Veganomicon and Beyond

I know I've posted plenty of pizza on here, but this time I made the sauce from scratch! I used the marinara sauce recipe from Veganomicon. It was so simple and, despite the short list of ingredients, made a very flavorful sauce. We ate the rest of the sauce on some gnocchi. I think I enjoyed this sauce more than the bottled sauces I've tried, and it is much cheaper to make.

Can you tell just how much I love Veganomicon? This is the Saffron-Garlic Rice, served with Morningstar Farms chik'n strips and sautéed bell peppers. My boyfriend said this might very well be his favorite rice yet. Garlic and onions can do no wrong around here.

I think I have a problem. I am addicted to testing recipes for others. These Buffalo Breakfast potatoes are a tester recipe for Frecklefoot over at the PPK. You can check out her blog here.
I did something silly at the grocery store recently. Even though Texas Pete hot sauce has never failed me, I bought the generic stuff because it was cheaper (not that Texas Pete is all that expensive). Little did I know that the generic stuff has no spice to it at all. It shall henceforth by known as "not hot sauce". So, these potatoes tasted great, but it was all tang and no heat whatsoever. I'll definitely be making them again, but with a different hot sauce in the future.

Sadly, the vanilla-yogurt pound cake is all gone. We were in need of another dessert last night, so I chose the Chewy Chocolate-Raspberry Cookies from Veganomicon. My boyfriend was skeptical, but in the end the cookies won him over. He said he would have eaten the whole batch if I'd let him. The introduction to this recipe in Veganomicon says that they are wonderful as ice-cream sandwich cookies. I'll be trying that this summer!

Paella with Tomatoes

We recently picked up a copy of The New York Times. I flipped through the dining section, not really expecting to find anything applicable to vegans. I was surprised to find a vegan paella recipe (assuming you use vegetable stock), especially since I always thought paella had shellfish in it. The paella with tomatoes recipe by Mark Bittman can be found online here, although I'm not sure if you'll need to log into the NY Times site in order to view it. Since I had the recipe in mind when we were at the Nashville farmers' market, we got local roma tomatoes there. Yum! Unfortunately we don't have an oven-safe skillet, so we had to make this on the stove-top. It worked all right, but I plan on trying it again in the oven once we get said skillet. I served this with sautéed chickpeas and artichoke hearts (I added some spices and such, but can't remember what I used besides nutritional yeast). This was very good, but we both agreed that we might add a little heat to it next time (cayenne or red pepper flakes, I suppose).

Italian-Marinated Tofu and Portobella Mushrooms Over Saffron Risotto

I have learned an awesome (and FAST) way to make risotto....in my pressure cooker! The tofu and portobella mushrooms are marinated in the Italian marinade from Vegan with a Vengeance. I followed the baking instructions for the tofu and sautéed the portobellas in a cast iron skillet while the tofu was finishing up in the oven. The incredibly simple risotto recipe follows.

Saffron Risotto with Red Bell Pepper

2 TB olive oil
1 yellow or white onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 1/2 c arborio rice
1 ts salt
pinch of saffron
3 1/2 c vegetable broth
ground black pepper, to taste

Heat olive oil in pressure cooker over medium-high heat. Add onion, garlic, and red bell pepper and sauté, stirring occasionally, for two minutes. Add rice and stir to coat with the oil. Stir in salt, saffron, and vegetable broth. Lock lid in place and bring pressure cooker up to high pressure over high heat. Once pressure cooker has come to high pressure, reduce heat until it is just high enough to maintain high pressure (for me this is between medium and medium-high) and cook for five minutes. Release pressure with a quick-release method. Stir in black pepper to taste and serve.

Rainbow Rice and Beans

This is another tester recipe for lolo at VeganYumYum. I know rice and beans sounds like a pretty simple dish, and this was easy to make, but it was also delicious. There is Worcestershire sauce in the recipe and that was also a lolo test recipe (conveniently so, as I had all of the ingredients and was going to put Worcestershire sauce on my grocery list anyway). I should have put peas in this, but I was all out, so I used some green peppers instead to still have something green in there. There is also corn, but it seems to be mostly hiding in that picture. This is a dish that we'll definitely be making more often.

Cheezy Rice and Broccoli Casserole

This is the cheezy rice and broccoli casserole from Joanne Stepaniak's The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook. I tried to make this once before and, due to a momentary lapse in my critical reading skills, totally ruined the recipe. The recipe calls for either umeboshi paste or salt. You aren't supposed to use the same amount of salt as you would umeboshi paste. In fact, it rather clearly says "or salt, to taste." I missed that "to taste" instruction on that ill-fated attempt and had to throw out the incredibly salty mess I had made. This time I followed the directions much better. And the result was tasty. Cheezy enough for me, but I don't know if it would taste cheesy to a non-vegan.

More Test Recipes

This non-traditional fried rice is a test recipe for mrsbadmouth. I don't recall if I've ever had traditional fried rice, but I really liked this one. The vegetables you include are really up to you. I used mushrooms, onion, green pepper, carrots, broccoli, and garlic. I was supposed to make this with brown rice, but I was all out, so I used the white rice I had in the pantry. I definitely won't mind making it again so that I can try it with the brown rice I should have used.

This is strawberry and vanilla bean haupia, which is a test recipe for lolo over at VeganYumYum. Haupia is a Hawaiian dessert and is a sort of coconut pudding (it's thicker than pudding, though). This was good, but is probably not something I will make often simply because vanilla beans are so expensive. I did really like the texture and flavor of this, though. If I make it again, I will probably serve the sliced strawberries separately, but that's mainly because my boyfriend is weird and doesn't like strawberries (he says it's a texture thing, as he didn't mind the strawberry sauce....yet he doesn't understand my dislike of raw bananas).

The Conclusion of Vegan Planet Week

This is Indonesian-Style Rice with Tempeh. The tempeh is crumbled up, which is why it's not really visible in the photo. This was my least favorite of all of the recipes from Vegan Planet that we tried last week. My boyfriend actually liked it quite a bit, though, so it might just be a personal preference and not a knock on the recipe. The recipe calls for one or two hot red peppers. Said red peppers were nowhere to be found in Knoxville last week, so I used two hot green peppers (I don't know exactly what variety they were...Kroger's doesn't seem to believe in accurately identifying their peppers). I couldn't decide if they were going to be more or less hot than the red peppers would have been. I wound up adding two peppers and I could barely detect any heat in the dish. Maybe the spiciness is what I was missing in this recipe.

Mustard-Battered Tofu, Baked Risotto, and Green Beans

The recipe for the tofu can be found here, but in case you don't feel like clicking on the link:

Mustard-Battered Tofu

1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder
2 cups unbleached white flour or whole wheat pastry
4 Tbsp. nutritional yeast (optional)
3 Tbsp. yellow mustard
1/2 cup water
2 Tbsp. baking powder
2 to 3 lb. tofu
3 1/2 cups vegetable oil

• Mix together the salt, onion powder, pepper, garlic powder, flour, and nutritional yeast in a deep bowl.
• In a separate bowl, dilute the mustard with 1/2 cup water.
• Add 1/3 cup of the flour mixture to the mustard mixture and stir. Add the baking powder to the dry flour mixture and mix.
• Dip chunks of the mock chicken into the mustard batter, then drop each chunk into the flour mixture and coat with the desired amount of “crust.”
• Fry the chunks in hot oil on medium-high heat in a large skillet or deep fryer until crispy and golden brown, turning as needed.

I didn't use any nutritional yeast in mine, simply because I was all out of it. I only used one package of tofu (which I'd frozen and then defrosted), and I definitely should have halved the rest of the ingredients. This was really tasty, though, and it doesn't have a really strong mustard-y flavor. Shortly after this picture was taken, I dipped my tofu in ketchup. Mmmmm mustard and ketchup. My boyfriend willingly took all of the leftovers for lunch today, so I give this two thumbs up.

The baked risotto is from Nava Atlas's The Vegetarian Family Cookbook (you can see a little bit of the cookbook peaking out of the top of the picture--woopsie). This recipe was so much easier than making risotto the traditional way. Honestly, the one time I made it "traditionally" before, I didn't really like it. That was just me being picky, though, as I don't really like creamy non-dessert stuff all that much. I still had arborio rice to use up, though, and noticed this recipe and thought I'd give it a try. It bakes for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes. At first I thought it wasn't going to work at all, as the first couple of times I stirred it looked remarkably like it had when I first put it in the oven. The last time I stirred, though, it had magically turned into something resembling risotto. I thought it was going to be a little too liquidy, so when I was supposed to add a cup of water at the last stirring, I only added half a cup. It's really thick now, so I probably should have followed the directions, but honestly I kind of liked the texture better than the previous time I'd made risotto.

The green beans are nothing special. They are organic ones from a can. I added black pepper and a bit of liquid smoke. They're actually pretty good for beans from a can.

Caribbean Beans and Rice

This was the first dish we made using the pressure cooker my boyfriend got me for Hanukkah. I must admit that even though I am the one who asked for a pressure cooker, I was scared to use it. Have I mentioned that I scare really really easily? This recipe came from Lorna Sass's Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure. If this recipe is any indication of the quality of the rest of the book, it is an AWESOME cookbook. We absolutely loved this dish. I think it was one of my favorite dinners yet. I thought I was going to find black-eyed peas to be an odd addition to a Caribbean dish, but they were really good. The only substitution I made in the recipe was to use two jalapeños instead of a red chili pepper, but that was because I already had the jalapeños on hand and needed to use them up.

Broccoli-Mushroom Casserole

As promised, this is the recipe I shared for the Recipe Exchange. It is actually my boyfriend's momma's recipe. She has made it for years in a non-vegan version. When we were visiting for the holidays, she veganized it for me. I liked it so much that she gave me the recipe for it. The casserole in the picture does not have any soy cheese on it, as I was all out. I liked it just as much without the soy cheese, though.

Broccoli-Mushroom Casserole

5 tbsp. Earth Balance, divided
1/3 cup diced onions
1/2 pound fresh mushrooms - sliced
White pepper, to taste
Garlic powder, to taste
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. cooking sherry (optional)
1/4^th cup all purpose flour
2 cups plain soy milk
1 cup raw rice, cooked according to package directions
16 oz. fresh or frozen broccoli, cooked until tender
1 cup vegan soy cheese (mozzarella or cheddar style), optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Sprinkle onions and mushrooms with garlic powder, white pepper and salt, then sauté in 3 tbsp. Earth Balance and 1 tbsp. cooking sherry until onions are tender.

In saucepan, melt 2 tbsp. of Earth Balance, remove from heat and add ¼ cup flour. Stir until blended, it may be lumpy. Add 2 cups soy milk a little at a time, stirring with whisk until smooth. Return to medium heat and stir until thickened. Add mushroom mixture to sauce and stir to combine.

In large bowl, combine rice, broccoli, 1 tsp. salt and sauce. Pour into large casserole dish and sprinkle with soy cheese. Bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes or until bubbly.

Not-So-Dirty Rice

This may be our favorite recipe yet from Vegan Planet. It was pretty simple, and the only change I made was to use Gimme Lean "sausage" instead of vegetarian burger crumbles. I thought faux ground beef sounded odd in dirty rice. My boyfriend took the leftovers for lunch and came home saying how much he liked this dish, so I think it's a winner.

West Indian Red Beans with Coconut Rice

This is another recipe from the Moosewood Restaurant's Simple Suppers. The recipe said to use either red pepper flakes or a chile. We had a habanero to use, so decided to be a little daring. The dish wasn't nearly as spicy as we feared, but we really liked it. The tomatoes and onions were a nice touch.