Veggie Goes Vegan

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Tortilla Casserole from Vegan Holiday Kitchen

Two nights ago I was still in the cooking mood, so I made another recipe from Nava Atlas's Vegan Holiday Kitchen, jumping ahead to the December cookbook for the #VegCookbookClub.

It had been a toss-up between making the Pueblo Corn Pie and the Black Beand and Sweet Potato Torilla Casserole for my weekend family get-together. I went with the Corn Pie. but I had also bought the ingredients for the Tortilla Casserole, so I went for it.

This was another pretty simple, and very hearty dish. It had a few more steps than the Pueblo Corn Pie, but less baking time, so overall it took about the same 45 mintues or so to make, including microwaving the sweet potatoes and baking the finished product.

A couple of recipe adjustment I made: I didn't have any unflavored rice milk on hand, so I used soy milk. Don't think that made an appreciable difference. I also had some poblano peppers on hand, so I chopped one up and tossed it into the black bean/salsa verde/onion/garlic/red pepper mix to give the dish even a bit more spice. It was not overly hot even so, so I would definitely do that again. I would also make sure I was really including the right amount of spinach. Spinach cooks down so much. I just eyeballed the amount, and I would have enjoyed a bit more of the spinach layer.

And as with the Pueblo Corn Pie, I might cut back on the Daiya cheddar shreds. Daiya is awesome, but it does have a very distinct flavor, and it can overpower a dish. It's not like I have a better cheese recommendation to make (although I like Heidi Ho's Smoked Gouda), but for my taste (and the taste of my S.O.) I would scale back a bit.

Lastly, the cheese sauce component, mostly Daiya cooked with a corn starch/rice milk thickener (I used soy) was really good on its own, and I could see whipping up just that portion of the recipe to use in other dishes.

I'm going to post several pictures of this dish, so you can see how it looks form the top, from the side, and then a slice, so you can see the layers.

Thumbs up for the Black Bean and Sweet Potato Tortilla Casserole.

Two recipes from Nava Atlas's Vegan Holiday Kitchen

This week I needed to contribute to a meal at my mom's house, and even though the #VegCookBookClub book this month is the Forks Over Knives book, I rebelliously cracked open my copy of Nava Atlas's Vegan Holiday Kitchen (a hardcover cookbook no less) and settled on two recipes from is pages: Massaged Kale Salad and Pueblo Corn Pie.

Massaged Kale Salad:

This is sort of a simple, can't-miss recipe of kale, dried cranberries, nuts, lemon juice and vegan mayo. I did a couple things to improve upon it and one thing that was a bit of a mis-step. On the plus side: I added persimmons. Nava suggests adding apples or pears herself, so it wasn't a complete stroke of genius or anything, but I had fresh persimmons on hand and they did indeed give the salad more heft and a pelasant sweetness. (I can't believe I never even ate persimmons until a year or two ago...where had they been all my life?) I also used Earthbound Farms "Power Greens" pre-washed combo, instead of just kale. Personally I find stripping and washing kale to be annoying, so I like the pre-washed bags of it. Whole Foods didn't have any bags of just kale, so I got this combo of kale, spinach and chard, and was pleased with the variety and eventual result. So what was my mi-step? I didn't measure the vegan mayo and just spooned out a few glops of it. A few too many, as it turned out. It was a little over-mayo'ed. I even added in more spinach I had on hand, but still...next time I will be more stinting with the glopping.

Pueblo Corn Pie:

Making this was a risk, because I'm not a huge polenta fan, and this pie is basically a layer of polenta, a layer of bean/pepper/tomaro/corn mixture, a layer of vegan cheese and then another layer of polenta. Two hits of polenta.

And truth be told if I make this again (and it is very easy to make) I would probably go with one layer of polenta on top, and that's it. I would also be a little more sparing with the vegan cheese. That would leave more room to get all the bean/corn mixture in (I had to leave some out). That mixture is definitely the highlight of the recipe. I could see also mixing in some vegan chorizo or vegan ground "meat" and using it for tacos or other dishes. It was just a good combo of veggie and seasonings.

That was my contribution this Thanksgiving weekend. What did you make?

Chloe's Kitchen: Best-Ever Baked Macaroni and Cheese

This weekend I was in a bit of a nesting mode after more than a week on the road. What could be more cozy, comforting, and nest-worthy than Mac and Cheese? Not much. 

So, even though the #VegCookbookClub has moved on from Chloe's Kitchen, I knew there were still some recipes I wanted to try in it, and the Best-Ever Baked Macaroni and Cheese was on that list.

It's a simple recipe, really, requiring only ingredients I typically have on hand. In fact, if I hadn't had elbow macaroni on hand, I bet it would have cooked up nicely with rotini or penne for that matter. I don't know about you, but I always have vegan margarine, some milk alternative, nutritional yeast, lemons (for the juice) and agave on hand.  Tomato paste might be the ingredient I'm mostly likely to have to acquire spcifically to make this, and I did use plain old Panko bread crumbs on top, instead of "seasoned" bread crumbs", but as you can see...these are not fancy ingredients for the vegan kitchen.

One of my favorite things about this cookbook was just that: Chloe uses pretty standard ingredients, but the recipes aren't SO simple that you're wondering why you needed a cookbook to tell you how to make something obvious like, oh, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a totally-made-up example.

One other great thing about this recipe is that the sauce portion of it is perfect for other uses. I could see whipping up that "cheese" sauce to serve with veggies or pasta or rice or to make nachos.

Here's the final product. It was very satisfying for both me and my omnivorous S.O. I may just have to make Mac Daddy from Veganomicon and do a taste-off on these two great Mac and Cheese recipes.

Veganize It! Roasted Brussels Sprouts from Hilah Cooking

Found this recipe on #BlogHerTV, and it looks yummy (and can be oh, so easily veganized):

I would suggest using maple syrup in place of the honey Hilah uses to get a richer sweetness, but I could also see using agave syrup.

Either way, I'm totally trying the wasabi powder trick...I've had a jar of it in my pantry for ages and only used it once! I look for any excuse to cook up some brussels sprouts, and this is a good one!

A great vegan meal at a non-vegan restaurant: The Red Cat in Chelsea (NYC)

My last night in New York last week (at the end of a trip that lasted longer than most) was at a restaurant recommended by a non-vegan colleague. She knows the owner and assured me they had vegan options...but non-vegans aren't always expert on the differences between vegetarian or vegetable dishes and actual vegan dishes. Still, I reviewed the menu of  The Red Cat in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan online, and it looked promising. MUch as I love my vegan stand-by restaurants in the city, I do like to show some flexiblity and go to non-veg places, since my dining companions are almost always non-veg.

It was a cold and damp night, but the Red Cat had a warm inviting ambiance. I got there about 30 minutes early, but they happily sat me and let me order a basket of very yummy herbed fries to pass the time until my friend showed up.

My official meal started with a fantastic fall/winter salad. I know the below looks like a piece of fish, but it's actually kabocha sqaush with the rind still on, served with black kale and dried cherries. Great combo

My entree was the second plate of pappardelle pasta with mushrooms I had in as many days. Also good, this time with tomatoes to sweeten and diversify the flavors a bit.

My dining companion used to date someone in the neighborhood and said that The Red Cat was a go-to joint during their relationship. I can see why. I don't get as far as 10th Avenue all that often, but should I be in the area again, I know where I'm going.

The Red Cat
227 Tenth Ave. (between 23/24)
New York, NY 10011 

Sometimes the great vegan food isn't where you expect it to be: db Bistro Moderne in NYC

I spent a couple of days in NYC last week, on my way back from a whirlwind trip to Istanbul. I'll save Istanbul for another post, but this trip to NYC was interesting because I had two great meals at non-vegan restaurants, and one really disappointing meal at a vegan restaurant I'd been looking forward to trying for a long time.

And it actually makes me wonder: Do I write an honest review here of a pretty well-known vegan place and possibly discourage people from going? It was but a week post-Hurrican Sandy, and given the site is in the East Village they likely still had logistical issues. They were also super-cool, because when they noticed I hadn't really eaten my entree they not only asked me if I didn't like it, but they took it off my bill. I'd like to think I had a fluke experience. But I also know I probably won't go back. I'm not a professional restaurant reviewer. I'm not writing this for the column I used to have where I did do restaurant reviews. I'm just an enthusiastic vegan evangelist. What would you do?

While I ponder whether or not to write about the not-so-good experience, I will tell you about one of the two wonderful meals I had at non-vegan restaurants this week.

The first such meal was at db Bistro Moderne, owned by famed chef Daniel Boulud. It's midtown in a fairly unremarkable location. But my salad qualified as remarkable. First take a look at two pictures of the adorable presentation:

What you might not quite be able to see is the dark crumbly "soil" at the bottom of the plate. It's made from dried, roughly ground olives. Seriously. So awesome to add a bit of crunch and salt to the dish. And with all the veggies standing up in it, it was like a little garden in my plate. (I should note that the item on the menu includes goat cheese, but it was easy for them to serve without it.)

I then had a lovely pappardelle pasta porcini, also sans cheese:

And, my lunch companion and I couldn't resist sharing a side of brussels sprouts (made in oil, not butter), which arrived in an adorable little pot:

db Bistro Moderne is on W. 44th St, between 5th and 6th Avenues (closer to 6th), tucked next to the City Club Hotel. Having just stayed at the City Club, can't say I'd recommend it for lodging, but I can definitely recommend db Moderne for a nice lunch...and a flexible open mind for serving vegans! 

Video: Vegan Style

Yes, I can hop on a trend just like the next gal. So, this is the video making the vegan rounds this week.

Enjoy. (PS-You might enjoy more, or at least get the references, if you watch the actual Gangnam Style video, but I'm not going to inflict that on you in this post too!)

 

Almond Roasted Cauliflower (and other Stuff too)

I finally got around to cooking a recipe I'd been wanting to try from the #VegCookbookClub selection in August, Let Them Eat Vegan by Dreena Burton. It's a pretty simple one called Almond Roasted Cauliflower and has two steps:

1. Roast your cauliflower florets tossed in olive oil, with some salt and pepper for about 20 minutes.

2. Sprinkle nutritional yeast and almond meal/flour on the cauliflower and roast some more, another 10 minutes or so.

Voila. Of course we all know roasting makes every vegetable better, and cauliflower is no exception. I think I could eat a head of cauliflower a day like this. I'm just not sure cauliflower is nutritionally dense enough to merit such fond attention. [Check out its nutritional stats for yourself here.]

The best thing about this recipe is that its method of lightly seasoning and flavor-enriching cauliflower is really vegetable-agnostic. I liked the simple combo of salt, pepper, olive oil, nutritional yeast and almond meal so much that the very next night I did another baking sheet full of cauliflower plus other veggies I had that needed using.

This is a picture of almond-roasted cauliflower, butternut squash, and golden and purple potatoes. I confess it looked a lot prettier before the roasting, as I had it nicely arranged. But you do have to toss it around a bit after sprinkling on the nooch and the almond meal, so I ruined my Stepford Wife-ian symmetrical vegetable arrangement. It's all good. And it certainly tasted great!!

This week's bookmarked recipes

I started something during Vegan MoFo that I tohught was worth keeping up: Each week I bookmark a lot of cool vegan recipes I find round the web, and each week I should share those with you!

So here are this week's bookmarks:

Veggie Fixation posted a round up of their own: Their favorite holiday recipes.

Manifest Vegan's Pumpkin Spice Rice Pudding sounds amazing, and so seasonal :)

It's no surprise Pumpkin is a theme, so I also bookmarked the Vegan Chickpeas' Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes and Chubby Vegan Mom's Pumpkin Mac & Cheese.

Cat Food Sandwich combines some of my favorite foods for Fettucine with Brussels Sprouts and Pine Nuts

Brussels Sprouts are also the main ingredient of Kitchen Opera's Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Apples and Almonds

The fall and winter bounty is on full display with these other heart, savory choices:

Cupcake Kitteh's Leek, Mushroom, Kale Pie

Kitchen Opera's Collard Green with Roasted Vegetables Wrap

Naked Vegan Lunch's Curried Butternut Kale Stew and African Peanut Stew

And finally, a couple of other yummy-sounding creations:

Big Mike's Eats' Vegan Cherry Cake

Peaceful Pantry's Wasabi Sesame Noodle Salad

and

VegHead's Creamy Avocado Soup

Haven't tried any of these yet, so if you have, please let me know how they turned out!

Vegan MoFo Day 31: Well, I did it!

That's right. We are at the end of the road. Cue Boyz II Men because I survived Vegan MoFo. I posted 23 out of 31 days in October. Of course if you look a little more closely, I clearly had trouble sstaining the effort. I blogged 14 out of the first 15 days in the month. And 9 out of the next 16. 

I cooked some new recipes. I share my most reliable go-to ingredients and meals. I went out to several restaurants. I brought the variety, I will give me that.

My pictures are not really very good, and I don't feel comfortable reprinting entire recipes from other folks, so I'm probably an annoying blogger.

But I did it!

Today being Halloween, we had a potluck at work, and I stopped and picked up a dozen vegan donuts at Whole Foods. These are moist and, to my mind, indistinguishable from regular donuts. They were so good I forgot, once again, to take picturesof them before they were gone. 

Because oh, yeah, that's the other thing I do. I forget to shoot the food I'm eating, sometimes at all, but often only when it's half-eaten and not nearly as attractive.

I could be a better blogger. I could probably be a better vegan too. But with both veganism and blogging: I just keep trying!

How was Vegan MoFo for you/