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?
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