Mission 2: Spinach

Mission 2 for Operation "Let's Eat Some New Vegetables" brings us the mushroom and spinach strata from Veganomicon. I am pleased with myself for getting my boyfriend to eat spinach without complaint. Normally he's quite scared of the stuff and has even pleaded with me not to add it to lasagna. I picked out this recipe to make before we went grocery shopping yesterday. When we were in the produce section, I simply said that I needed some spinach and picked some out. He did not even question what I was going to do with it. I was already working on the recipe when he came home from work, and he said that it smelled good. Not once did he balk that it contained spinach. And....he loved the dish! (As did I.) It uses blended up soft tofu (with some other ingredients) as the base of the custard, which is poured over the vegetable and bread cube mixture. I should have taken a picture of the whole dish, as it was pretty neat looking.

The spicy yogurt tempeh is a test recipe for frecklefoot (another ppk member) of One Chubby Vegan. It was tasty and I was glad to find another tempeh preparation that my boyfriend likes (although I think his favorite will always be tempeh wingz....I can't really blame him on that one). Mine didn't turn out to be all that spicy at all, though. Most of the other testers have reported that theirs was, though, so either some of my spices weren't as hot as theirs, or I just like things spicier. Either one is certainly a possibility. I will still make this dish again, but will add more spice to it probably. I'd also like to try baking it. I tend to like to try the same recipe both pan-fried and baked, to see which we prefer.

We have finally finished all of our stuffed mushrooms (there were several meals between the previous post and this one). They were good, but I was getting kind of tired of them. Perhaps that's why people usually serve stuffed mushrooms as party appetizers, as there are more people around to eat them.

Sesame Tofu

Somehow this picture slipped through the cracks when I was looking through all my backlogged food pictures. I got the recipe for sesame tofu from the Whole Foods' website, and the only change I had to make was subbing agave nectar for the honey (and I left out the scallions because I did not have any). This was good, but I don't know if I'd make it again. I think I'm just not a huge fan of sweet sauces at dinner.

And here's some more....

I finally got around to trying the pumpkin cinnamon rolls from the second issue of Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk. I have no clue why I waited so long to make these, because they are awesome. They were nice and soft with just a hint of pumpkin flavor. For those of you who haven't ordered the second issue yet, she put the recipe up on her blog. The only change I made was I used a 9x13" pan, as a 9" square pan just seemed to small to me. Normally I like my cinnamon rolls covered in cream cheese (Tofutti non-hydrogenated, of course) icing, but these were good with just the glaze.


For Hanukkah, I made the potato latkes from Veganomicon. Sorry I didn't get a very good picture of them. These were good, but I am undecided as to whether I prefer latkes with or without matzah meal. They had more body this way, but still...I'm just not sure. I like both, though. Last weekend we had a family Hanukkah celebration in Columbia, SC. We spent the night at my parents' house in Greenville, then drove down to Columbia just for the day on Saturday. I brought the leftover latkes to serve with dinner Friday night and my dad really liked them (I'm sure Momma would have, too, but she wasn't there...she went to go help out my sister with her new baby). At the family Hanukkah celebration, they made me some vegan latkes before they fried the non-vegan ones. My aunt even made me vegan cookies (Mexican wedding cookies from The Joy of Vegan Baking, which she got me for Hanukkah).

I brought some dessert with me to the family Hanukkah, so there were vegan cookies galore. I got this sugar cookie recipe from A Veg*n for Dinner. I didn't use any food coloring for the icing, though, as I avoid artificial colors and the natural food colorings are just too expensive for me right now (and I've never seen them locally anyway). I also made the sparkled ginger cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance, but I didn't take a picture because I've also blogged about them before. I have learned that my family is scared of the word ginger, but if I call them "molasses cookies," they are okay. Crazy people.

This is the hot and sour soup with napa cabbage and woodear mushrooms (I may have muddled that name up a bit) from Veganomicon. My cabbage was being stubborn about coming off the head of cabbage neatly, so I cut it up in the food processor instead. The only other time I've had hot and sour soup was at a restaurant in Richmond, VA called Panda Veg. It was good, but homemade is better (and quite simple). Awhile back we were at a Whole Foods and we found this little package of dried woodear mushrooms for a reasonable price. We'd never even heard of woodear mushrooms, but we bought them anyway, then couldn't think of a use for them. Veganomicon arrived and ta-da, finally a recipe that calls for them. This soup is both spicy and filling and the leftovers reheat well.
Hanging out behind the soup are some homemade fried wontons. They would have been spring rolls, but I was having a ton of trouble with the rice paper wrappers. I got so frustrated that I defrosted the wonton wrappers that I had in the freezer and decided to use those. I know that wontons are normally boiled, but I already had the oil all set to fry, so I just went ahead with this. They actually turned out pretty well this way. The filling was napa cabbage, red cabbage, dried shiitake mushrooms, Morningstar Farms chik'n strips (they'd been hanging out in the freezer for quite awhile, so I figured I might as well use them in something), soy sauce, sriracha sauce, ginger, and garlic.

More from Veganomicon

I served the leftover ED&BV Kinda Corny Muffins with Veganomicon's Chile Cornmeal-Crusted Tofu. I did the baked version, but forgot to spray the tofu with oil, so it was a tad bit dry. The flavor was still very good, though, and I would make this again. I am sure I would also like it fried, but I was trying to be a bit healthier. There was tons of extra coating, so I battered and fried (yeah, so much for the healthy thing) some mushrooms. My boyfriend came in the kitchen, found me coating the mushrooms, and said, "oooh, somebody loves me!" (He'll probably kill me for repeating that, but he meant it to sound goofy, I promise.) We had the carrots with the Black Creek Ranch Dressing from The Native Foods Restaurant Cookbook. It's peeking out of the top right corner of the picture...I don't know why I didn't take a purposeful picture of it. It's really good and so simple.

For dessert we had the Vanilla-Yogurt Pound Cake from Veganomicon. I haven't had pound cake in, ohh....at least a decade, but the wait was most definitely worth it. This might just be one of my favorite desserts yet. It's so moist and full of flavor. We still have plenty left, but already I want to make another. The strawberry sauce on top is homemade. I don't follow a recipe for it, but it is frozen strawberries, sugar, a splash of orange juice, and a cornstarch slurry.

Tofu Paprikas

When Isa posted this tofu paprikas dish on her blog the other day, I just had to try it. I'm not even sure why, since I had never heard of the dish before and I don't normally care much for cream sauces. Nevertheless, she somehow sold me on the idea. This was really tasty. The sauce wasn't too heavy, which I think is what I normally dislike about cream sauces. My version didn't have much spice to it, which I suppose means that my Hungarian paprika wasn't very spicy. I'd like to try this again with a hotter paprika. I think I should join Spicy-Food-Eaters Anonymous.

Barbecue Tofu Sandwiches with Herb-Scalloped Potatoes

I finally got my copy of Veganomicon!!! I did a little dance at the mailbox when I opened it and found that my books (I got Eat Drink & Be Vegan as well) were FINALLY there. Word to the wise: don't preorder books from Amazon. Apparently their policy is first-come, last served. We preordered the books in mid-August. I knew that they were going to ship together, so if one came out first (which ED&BV did), I would have to wait for the other to come out before they would ship. It took Amazon almost three weeks after Veganomicon was released to ship my books. Calling or emailing them resulted in garbled messages that didn't even apply to my situation. Amazon, your poor business practices have lost you yet another customer. Preordering books is supposed to mean that we get them as soon as they are released, not that you offer them for sale on your website to other customers before you have fulfilled all of the preorders.


On Friday night I made barbecue tofu sandwiches (served with hominy). For some reason I didn't love these sandwiches, even though I liked the barbecue tofu on its own, and I liked the homemade whole wheat bread (I used this recipe, substituting maple syrup for the honey). We had leftover sandwiches for Saturday night, but needed something to go with them. I found the herb-scalloped potatoes recipe in Veganomicon. We had all the ingredients on-hand and LOVE potatoes, so this was the first recipe I tried. I'd never had scalloped potatoes before, but these were great. I told my boyfriend that and he said that these were better than most scalloped potatoes. High praise. I can't wait to try more new recipes!

Creamy Tomato Barley Risotto...and Boston Cream Pie for dessert

This creamy tomato barley risotto is a test recipe for lolo at VeganYumYum. I don't often like creamy non-dessert things, but I am absolutely in love with this. I think I want to have it at least once a week for the rest of my life. Seriously. Recently I have noticed that we eat a heck of a lot of rice, so it's nice to have some other grain recipes to use. I served the barley risotto with baked Italian-marinated tofu (and mushrooms) from Vegan with a Vengeance.

This not-so-pretty-to-look-at (but yummy to eat) Boston Cream Pie is half from Damn Tasty and half from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I didn't have all of the ingredients for the cake recipe from Damn Tasty, so I used the golden vanilla cupcake recipe from VCTOW (I doubled the cupcake recipe and baked it in two 9" cake pans). The pudding layer and the chocolate ganache are both from the Damn Tasty recipe. This was my first time both making and eating Boston cream pie. It was indeed damn tasty.

Breaded Tofu with Mashed Potatoes and Green Beans

This dinner was actually "quickly" put together because I hadn't planned what to make and it was already dinnertime when we got back from seeing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on Saturday. I say "quickly" because who chooses to make mashed potatoes from scratch when trying to make dinner in a hurry? I don't like using tofu when it hasn't been pressed, so I sliced it and pressed the slices while the potatoes were boiling. I then dipped the tofu slices in a mixture of soy sauce, broth powder, water, and nutritional yeast and coated it in some seasoned flour (all purpose flour, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and onion powder). I let that dry for a few minutes, then dipped the tofu in the broth again and then coated it in bread crumbs. I fried the tofu for a few minutes on each side. For something I put together on the fly, it turned out really well and I plan on making it again (perhaps baking it when I have more time to spend on it).
For the mashed potatoes, we cut peeled potatoes into chunks and boiled them for 15 minutes (or until soft). We drained the potatoes, then mashed them with a couple of tablespoons of Earth Balance Whipped, then stirred in plain soymilk until the consistency was right. I'm not sure how much soymilk we wound up using, as my boyfriend was in charge of making the potatoes while I was coating the tofu.
Sadly we are all out of the home-canned green beans, so we used some organic canned ones from the grocery store. They are still good, but not as good as the home-canned ones. We prepare the beans by heating them on the stove with a bit of salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper, and some liquid smoke. Mmmm....

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.

BBQ Pomegranate Tofu and Mellow Millet Quinoa Pilaf

I finally got to try the BBQ Pomegranate Tofu from Vegan with a Vengeance. I'm SO glad I did. Yum! I have leftover BBQ sauce from it, so I'll definitely be making some more. I would like to try it with some seitan or maybe with frozen tofu. Vegan with a Vengeance recommends serving this with coconut rice, but I decided to try out the Mellow Millet Quinoa Pilaf recipe from Dreena Burton's Vive le Vegan. We bought some millet at the health food store awhile ago because I was wanting to experiment with some new grains, but it's just been hanging out in the pantry ever since. I'm glad I finally found a use for it! The pilaf wasn't quite as umm....pilaf-y as I was expecting. Because millet is sticky, the pilaf had a little more of a creamy consistency. Had I realized that, I probably would have served the broccoli and cauliflower separately. Next time I make this, I'll probably spice it up a bit more, but I'm glad to have found a new recipe that uses whole grains (well, quinoa is a grass and not actually a grain, but close enough for me!).

Calzones

Last Friday I made stuffed shells to take with me to a Shabbat dinner. I had extra filling and didn't want to just throw it out, so I used it to fill some calzones. The dough is my usual pizza dough recipe, divided into four pieces and rolled out. I filled these with a mixture of the leftover stuffed shells filling (one container of water-packed extra firm tofu, one box of Mori-Nu firm silken tofu, a couple of tablespoons of vegan mayo, a splash of lemon juice, 2 teaspoons of garlic powder, basil, and oregano, 1 teaspoon of onion powder and salt and pepper to taste) and some shredded mozzarella soy cheese. I would have also added sauteed mushrooms, but I was all out. The stuffed shells filling was enough for 18 shells and 4 calzones. After filling and closing up the calzones, I cut a few slits in the top. I baked these on a pizza stone in a 450 degree oven for 9 minutes. The last time I made calzones I put some sauce inside them, too. This time I didn't and I liked them better that way--they were much less messy.

Pepper-Crusted Tofu and Mac 'n Cheeze

Last weekend I watched America's Test Kitchen and they made pepper-crusted filet mignon. Now, obviously the idea of filet mignon isn't exactly appealing to me, but I was intrigued with the idea of pepper-crusting something and just had to try it. I marinated the pressed tofu in some doctored-up (vegan Worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard) homemade barbeque sauce, then roughly followed the America's Test Kitchen recipe (sorry, you have to register on their site to see the recipes) for the pepper-crust part. I didn't bother trying to pan-sear the tofu because I thought the crust would just fall right off. I baked it at 450 degrees for 15 minutes per side. While the tofu was baking, I heated the rest of the sauce on the stove over medium heat to let it reduce a bit. I liked the sauce, but my boyfriend said that, while it was good, he thought it was better suited for pork. Having never had pork, I'm not exactly sure what that means. Neither of us had ever had anything pepper-crusted before. I don't think either of us ever will again, either. I strongly disliked the texture and after two bites, scraped the crust off of mine. He thought it was too spicy and scraped most of the crust off of his, too. When I served the leftover tofu, I scaped off the crust first. So, the moral of the story is that I don't recommend pepper-crusting tofu. It was a lot of work for something that was kind of gross.

This is macaroni with cashew cheddar cheese from the Real Food Daily cookbook. The actual recipe calls for spelt noodles, but 1) I already had regular macaroni, and 2) spelt noodles aren't very appealing to me. This was good, but the cashew cheddar is certainly not a cheap recipe to make, as it calls for quite a bit of agar. I didn't use all of the cashew cheddar for the macaroni, and I put the rest in a container in the fridge to let it harden into a slice-able cheese. I had some of said cheese with some wheat crackers for breakfast this morning. It wasn't bad, but I found the cheese to be kind of stinky. It also wasn't quite as solid as it should have been, but that's my fault because I didn't have quite enough agar for the recipe.

Broccoli Almond Sweet and Sour Tofu

This is another test recipe for lolo at VeganYumYum, but this time it's a recipe that she already had up on her blog, so I can link you to it (here and here). I forgot to garnish it with sesame seeds, but it was good as is. I liked the sauce much better than the last time I made it (she updated the recipe at some point in between).

It's Vegan Planet week around here.

Before we go grocery shopping on Sundays, I sit down and pick out a few recipes to make for the week. This week everything I picked was from Vegan Planet. On Sunday night we had Not-So-Dirty Rice, but I didn't take a picture of it because I've posted it on here before. We added mushrooms to it this time, which made it even more awesome. Have I mentioned how much we like mushrooms?

This is a Red Bean and Sweet Potato Curry served over brown rice. It uses curry powder, so it's not exactly an authentic curry, but it was simple to make and pretty tasty. The recipe suggests pureeing a portion of it and then mixing it back in if you like a creamier sauce. I might try that in the future (I was in a hurry the night I made this).


This one is Tofu and Vegetable Lo Mein. I hadn't had snow peas in a very long time and had forgotten how good they were. The recipe said to use either eggless Chinese noodles (that's not very specific...I'm pretty sure there are different kinds of Chinese noodles) or linguine. I went with whole wheat spaghetti since I already had it on-hand. There is shredded cabbage hiding in there, even though you can't really see it. I have no desire to sit there and actually shred cabbage, so I just buy it already shredded for coleslaw. The lo mein was good and, like the other recipes above, simple to prepare. I haven't really come across anything in Vegan Planet thus far that I've found to be complex to make. There will be another recipe from the book coming up here. I think it was an Indonesian rice dish that I picked out.

Teriyaki Tofu (Take 2)

This is more of a product review than anything else, as I've posted a teriyaki tofu stir-fry on here before. This time I marinated the tofu in Soy Vay's Veri Veri Teriyaki sauce, then baked it according to the instructions for the Asian-marinated tofu in Vegan With a Vengeance. Please ignore the veggies underneath the tofu; that's certainly the last time I buy the Kroger brand of mixed veggies! Anyhoo, we've been wanting to try the Soy Vay teriyaki sauce for quite awhile and finally bought a bottle last weekend. It's not bad, but I found it a little too salty. There is also quite a bit of sugar in it. You could really tell how sugary it was after baking the marinated tofu, as a lot of the sugar caramelized on the tofu and the pan. I liked all of the sesame seeds in the sauce, but overall, I don't think this was really worth the money and don't plan on buying it again. They still get credit for a cute brand name, though.

Brooklyn Pad Thai and Quiche....I think

This is the Brooklyn Pad Thai from Vegan With a Vengeance. Sorry the tofu looks kind of weird. We have established that my boyfriend likes the texture better of tofu that has been frozen (and then, of course, defrosted), but clearly I have not gotten the hang of this. I can't seem to do it without the tofu getting all crumbly. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Despite my crumbly tofu, this was good. Spicy, but not too spicy. I halved the recipe and it still made a ton (way more than the 2 servings that half of the recipe should have been).

This is the quiche recipe from Celine's blog, but with mushrooms added (and green onions instead of chives because apparently the cultural mecca that is Knoxville does not choose to recognize the existence of chives). Hers is much prettier to look at than mine. I've never had quiche before, so I really have no clue, but I think it should have firmed up more than it did. This wound up being really rich. Is cheesy quiche normally so rich? There's nothing wrong with rich food, it's just not my cup of tea. If I try to make a vegan quiche again, I will probably try it with tofu. It seems like it would be firmer that way. Oh well, new recipes are fun to try anyway!

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.

General Tao's Tofu

This recipe received such rave reviews on vegweb that we just had to try it. I doubled the sauce because I reallyyyy like sauce. It was really good, but I highly recommend cutting back on the sugar. I didn't use as much sugar as the recipe called for and I still thought it was a bit too sweet. For the tofu, I used frozen tofu for the first time. I don't normally plan meals far enough in advance to have time to freeze and then thaw out the tofu, but I finally got around to trying it. I thought the texture was a little odd, somewhere between springy and gummy, but my boyfriend said he actually liked the texture. He also said that this meal got two thumbs up from a carnivore (his words, not mine....technically he'd be an omnivore).

Tofu Cacciatore

We got some white wine the other day that my boyfriend didn't really care for (and I'm not much of a drinker, so I wasn't going to like it in the first place). I started looking for recipes we could use white wine in and came up with this one from randomgirl.com. I thought I had all the ingredients going in, but it turns out we were out of the diced tomatoes, so I subbed some marinara sauce we already had in the fridge. We also used more mushrooms than the recipe called for since we really really really like mushrooms. I'd never had any kind of cacciatore before, but we both really loved this. Yum!

I've been slacking on posting

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Funny story....I bought the book right after it came out, only I'm trying really hard to control my spending, so I kind of neglected to tell my boyfriend about it. I figured he would figure it out eventually, though, especially when I suddenly started making lots of cupcakes. Apparently guys do not think the way I do, though. Instead of analyzing where the cupcakes came from, he just thought "mmmm cupcakes." So, one day he went to the front page of theppk.com and noticed that the cupcake book was out. He asked me if I was going to get it. I am a horrible liar and don't like doing it anyway, so I fessed up that I'd had it for a couple of weeks already. Turns out he didn't care that I spent the money and, in return for not getting upset with me for hiding the book, he got to pick out the next cupcakes (but the Tiramisu ones got vetoed by me because I don't do coffee).
The mint icing on these just wouldn't stiffen up for me, and there was a bit of an incident with my makeshift pastry bag, but I think everything turned out just fine. I kind of like the mint icing being smooth like it is because it reminds me of a mint filling from a peppermint patty.

Asian-marinated baked tofu (Vegan with a Vengeance) with sauteed green beans and onions over yellow rice. I just love yellow rice. Even though it's really just turmeric added to regular rice, I think it is tastier and much more visually appealing. Hey, I'm easy to please.

Baked BBQ seitan with mushrooms, black beans, and (I think) onions over rice.

Homemade bread. It's shiny because I brushed it with oil after coming out of the oven. Although I have a bread machine, I did this one all by hand. Non-bread machine bread is so much easier to slice, plus there is no hole in the bottom from the paddle. I think I'm going to start using my bread machine for the kneading and rising, but then shape the dough and put it in a loaf pan. It might take some practice to get that right, though, as I'll have to figure out what temperature to bake it at.