Author: vegansneedsauce

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Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 27: Favorite herb or spice? Garlic!

It’s almost too obvious, but where would we be without garlic? What else is so versatile, so universal, so DELICIOUS? There are so many ways to use it.

You can use it roasted or grilled, where each clove slips out of its husk with little effort and tastes sweet and smoky as it does pungent.

Or have it raw and minced to punch up your dressing. It’s in my go-to tahini sauce, and usually thrown into the blender when making a fresh herb-based dressing.

Crispy and fried in an Asian soup or salad (Burmese tea leaf salad? Vietnamese pho?), often with its BFF, shallots.

Young “green” garlic and garlic scapes let you use the whole plant and offer a different texture and milder flavor. Something to look forward to every spring.

Not to mention myriad other ways, just crushing, chopping, or slicing the cloves and cooking with vegetables or adding to sauces and soups.

When I run out of garlic, I panic.  My favorite is a hard-necked variety with purple skin that comes off its large cloves super easy. It’s not always available in the market, but I stock up when I find it. I love hearing people at the farmers’ market ask what to do with X vegetable and being told, almost invariably, “Well, I saute it with some garlic…”

There are very few things garlic cannot improve. (Chocolate is one. Berries are another. Otherwise…)

Nearly every other spice or herb I could name that I love is made even better by garlic. Parsley? Yeah. Cilantro? Duh. (Parsley AND cilantro with garlic? Mmmmm.) Basil? Hello, pesto. Cumin and coriander? Add ginger and garlic and you’ve got a curry. Red pepper flakes? Critical.

Garlic: can’t live without it. End of story.

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#VeganMoFo Day 26, part deux: breakfast potato … Nachos? Kinda? With kale, purple potato slices, black beans, and cashew sauce. Using up stuff in my fridge. Still in the spirit of the challenge, though tomatoes will be hard to find in the apocalypse.

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#VeganMoFo Day 26: It’s snowing–what can you make with what you’ve got?

If it’s snowing that much in San Jose, the end times have arrived. So I’m making dessert.

Ever since I wrote about Vegan With a Vengeance being my sentimental favorite cookbook, I’ve had a craving for the boozy chocolate pudding cake, which of late I’ve made with bourbon, but I am fresh out. What I do have is Grand Marnier. Orange and chocolate is a valid combo, and I’m not going out in this apocalypse–what the hell, right?

It’s hot, it’s gooey, it might get you a little buzzed. What better way to spend a snowed-in evening?

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Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 25: Favorite cuisine — Indian

The world is full of pretty amazing food, and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to visit some of those places and eat some of that food. I’ve learned how to make curry from scratch in Thailand and gorged on falafel on Christmas in Paris. Even closer to home, I can explore one dinner at a time: Ethiopian, Korean, Persian, Mexican, Italian…hell, even American, which is pretty all-encompassing. It only makes me hungry for more.

One cuisine I seldom get bored of is Indian. You could eat something different every damn day and still not try everything, and that’s just the veg options. Vegetables can be prepared and combined in endless combination with all those spices. There’s rice, grains, lentils, and beans that become dosas, dhokla, chapati, stuffed parathas, dals, curries… And then there’s regional specialties, about which I am only marginally informed. (When I went to Bangalore for work, for example, I learned about Parsi cuisine, from Indians of Iranian/Persian descent, and got to eat it twice. It was the bessssst, even though I confused them by being *really* into the “plain” greens dish.)

Anyway. It’s pretty awesome. I don’t cook it at home enough, because even though I know it needn’t be terribly complex, it just fails to pop up when I’m doing my usual last-minute dinner planning. MoFo has been good for something, in that sense. So for this theme, I made a quick Indian dinner, using recipes and a menu from The Indian Vegan Kitchen. I have a few Indian cookbooks, but this is the one I tend to use.

Dinner consisted of quick channa masala (to which I added spinach)…

…peanut-cabbage “salad” (it is cooked; really more of a nice vegetable side than a salad)…

…and rice to serve. Yum.

Bonus: earlier this week I made a nice chaat-inspired sprout salad with sprouted lentils, tomatoes, cucumber, carrot, pepper, onion, and fresh homemade cilantro chutney.

I wanted to make something with chapatis, because I love flatbread, but this really did work better over rice. Plus it’s less work after work. Next time.

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Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 24: What Zombie Bourdain and Alternate Universe Nuge would cook if they were vegan.

I suppose this is a pretty well-trod territory as far as vegan mockery. Anthony Bourdain’s feelings about vegetarians are oft-repeated in these circles, so he’d have to be a zombie to go veg; Ted Nugent is an infamous hunter/asshole in this universe. None of this is news. So it’s really too obvious… but I couldn’t think of anything else.

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My inspiration comes specifically from the old episode of No Reservations in which Bourdain visits Nugent’s Texas ranch, where Ted breeds large game so he can hunt it. In my alternate reality, Nuge has populated his private wilderness with mushrooms and edible wild plants like ramps and greens and spends his days foraging and advocating for native plants. Bourdain … would still have to be a zombie to go veg, but he can still cook, so, let’s use that. In the episode I’m re-imagining, Zombie Bourdain cooks a beautiful risotto with Nuge’s freshly foraged mushrooms and wild arugula.

Also, tofu; look, this is a *meal* in real life and I need to use the tofu up, and what kind of vegan doesn’t eat tofu?. Plus my produce isn’t actually foraged. But pretend, okay?

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#VeganMoFo Day 23: Autumn equinox eats!

Although in some ways similar to yesterday’s seasonal produce theme, I tried to take a somewhat different approach with the menu. I wanted to use nuts, pomegranate, and apples – all symbolic in various ways, although not especially to me, and delicious, fun challenges to base a meal around.

Here’s where I landed:

  • mushroom-walnut pate (veganized and tweaked) on good bread
  • white bean soup with roasted apples and sage
  • frisee salad in citrus vinaigrette with pomegranate seeds and hazelnut parmesan

Bread first, right? Yummmm.

Here in California, the early fall weather is near 100 degrees, so I made both the soup and the pate a day ahead and served them chilled.

Soup was very simple, and maybe not for all palates, but a worthy starting point. First I halved and cored two whole gravenstein apples, cut a small red onion into big chunks, and grabbed a few sprigs of thyme and sage, then brushed them with olive oil before giving them a 20-minute bake in the toaster oven. The cooked ingredients went into the blender with two cans of cannellini, water, and salt and pepper. Finally, the resulting puree got a gentle simmer (maybe half an hour?) before it went into the fridge. To serve, I garnished with some fried whole sage leaves and a sprinkling of the hazelnut parmesan I made for the salad.

The salad was a bit more colorful. My dressing consisted of juice of one orange, olive oil, a little bit of mustard, a dash of sweetener (I used coconut nectar), a splash of apple cider vinegar to cut the sweetness, and a little salt and pepper. At the market I picked up a huge head of frisee, which is bitter and pretty and ought to stand up well to a strong, sweet dressing like that, so I pulled out the more tender greens in the middle, washed them, and gave them a quick spin to dry before tossing. Hazelnut parmesan was quick and easy–handful or two of nuts with a generous shake of nooch and let it ride (in the spice grinder, food processor, or blender, you pick your poison)–and ultimately tossed with the salad and extra sprinkled on to serve, along with those beautiful pomegranate jewels.

Fall cooking is possibly the most fun. So many great vegetables are still available, and between MoFo and Thanksgiving prep, I’ve got menus on my mind. This was a quiet weeknight dinner on a hot “what seasons?” kind of night, but maybe for a minute those nuts and seeds meant a little something, even to me.

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#VeganMoFo Day 22: Dish using all seasonal produce

This is basically how I cook every day – I shop at the farmers’ market like it’s a religion – but living in Northern California means so much great stuff is in season for a long time, even during this drought. Still, things do come and go. The end of summer tends to have beautiful tomatoes and squash, along with lovely greens, onions, and root vegetables, and all of these are among my favorite things.

To shake things up a little, I wanted to try some new things:

  • Wild fried rice with roasted delicata squash and beets (+ onion, shallot, cilantro, red pepper flakes)
  • Cherry tomato chutney (with shallots and apple cider vinegar) over baked tofu
  • Steamed kale, because greens are a requirement

I’ll have to make the chutney again–it was easy and delicious.

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#VeganMoFo Day 21: Desert island foods

“What three endless food supplies would you take if you were going to be stranded on an island? (Imagine your nutritional needs have been met, these are a bonus!)”

Chocolate, pineapple, and nutritional yeast.

Not because I think they GO together – far from it. But they each scratch a proverbial itch.

Chocolate is obvious. I’m sure it’s on 95% of these responses. There are some problems only chocolate can solve, at least temporarily (like the nagging need for chocolate). Bonus points if it has nuts. Extra magic points if it fails to melt in the tropical heat.

Pineapple may well be present on the island, if I’m lucky and this isn’t some horrible Naked & Afraid scenario where the best you can hope for are young coconuts and a machete. At any rate, it’s my favorite fruit, and it’s tasty and refreshing. If I’m stranded with my rabbit friends, they can enjoy it too. Plus if you’re bored you can make a game of hacking it up as pretty as you can, or as violently (i.e. cutting off the eyes). I have and would eat again fresh pineapple from a street vendor in countries where Americans are told never to eat uncooked street food, that’s how much I like it. I brought home two white pineapples from Hawaii once and wished I’d known they would let us bring more. It’s the only non-locally-grown fruit I eat on a semi-regular basis. God, I love pineapple.

Nutritional yeast is just to make the “nutritional needs” a little more interesting. Better than salt? It’s the thing I’m most likely to buy from a local grocery store while traveling. Maybe that is unlikely to apply on a deserted island, but I have only my experience and taste buds to guide me. Nooch goes with everything, therefore, nooch goes with me.

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#VeganMoFo Day 20: Veganize an old family recipe

…Or admit #defeat while trying.

My mom is an awesome cook. She can feed armies and menu plan with the best of them. Of course she taught me to cook, too–I’ve been in the kitchen as long as I can remember. (I made up my own, admittedly terrible, cookie recipe in the 1st grade.) Perhaps my mom’s most requested dessert is boccone dolce, a layer cake of sorts with meringue, chocolate, fresh whipped cream, and strawberries. After I went vegan, I thought I’d never get to enjoy it again, but then I heard about the vegan meringue group on Facebook and how people were using canned bean liquid to replace egg whites, calling it aquafaba. Armed with a stand mixer, I had to give it a try.

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However, the first time I attempted this didn’t go so well. So I took more precautions this time. And I didn’t use my silpat – if I gotta clean disintegrated sugary goop off of something, it might as well be parchment.

I used The Homemade Vegan Pantry’s recipe this time, which relies on flax egg whites that are frozen, then defrosted and whipped. Xanthan gum is added, presumably for stability. And, miraculously, it WORKED. Not as beautiful and crispy and perfect as my mom’s, but it should do the job.

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The whipped cream comes from the same book – almond milk pureed with cashews, then whipped fluffy. Except…not so fucking much. The mixture was chilled overnight (as instructed), but when I put it in the mixer, it broke – the fat separated from the liquid. I tried re-melting and re-freezing, to no avail. So I just re-blended it and let it chill for a bit. A rich, scoopable cream isn’t too terrible, if you don’t know what you meant for it to be, right?

The chocolate is simple melted dark chocolate, which I smoothed out with a little almond milk to ensure it would spread well without crushing the delicate meringues. Of course…things deflated and softened overnight. Not exactly the texture I was going for, but maybe still good. I mean, meringue isn’t supposed to be bendy.

And strawberries? Luckily we have a long summer here in California, and my market is on Sunday (today!), so it’s the final piece of the puzzle. At least that’s hard to fuck up, but I wouldn’t put it past me today.

Oh, strawberries, you still get me, right?

Anyway…after all that disappointment, I decided the best thing I could do was to make it into a taco.

That makes it look tastier than it actually was. The cream had a good flavor, as did the chocolate. The “meringue” was a big nothing. The strawberries failed to stand out (thx, strawberries, next time I’ll just use raspberries, maybe they will appreciate it more) but it was fine.

Oh well. Onwards and upwards. Next few days’ themes are a lot more up my alley, or at least I planned them better, I hope.

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Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

Sigh. So today’s post is a fail…

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Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

Trying a new Korean place in downtown SJ with great veg options (Hodo Soy tofu!). Check it out! http://homkoreankitchen.com/

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Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

Just a little breakfast: Purple potato and cabbage hash with shallots and homemade Italian snausages, and a side of heirloom tomato and basil.

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Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

This snausage is really taking its double entendre seriously.

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Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 19: Lunch on the go

Whenever we’ve joined my boyfriend’s mom on a day trip that involved picnic lunch, she’s prepared a lovely tofu pasta salad. So with that inspiration, I put together my own version, along with a bonus lettuce cup salad using leftovers, just ‘cause.

Pasta salad included:

  • Frozen, then defrosted, firm tofu: sliced into four pieces and marinated in olive oil, soy sauce, red wine vinegar, and oregano, then baked for about 20 minutes at 400°F; let it cool, then dice into 1” cubes
  • A cup and a half of dry pasta, any shape you like that’s short (something twisty works well – I used whole spelt twists today), cooked according to package directions
  • One bunch of kale (I used lacinato), cut into small ribbons and cooked with the pasta for no more than 5 minutes
  • Handful of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
  • About a third of a cup of thinly sliced red onion
  • Dressed with a drizzle of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and nooch

The bonus dish used up some leftovers hiding out in my fridge (which, after the shaaaame of showing it in its messy glory to you all, I tried to clean out just a little bit):

  • Black lentils
  • Quinoa
  • Finely diced cucumber, tomato, and red onion
  • Minced parsley
  • Tahini sauce
  • Whole baby red romaine lettuce leaves, rinsed and spun dry

Now…I know the theme is LUNCH on the go. But we ended up having this for dinner on the go. We took it to San Jose’s Alum Rock Park about an hour before sunset. While we were there, we got to observe several deer foraging for their dinner, watch a tarantula cross the road, catch a woodpecker in action, and follow the sun as it turned deep red and lit up the edges of the puffy white clouds in its way. No regrets.

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#VeganMoFo Day 18: Honor someone who inspires your veganism

OK, look, I was going to post something suitably animal-friendly and tell you about my herbivore friends named Lilly and Ollie. Don’t get me wrong, they are fucking cute as hell, but their diet does little to inspire mine. It just seems appropriate for a vegetarian to keep vegetarian pets (also, they are ADORABLE, just to reiterate).

They also have secret talents*, but let’s not get into that now.

After some thought, I realized I have to write about my boyfriend. He’s pretty private, so I’ll keep his name and face off the blog. He’s been vegan since he was 15. We’ve been together for coming up on 13 years now. I finally went vegan about 5 years ago. We eat dinner together nearly every day, and I cook over half of those meals. So really, who else could it be?

Although we don’t really cook together – I’m a control freak in the kitchen, and he doesn’t appreciate all my, uh, constructive criticism – I’ve developed my cooking skills largely out of an ongoing dialogue over these dinners. And all that cooking made it so easy for me when I finally made my own decision to stop eating animals.

Plus we can get very nearly equally excited about trying new vegan restaurants, even if our opinions about the experience differ. It’s convenient and fun to share a diet – well, normal, I guess – so it never feels entirely like a compromise: “I guess I’ll have a salad at your favorite steakhouse this week, darling, if we can eat at the vegan sushi place next time.” No! Vegan sushi always! Biggest arguments are about whether we aren’t too bored to eat at Vegetarian House again or which Ethiopian restaurant is better!

He doesn’t like sweets, though. And I am a damn good baker. So we have a bit of a Jack Sprat and his wife kinda thing. Whatever.

* one of the rabbits can play piano. Seriously. But I never manage to record it.