Category: Food Blog

A sporadically-updated log of what I cooked, why, and how. Not a recipe creator. Mostly Vegan MoFo posts.

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Food Blog

Cajun-Creole-spiced tempeh with creamy grits and citrus broccoli salad

Tonight’s dinner comes from a cookbook I admire, but rarely cook from: Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry. It’s just *cool* – but I find the recipes overly complicated for my style, and the instructions a bit dense. You really have to read all the way through or you’ll miss details. Certainly that means there’s something in there for me to learn, but I’ll admit I’m not always too eager to do so.

Admittedly, even here, I took a few shortcuts. I used a pre-mixed Cajun spice blend; I did not toss everything in a damn paper bag (all my paper bags are leftover from grocery shopping so they probably have bits of mushroom stuck in there). I halved the grits themselves and skipped the cashew cream in favor of a little extra almond milk (I know, OK? I know how to make cashew cream, I just wasn’t in the mood). I did take the extra steps with the tempeh itself as far as cooking it in broth, though I opted to use just enough broth that it would be all get absorbed rather than having leftovers to store. It resulted in a really nice, tender tempeh, which works really well here. This might be a good method for someone who isn’t super keen on the natural bitterness or texture of tempeh.

The broccoli salad was really easy: slice broccoli (I used a 4mm food processor slicer blade); blanch; marinate in a dressing made of lime, lemon, and orange juices; enjoy chilled. It was a nice, bright side for the rich and creamy grits. I’d probably double or triple the recipe for a summer picnic.

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Collards & sweet potato crunch bowl

On Wednesday nights, I try to make something that comes together quickly, because I go to Pilates when I’m normally working on dinner. Lately, of course, I have time to get everything prepped before I go–either have everything ready to cook and serve or make it and let it cool off. Tonight I ended up trying a recipe from Salad Samurai I’d flipped past but never tried before, and man, I won’t sleep on it again. This is a pretty good bowl, and easy too!

The main components are sweet potatoes (roasted in chunks), collard greens (raw or gently cooked), black beans, scallions, spicy nuts, and an orange-based dressing. I used walnuts instead of the recipe’s pecans because that’s what I had on hand; I also threw in a cup or so of leftover cooked quinoa just because. It’s spicy and bright and delicious. You could probably buy some spicy candied nuts and use baby greens for something even faster, but this was simple enough.

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Made these sourdough apple fritters to use up both extra whole wheat starter and granny smith apples, and they are delicious. Not too sweet. Not too hard. Mmmm.

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Ginger carrot salad, lemongrass tofu, and seaweed rice

This was so many things, but all of them simple. The lemongrass tofu comes from Salad Samurai, and I’ve made it before (for the pad thai salad), but I thought it might work in this context. The other two dishes come by way of the Thrive Foods book, which I’ve only cooked out of once. Well, technically, that was a raw thing (some energy balls involving all kinds of obscure “superfood” powders I ended up spending $$$ for at Whole Foods that now live in a gallon zip bag in the bottom of my baking tub, but I digress!), so this is the first time I *cooked* with the book. It’s basically a vegan nutrition book with a section containing collected recipes from a variety of sources (well-known vegan/raw food restaurants, friends of the author’s, etc.), and it’s not the most well-organized reference, so I really had to sift through it for inspiration.

What drew my eye was this “Asian” carrot salad with a ginger-lime dressing, fresh herbs, sesame seeds, and avocado. I threw a whole bunch of big, fat, locally-grown carrots in the food processor with the shred blade, and ended up with twice as much carrot as necessary. And even setting aside half of the shreds, this was a pretty massive salad. Hopefully it makes good leftovers.

I opted for a simple rice dish to bring things together, and this recipe was from Ravens Restaurant in Mendocino, Calif., which is attached to the Stanford Inn, an all-vegan rustic/fancy lodge that I’ve had the great fortune of visiting three times. I’d go back right now if it wouldn’t fill me with checking account dread. It’s beautiful and cozy and the breakfasts are wonderful. So why not try to make their seaweed rice? It’s not the same, but it’s a lot cheaper and doesn’t require a four-hour drive.

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Fuck Yeah Carrot Cake Pancakes!

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Sweet potato gnocchi with brussels sprouts and tarragon cashew cream sauce

A mighty fine selection from Isa Does It, which I have made before but wanted to revisit.

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The process of making gnocchi is really fun, but time consuming. And I don’t think I’ve perfected it, by any means, but it is pretty good.

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Nuked the sweet potatoes – a starchier Japanese variety with purple skin and yellow flesh – and scooped out the guts after they had time to cool.

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Smash, smash, smash with miso and olive oil. It comes out the holes in my masher looking like play-doh.

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I think you all know how I feel about dough by now: it feels goooood in your hands.

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Rolled it out like a big, skinny, flour-coated snake…

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…and chopped it into tiny pillows! Chop, chop, chop!

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Boil it until it floats; that’s how you can tell it’s a witch! Erm, I mean, it’s cooked.

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Tonight’s dinner is roasted carrots with black lentils and green harissa, the first recipe I’ve ever cooked out of Vedge. The lentils and carrots are both spiced with the book’s “island spice blend,” which is some pan-Caribbean spice mixture with a little sugar. I didn’t have any dried onion powder so I just doubled the garlic powder. It’s pretty tasty, though I think the recipe underestimates the amount of liquid required to cook the lentils (3 cups of broth for 2 cups of dry lentils? Hmmm. I had to add water near the end because the liquid was absorbed but the lentils were a bit al dente.)

Looking at the photo after the fact, this would make a great Halloween dish: black, orange, and green goop! SpooOoOOOOoOooOky!

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I love bread (probably not as much as Oprah, though)

Since getting my oven back, I’ve been on a mission to improve my bread-baking skills. My mom gave me a print-out of these instructions back at Christmas, and I finally had the guts to give it a shot. It required more patience than I usually have for cooking, well, anything, but I’ve got plenty of time.

The overnight-proofed starter+whole wheat flour+water mix ready to mix with more water and flours (rye, bread, spelt)

The dough, fully mixed and ready for a 24-hour rise

You guys. Bread dough feels so fucking good in your hands. I tried not to handle this too much, but it was a little addictive. If you haven’t made bread and you have any baking inclination, try it JUST SO you can feel the dough. It’s eeeeevverrything.

Fully baked loaf, dusted with semolina flour

I had a little trouble with the final rise–the damn thing stuck to the floured tea towel and left a bit of itself behind when I tried to dump it neatly into the (very hot) cast iron dutch oven to bake. But it turned out all right, with just a little oddball lumpiness on top. Character, I guess.

And the verdict is…

Seriously the most flavorful bread I’ve made by myself. And great texture. Well, we’ll see how it in the middle, and how it is when it cools. It’s quite lovely right now, though.

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When life gives you overly-dense whole wheat sour pizza dough, roll it out thin, stud it with seeds, give it an olive oil glaze, and make crackers!

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Pad thai salad with asparagus ribbons and lemongrass tofu

A nice Sunday lunch, via Salad Samurai. Although I enjoy pad thai, I don’t have a favorite pad thai recipe because too often I find the sauce/noodle balance out of whack, so I thought I’d give this less-saucy version a try. It’s fresh and crunchy and tasty–and the lemongrass baked tofu is pretty great; I will make that again–but I wish for a bit more salty peanutty-ness. That’s an easy fix: ADD MORE PEANUTS.

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Homemade whole wheat sourdough pizza with tomatoes, pepitas, baby chard, cremini mushrooms, and shallots.

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Fresh rolls with walnut-lentil pate and mock nuoc cham

I love fresh rolls/salad rolls made with rice paper. For Vegan MoFo last year, I made a much more elaborate version. That’s why I’d had my eye on this version in Salad Samurai, because vegan pate made with walnuts and black lentils is a hell of a lot more approachable than homemade vegan fish (made from tofu skin and agar), and with a more reasonable amount of prep.

First, gotta get everything ready to roll. Besides the pate–which I made the day before–all I had to do was chop up some veggies and herbs: lettuce, cucumber, carrot, radish, green onion, cilantro, and, what the hell, avocado. I set out a pie plate for hot water to soften the rice paper, a dinner plate for assembly, and a salad plate to pile up the winnings.

For each roll, gotta make a neat little pile of fillings and roll it tight. The paper shouldn’t get soaked in the water, only dampened, because it’ll continue to soften. Once you’re ready to roll, it’ll be perfectly pliable and won’t tear as easily as if you’d let it get too wet.

After a few rolls, you re-learn your own tricks, like putting somethin’ pretty like cilantro on the last fold so it’ll show through the translucent rice paper. They might not be perfectly or effortlessly uniform, but that’s OK. It’s just dinner.

Although the cookbook suggests a soy-mustard dipping sauce, I opted for the mock nuoc cham from Vegan Eats World, which is sweet and sour and had the side benefit of using up the remaining shredded carrot and adding a bit more herbs (fresh mint).

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Spicy tomato soup with chickpeas and kale + homemade sourdough bread

The soup is very humble: a bit of this, a bit of that, whatever was handy, which was: a little bit of veggie broth, half a jar of tomato puree, garlic, onion, kale, chickpeas, oregano, red pepper, and balsamic vinegar. It’s thin and brothy but I like it.

The bread was the harder part.

My oven hasn’t worked for the last month, and today I finally had a repair guy come out and fix it. $210 and a new igniter and sensors later, I finally had my oven back.

I immediately made use of it by proofing bread. Which I had never done in the oven. It’s an easy-to-read panel, we’ve had it four years, and I’m the one who did the research before purchasing it, and somehow I didn’t notice the “PROOF” button until recently.

Now, I have been feeding a whole wheat sourdough starter since New Year’s, and I’ve made a no-knead loaf just a few times. I was happy to have the oven back so I could get back to that practice. (That, and roasting vegetables. Oh, how I’ve missed you, roasted veggies.) Before I’d set up a space heater in the bathroom for proofing the loaf – it took many, many hours; I usually let it sit overnight or even a whole day. The oven proof took 6 hours.

So I needed to come up with something for dinner to go with warm, crusty, homemade bread. What better than a simple soup?

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Jamaican-style curry with plantains and squash, plus collards and red rice

Another week, Vegan Eats World recipe. This is a nice, spicy coconut curry with some sweeter elements–pumpkin, plantain, allspice. I thought it needed a nice green veggie, so I prepared simple ribbons of collard greens in coconut oil with red onion, ginger, and garlic. And a mix of red rice and brown rice to tie everything today. Hearty and delicious, I expect it will make excellent leftovers.

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Soba noodles with ginger and veggies, braised greens, and baked tofu

I had a bunch of random stuff to use up, and the only requests I got from the boyfriend were “not too kale-y” and “very unlike calzone” (because that’s what he had for lunch). So here’s what I made:

Baked tofu with a marinade/baking sauce composed of gochujang, soy sauce, sesame oil, minced ginger, and a little bit of mirin and coconut syrup. Baking tofu in a sauce–mixed right in the pan–is my lazy go-to. It’s easy to play up and try different combinations of things. I just throw the baking dish in my toaster oven for 20 minutes on 400 degrees, then flip and bake another 20 minutes. Besides my oven being presently out of order (I’ve got someone coming out Thursday to fix it, I hope), the timer function makes this very easy. I use the toaster oven even when my oven is working, unless I’m roasting a bunch of stuff.

Soba noodles with ginger and veggies was a bunch of things cooked separately–the noodles had to boil, of course, but I stir-fried in sesame oil shallots with thinly sliced red bell pepper, then pieces of asparagus, then some snow peas. I added a few spoonfuls of a quick sauce I made for the veggies – miniature ginger matchsticks in vegetable broth and a splash of soy sauce and a few good shakes of red pepper flakes. After the noodles were cooked, I tossed everything together with the rest of the ginger sauce and a couple chopped scallions.

Braised mixed greens were the last, simplest part. Happy Boy Farms sells a great braising greens mix that’s got a little bit of everything–kale, escarole, cabbage, and chard–that I chopped u[p a bit and stuck in a pan with vegetable broth and ginger. Cooked on low until everything is tender and wilted, annnnnd… that’s it.