Pantry White Bean Salad

Since the big party last weekend I’ve been eating party food for meals: chips and salsa, hummus, Hot Parmesan Artichoke Dip that I made from The Uncheese Cookbook, samosas, and pakoras. It’s been a little ridiculous: no fresh vegetables, nothing homemade except that dip, and mostly fried. Add to that all the crappy food I’ve eaten out to “supplement” that, and I find myself kind of blah by Thursday. All I had in the fridge tonight was the leftover canned white beans from making the dip. So I decided to eat them as a simple salad: I mixed dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, capers, a tiny bit of maple syrup, a couple of shakes of poppy seeds, a pinch of marjoram, and salt and pepper. It was delicious, and then I remembered to add a small clove of minced garlic after I took the picture, and it was even better.

Pakoras

These are Indianlife brand storebought pakoras that I bought to serve at my birthday party and forgot to! Pretty good: I like the little bursts of fennel seed. Their samosas are pretty good too!

My 27th Birthday Cake

For my birthday this year I decided to make a green tea marzipan cake!

Here we have the layers: I made the “non-chocolate cake” from Papa Tofu, taking out a spoonful of flour and replacing it with a 1/4 cup green tea powder. For the filling I continued my troubled experiments with not-too-sweet creamy fillings: I blended raw cashews and soymilk to make a smooth paste, added in some icing sugar, vanilla, almond extract, and silken tofu, and ended up with a runny mess! So I cooked it with a bit of arrowroot to thicken it, but it was nothing to write home about.

Here we have the cake iced with standard buttercream, stabilised with skewers and then chilled.

Now for the tricky part that I had never done before and that I know way better how to do next time. I rolled out the marzipan, making sure at first that there was enough icing sugar on the surface to keep it from sticking. As the round got thinner and thinner, though, I failed to make sure it was still not sticking. So then I had a very thin sheet of marzipan stuck like glue to my counter, and some swearing and jabbing with a thin metal spatula and tearing ensued. Once it was all torn in dry pieces that couldn’t be fixed, I decided (or was forced) to go the “rustic” route. The “rustic” route always saves the day!

Red Cooked Celery

I had more celery to use up (which happens when you live alone and buy a whole head of celery) so I decided to continue with the braising theme and “red cook” it, which refers to a method of Chinese cooking that I first read about ages ago in Cooking Light magazine. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on it, and I only loosely followed the method. I braised it with white wine, hoisin sauce, a cut-up tomato, some tamari and garlic, with a bit of sesame chile oil at the end. And I didn’t really braise it because I wanted to reduce the liquid quickly and so it spent a lot of cooking time with the top off. I thought a tomato would go well, and it did. I mostly thought of it because of the part in Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill where he talks about the recipe for Tomato Beef. I love the food prose poems in that book with a passion, even though, ironically enough given this blog, the poem on Tomato Beef ends with his vegetarian sister claiming it’s a good enough dish to make someone want to go back to meat. No need for the beef, I say, when you’ve got garlic and soy sauce and tomatoes and sugar and spices. And celery!

VeganMoFo Day 22: The Trick to Oven Fries

This has been my favourite way to cook potatoes for probably a decade. I originally got the idea from Bonnie Stern’s Simply HeartSmart Cooking. The trick is the rack on top of the cooking sheet: less surface area to stick means you can use way less oil, as little as a teaspoon! And despite less oil, the fries taste really great. Toss the potatoes with a bit of olive oil, arrange on the rack over the sheet, sprinkle with herbs and spices of your choice and salt and pepper, and bake at 400F (I never know for how long: I’ve come to think it varies by potato and oven. I usually just keep an eye on them, and I’d say it’s usually in the 30-45 min. mark.)

BBQ Tofu, Braised Celery, Mashed Rutabaga

I didn’t get home until 8 o’clock, and I was so hungry! But I’d had my heart set on making this all day, so I did, and it took less than an hour. I baked the leftover tofu from the sushi challenge, brushing it with bottled barbeque sauce. Meanwhile, I braised some celery and garlic on low heat in a bit of olive oil, white wine, and later some water. I boiled and mashed the chunks of rutabaga with a bit of unsweetened soymilk and a touch of olive oil. Voila!

Veganmofo Iron Chef Challenge: Tamago Nigiri Sushi

I know this is picture heavy, but these are so pretty! For this week’s Iron Vegan Chef Challenge (see here) , the item is sushi. Being from Vancouver, I’ve eaten a fair bit of sushi in my life. Something I had every once in awhile in my pre-vegan days was tamago nigiri, which is a piece of sweetened egg omelette on top of a piece of rice. To make the vegan version, I marinated tofu pieces in water, nutritional yeast, and a bit of sugar, then simmered the pieces in that mixture for awhile with a bit of turmeric added, then cooled them in the fridge. The result doesn’t taste exactly like the original–it’s less sweet and less eggy, predictably enough–but I thought that was actually for the best! It made a lot of nice gestures to the original and was quite tasty. One more picture below, mid-prep.

Pot Pie

This is a takeoff on the Almost All-American Pot Pie from Veganomicon: I used white beans instead of seitan and switched up the veggies to include rutabaga and exclude peas I didn’t have. But I followed the recipe for the crust and gravy, with good results! Good comfort food.

Survey Time

I feel like my blog has a mandate: only pictures of food I make and descriptions of what it is and how I made it. But reading all the Veganmofo posts from other blogs, I thought I’d get in the branchy-outy spirit and post something else! So here’s a food survey that’s been making the Veganmofo rounds.

1. Name a song that involves food in some way.
“You Can Have Him,” Nina Simone. “I’d fix a breakfast that would please him most/ Eggs and coffee, some apricot juice and some buttered toast.”

2. What criteria do you use when choosing a new cookbook to buy?
These days it has to really have an interesting approach to recipes. I dunno, I haven’t bought a cookbook in awhile because I have so many already.

3. What did you eat today?
Hmm, I just woke up. Rye toast with Earth Balance and a couple of florets of roasted cauliflower out of the fridge.

4. Name a vegan food that you know exists but you have never tried.
All those new vegan cheeses that have been burning up the internet this year, Teese, Scheese, all those.

5. The Food Network just called and needs you to start your new show tomorrow. What will the title of the show be?
Pump up the Parsnips.

6. Favorite hot sauce or other spicy condiment?
I like them all! Sambal Oelek, uh, standard tex-mex hot sauces are favourites, I suppose

7. How old were you when you became vegetarian/vegan?
Vegetarian at 22
Vegan at 24

8. Favorite vegan cheeze?
The sauces from The Uncheese Cookbook.

9. Cutest baby animal?
Man, I usually find the adults of any given species cuter. Uh, elephants.

10. Favorite type of jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves?
I think basic strawberry!

11. Do you take any vitamins/supplements?
Some Jamieson kids vitamins, B12.

12. What food/dish most embodies the Fall season?
Root Vegetables!

13. What food would you have a hard time living without?
Greens and cruciferous. I get antsy after a couple of weeks away from these (as I probably should!) I think I’d have a really hard time living without toast. I eat toast just about every day, and I love its guts.

14. Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?
Coffee. I really only prefer tea when I’m sick or overtired, or when I’m having a tea party with my friends.

15. It’s 10PM and you’re starving. What do you eat?
Hahaha, I’m rarely starving at 10PM! But I’d say toast. Or popcorn with nutritional yeast et.al. Or, whenever I’ve made tempeh or seitan or tofu for dinner, which isn’t often, a leftover slice of that.

16. If you have an animal companion, what is his/her favorite food?
Aw, don’t have one. But Hannah my late dachsund used to like everything but lettuce. Everything. She ate a whole stick of butter once.

17. Worst injury you’ve gotten in the kitchen?
I think just little burns and cuts. Unless I’ve blocked something out, which I wouldn’t put past me. I had e.coli once, but that sure as hell wasn’t from MY kitchen. It was probably from SOMEONE’s kitchen, though!

18. When you have a food-related question, who do you call?
Haha, I’m usually the one people call! But, definitely the internet.

19. Summer is ending- What food will you miss most?
Berries.

20. What snacks do you keep in your purse/backpack/desk at work?
I never bring snacks to work, which means I usually end up with an overpriced banana from the student centre, or just have another cup of coffee for a snack.

21. Favorite soup to make on a rainy day?
Oooh, Matzoh Ball Soup from Vegan with a Vengeance! That was what I made for my last rainy day soup session! Or Mushroom Barley, or Tarragon Lentil…

22. What’s your favorite combination of fresh vegetable and/or fruit juices?
apple ginger.
23. Favorite brand of root beer?
This organic kind, Santa Cruz Organic I think? Or am I thinking of their ginger ale, which is amazing!

24. Make up your own question!
What is your dream birthday cake?
I’m making it for my birthday this year: green tea layer cake with almond cream between and marzipan to cover.

Roasted Feast

Argh, all the pictures of this dinner were dark and blurry! But I looked forward to making it all day and it didn’t disappoint. Roasted cauliflower, zucchini, and carrot, with Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh from Veganomicon. If you haven’t roasted cauliflower before, do it! And it’s pretty rare for me to make recipes multiple times because there’s just so many to try, but this is the third time I’ve made this tempeh because it is fantastic.