» Archive for January, 2009

Braised Winter Greens with Chickpeas, Onion and Garlic, Crash Hot Potatoes

Saturday, January 31st, 2009 by cyn
greenspotatoes Potatoes from Vegan Yum Yum, greens from Orangette Yes, so, I may have mentioned that I was addicted to these potatoes? Like, crazy, make them two days in a row addicted? This time I went all out crazy, it was totally Potatoes-Gone-Wild. I mashed them super flat with my potato masher, then I drizzled plenty of olive oil over them and sprinkled them with salt, pepper, nutritional yeast, garlic powder and smoked paprika. Oh yes, it was madness. And they came out even better than the day before, even crispier and creamier and saltier and more delicious. My boyfriend especially was a fan of these. I used six sort of smallish red potatoes, and the boyfriend and I ate them all. (I had eaten one before I even served dinner.) We are smashed potato crazy. To balance our potatoes gone wild, we had the sensible chard and chickpeas. This is a super simple recipe, just chard, chickpeas, onion, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice, but it's one of those totally-delicious-in-its-simplicity recipes. It was a great balance for my potatoes gone wild, and quite yummy in its own right. Once of those recipes that you feel good eating, because it's tasty and good for you and almost slightly earnest. I thought the chickpeas especially really shined here. My boyfriend kind of shunned this though, I think it was too much chard for him. Local: Chard, onion

Crash Hot Potatoes, Sesame Orange Tofu, Cabbage with Hot Sauce

Thursday, January 29th, 2009 by cyn
potatos tofu from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan, potatoes from Vegan Yum Yum, cabbage from Orangette This sesame orange tofu is becoming my goto tofu on nights when I don't know what to make - I always have a billion oranges from the CSA lying around, I don't have to remember to marinate the tofu ahead of time, and it is easy and delicious. Plus the sauce thickens up beautifully from the cornstarch. It's really, really nice. I am not going to lie to you, I think I may be addicted to these potatoes from Vegan Yum Yum. I have made them two more times since this. They are so easy! And so delicious! And so completely covered in olive oil! I made these guys super simple, just (lots of) olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then I sprinkled smoked paprika on them once they were out of the oven. So good! So many crispy bits, and such a creamy inside! So good they cause me to use more exclamation points than is strictly speaking necessary! I broiled them for a couple minutes at the end to get them extra crispity. You should definitely make these, although it may be the start of an olive oil laden addiction. The cabbage I suspect would have been delicious, if I had not gone crazy and thrown in way too much sriracha. I ate it anyway, and I liked it! I just had to drink lots of water, to help with the burning. The boyfriend, who has less patience with failed food experiments than I do, or maybe feels less guilty and compelled to eat them because he is not the one doing the ruining, shunned the cabbage after a couple of bites. It was actually decent mixed with with the tofu, it added a nice bit of spice to the tofu and the tofu took the edge off of it. Local: Cabbage, oranges

Mexican Green Rice, Hummus, Bok Choy

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 by cyn
greenrice rice from Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure I had soaked the chickpeas to make some kind of chickpea salad with, but when it came time to actually make dinner, I decided what I really wanted was hummus. I remembered that in Veganomicon, Isa says the secret to really creamy hummus is to use the blender instead of a food processor, so into the blender I chuck my three cups of cooked chickpeas, some lemon juice, garlic, tahini, salt, pepper, cumin, a dash of sesame oil, some of the chickpea cooking liquid, and enough olive oil to make it about the right texture. (The sesame oil gives the hummus a delicious bit of smoke flavor, I recommend it highly!) The hummus did turn out wonderfully creamy, but it required an insane amount of poking around in the blender with a spoon to get all of the chickpeas to blend, and towards the end of things my blender was giving off a kind of Not Good smell. So I would recommend this method only if you have a blender that doesn't suck - I'm going back to the food processor, and I'm just going to ignore any slight graininess of the resulting hummus. The Mexican rice was quite good, despite me overcooking it quite a bit. (I subbed white basmati for brown rice, then followed the brown rice directions instead of cutting down on the time.) I think in the future I'll leave out the corn, as I find corn insipid, and who needs both rice and corn? It's like a big starch party. I ate the leftovers for lunch mixed in with leftover red beans from the night before and some guacamole left over from tempeh quesadillas, and it was fantastic. The bok choy I just stir-fried with some olive oil and soy sauce. I might have added some red pepper flakes too, I don't remember. (I do like adding red pepper flakes to things!) Local: Bok choy, cilantro, parsley

Granny’s Corn Casserole, Louisiana Red Beans, Chard

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 by cyn
corncass Corn casserole is a Vegan Crunk tester beans beans from Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure Oh man, this corn casserole . . . I don't even like corn, and it was delicious. I served it to a friend of mine, and she was like "I would like to bathe in this." It's good, people. Deliciously, sinfully good. The three of us ate it all and scraped the casserole dish clean. I was worried it would be bland, but there are diced green chilies in there along with corn and cream cheese, and they add just the perfect amount of spice. So good! The red beans were tasty, although they turned out too watery. (This was entirely my fault, there are even instructions in the recipe telling you to drain off some of the extra water which I for some reason didn't follow.) I just decided to make them soup, and they were tasty that way. I've been making beans all the time since I got the pressure cooker, and I love it. The chard I just stir-fried with some soy sauce and a splash of worcestershire sauce. Our friend and I liked it, the boyfriend didn't. Simple, easy, pleasing to two out of three people. Local: Chard

Tempeh Quesadillas

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 by cyn
quesadilla Made by the boyfriend I've put the boyfriend in charge of making dinner once a week, because I am mean, and sometimes I just want to come home from school and have dinner magically be made, without having to cook dinner myself or have to worry about spending money buying it. For his first dinner, the boyfriend made tempeh quesadillas, using homemade tempeh marinated in leftover Vegan Crunk Tempeh Bacon Marinade and Tofutti cheese. He also used the quesadilla maker that's been sitting around our kitchen forever, a gadget we should use more often. Please let me know if you have ideas for what we could do with it! These quesadillas were totally delicious, especially with salsa and guacamole on top of them. You'll notice there's no vegetable component of this meal - that's because he claimed the guac should count as a veggie! So look forward to Boyfriend Made meals appearing about once a week from now on - guaranteed to be easy enough for your boyfriend who's afraid of the oven to make!

Country Potato Soup, Salad

Monday, January 19th, 2009 by cyn
countrysoup soup is a Vegan Crunk tester Oh man, this soup. It's so creamy, you cannot even imagine. Not to mention hearty. And delicious. It's homey, somehow. It's like you just came out of the rain and this soup wants to wrap you in a warm blanket and set you down in front of a fire and give you some hot cocoa. This soup wants to give you a hug. A creamy, starchy hug filled with potatoes and carrots and little salty nuggets of tempeh bacon. A hug that will fill your belly before you've even finished one bowl, and make you wish that you could swap out for a new, empty stomach and eat some more lovely soup. I used the ranch dressing from the Real Foods Daily cookbook on the salad, and it was just a straight up, classic ranch dressing, vegan style. My boyfriend didn't find it all that exciting, but I was thrilled because I had been looking for a good vegan ranch. I did find it slightly thin, but I think upping the amount of tofu and lowering the amount of soymilk would fix that. I also made some croutons out of a loaf of bread that was sitting around getting stale - I liked them, but my boyfriend thought they were too crunchy and boycotted them. Local: Carrots, salad fixins

Winter Squash Risotto, Tempeh Bacon, Salad

Sunday, January 18th, 2009 by cyn
squashrisotto Tempeh is a Vegan Crunk Tester, risotto from Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure This tempeh bacon was so tasty! And I actually had all the ingredients lying around, which is nice. I like the VwaV tempeh bacon, but I never make it because I never have apple cider, and if I buy apple cider I have to figure out what to do with the rest of it. And apple cider doesn't go particularly well with gin, so it's not like I'm going to drink it. Anyway, unlike that tempeh bacon, Bianca's tempeh bacon won't leave me with a giant jug of barely used apple cider taking up half the fridge, and it is, if anything, even more delicious. Sweet, smokey, salty, it's got it all. The winter squash risotto was decidedly meh, a fact I am blaming entirely on this stupid mediocre squash the CSA keeps giving me. First it took forever to peel the damn thing, and then when it was cooked it didn't even taste good. It did have an amazing texture though - I mashed up the squash a little with a potato masher when it was done cooking, and it made the risotto even creamier than it normally is. I think this would probably be delicious if you made it with the butternut squash called for in the recipe, just don't substitute carnival squash, it will suck and you'll be sad and your wrists will hurt from hacking the stupid thing up. This did taste better when I mixed in some of the tempeh bacon, and it got better as leftovers, but still, seriously bland. Local: Salad fixins, squash

Texas Caviar, Mac n Cheez

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 by cyn
texascaviar bean salad from Yellow Rose Recipes, Mac n' Cheez from Vegan Yum Yum I think we have a new favorite mac n' cheez. My boyfriend especially loved this one, he said he liked it even better than our previous favorite, the creamiest mac n' cheez ever. And this one involves only a blender, two pots and one baking dish, instead of three pots and a baking dish. (Same number of things to wash, but less stirring.) I like that it involved carrots and potatoes, although I was slightly frightened by the amount of earth balance involved. I used greens instead of broccoli, and they turned out super delicious - they added a nice bitter contrast the creamy mac n' cheez, and got wonderfully crispy on top. I think I'll probably try the original Veg News version of this at some point, but I have trouble imaging mac n' cheez being as good without lots of noochy goodness. I think the secret of this is really the cashews, though - they add an awesome creaminess and richness. I messed up the Texas Caviar by adding too many beans - I used two cups per "can" called for by the recipe, instead of 1.5 cups. The resulting bean salad turned out slightly bland. It was still good, just not as flavorful as it could have been. I also subbed dill for cilantro, and didn't let it sit in the fridge for long enough. I did use the leftovers from this thrown into green salads for the rest of the week, and they were delicious in that capacity. It also got much better as it sat in the fridge and I used up some of the extra beans that were blanding it up. Local: Carrots, green onions, parsley, dill

Beet Borsht

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 by cyn
borsht from Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure My boyfriend said "How did you get beets to taste so good?" I was slightly less incredulous, but I agree that this was totally delicious. It was tangy and savory and super filling, and used up both some of my dill and some of the soy yogurt left over from the tandoori. I bet this would be super good with some barley thrown in, too. I got to use both the pressure cooker and the immersion blender while making this - yay for kitchen gadgets! And it cooked up super fast, thanks to the pressure cooker. I'm definitely going to keep this in mind when I get more beets from the CSA. Local: Beets, dill

Baby Lima Beans with Spinach and Dill, Mexican Pesto

Monday, January 12th, 2009 by cyn
limas Lima beans from Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure, pesto from Yellow Rose Recipes I subbed mizuna for spinach in the lima beans, since that's what I had around. I also added some nutritional yeast, just because it seemed sort of appropriate. Sometimes I just get an urge to add nutritional yeast to things. This turned out great, creamy and delicious, with a really nice lightness from the lemon juice and dill. The mizuna got a little bit stringy, so next time I think I'll chop it up finer. (To be honest, I barely chopped it all other than trimming the stems off.) This was supposed be reminiscent of creamed spinach, but I'm not sure I've ever had creamed spinach, so I can't say much about that. I can say that it was good, and it helped me get through some of the insane amount of dill I've gotten from my CSA recently. (Seriously, I have two huge bags of dill in my crisper right now. Let me know if you have good ideas for what to do with it - I've mostly been throwing it into salad dressing.) The pasta sadly turned out kind of bland. I think I just didn't add enough pesto to it, and then instead of just adding more pesto, I kept adding more salt until it was slightly too salty. I also added some shredded carrots and radishes in an attempt to liven it up, but I think I should have sauteed them for a minute first, because they just seemed aggressively raw. I liked this better as leftovers, but it was never super amazing. I think it would have been better if I'd added some lemon juice or hot sauce. I've got a bunch more of this pesto in the freezer now, so I'm hoping that it's just a matter of not adding enough of it this time. Local: Herbs, mizuna, carrots, radishes