cucumber and avocado. Also, I made sushi! And that's really exciting.

Italian Grilled Tofu

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 by cyn
grilltof1.jpg from Veganomicon I made this to go with the quiche, mainly just as an excuse to use my new grill pan and to kill some time while waiting for the quiche to finish. It turned out pretty good, although I think I had the heat turned up too high at first because the tofu sort of burnt to the pan on the grill parts. (Or maybe my pan isn't seasoned enough yet?) But once I started flipping it faster I got some nice grill marks going on.

Asparagus Quiche With Tomatoes and Tarragon

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 by cyn
quiche.jpg from Veganomicon This was really tasty, but it took forever to make. I started cooking at 6:30 and finished around 9, and that was starting with a pie crust I'd made previously. If I make this again, I'll do it on a lazy Saturday or something and not on a week night. Still, the flavors were really nice, the beans & walnuts seemed kind of cheesy tasting to me, and I liked the tarragon. I also made the crust with 1/3 whole wheat flour to make it heartier & healthier.

Calzone

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 by cyn
calzone.jpg Ingredients: Trader Joe's Pizza Dough Medium Eggplant 2 Leeks Onion 3 cloves garlic Crimini Mushrooms Sun-dried Tomatoes 1/2 recipe Cashew Ricotta Braggs Rosemary Oregano Majorum Red Pepper Flakes Sherry Calzones are almost as awesome as tofu scramble for using up all the random veggies kicking it around my fridge. I sauteed the veggies sort of as I was chopping them, just throwing stuff in my cast iron frying pan when I was done cutting it up, and then I added the spices once everything was in there. I would have used Herbs de Provence, except I was out. After the veggies were all soft, I rolled out the pizza dough as thin as I could, put it on a baking sheet, and put in the veggies and then the tofu ricotta, and folded over the pizza dough and smooshed/rolled together the edges. I sprayed the top of it with spray olive oil and baked everything at 450 for fifteen minutes. My boyfriend really liked this, and both he & my omnivore roommate were impressed by how cheesy the cashew ricotta was. Yay calzones for being easy, delicious, and impressive to people who don't realize how simple they are to make.

Pistachio Rosewater Cookies

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 by cyn
cookies.jpg from Veganomicon ZOMG these were so good. I made 32 of these and had 10 left the next day, and that involved making a concentrated effort to not have six cookies and cup of coffee for breakfast. (I had three cookies and cup of coffee.) They were really sweet, possibly aided by my subbing some brown sugar because we didn't have enough regular sugar, and the rosewater and the lime in these just had this perfect delicate flavor, sort of perfumey and sweet and tart. These cookies also used cornstarch as their binding agent (i.e. "egg replacer") which I found sort of interesting, as I don't think I've seen that in baked goods before.

Asian Style Tofu Scramble

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 by cyn
tofscram.jpg from Vegan with a Vengeance Leave it to the always reliable tofu scramble to get my cooking groove back. I made this using the Asian scramble variation from VwaV, except with string beans instead of mushrooms, adding a couple teaspoons of Five Spice Powder, and throwing in some spinach at the end. Oh, and I added more turmeric to make it yellow since I was leaving out the nutritional yeast. Turned out a little bit stir-fry-like for breakfast, but I am totally down with that.

Tahini Rotini with Broccoli and Lemon

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 by cyn
tahini.jpg from Vegan Planet I think maybe I just had a bad couple of days in the kitchen, because I was disappointed by this too. Part of it was my fault, as I way over cooked the broccoli and ended up with sad broccoli mush. But I also was expecting the sauce to be more sesame-tahini, kind of like the Sesame Soba Noodles from Vegan Planet, and it was more like a thinned out hummus. I did like the lemon flavor in it, though. I ate this with this sesame & nori seasoning, which is why it's so green in the photo.

Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits

Monday, February 18th, 2008 by cyn
bisbean.jpg from Veganomicon I was really excited about this because, leeks! Biscuits! Use of cast iron skillet! These are things that are good. But then when I finally made it, I found the finished product kind of bland, and felt like it was missing something. This was extra disappointing since it took over an hour and a half to make the cassoulet. It was sad times, and making biscuits should never be sad times.