Black Bean Glazed Tempeh

As you might know, my favourite method of making tempeh is from the Veganomicon “smoky glazed” and “hot sauce glazed” recipes: poach, then marinate, then fry, adding marinade as you go. The bottled black bean sauce I used for the chickpea fritters a few posts ago seemed like a perfect sauce for this method–nice and strong–and it was very good. Not as good as the Hot Sauce Glazed recipe, but nothing seems to be. Then some rice and some cabbage sauteed and wilted with a bit of tamari, some sesame seeds, and rice vinegar: yum!

Fried Kugel

In my trusty freezer, I had leftovers of the Spinach and Noodle Kugel I made back in October…which itself was made from noodles I’d saved in the freezer since Mack’s birthday in July… oh, these were some workhorse noodles. This Freezer Find needed some jazzing up. I thawed it overnight in the fridge, and then fried it in a bit of oil, like you would with leftover rice for fried rice! A good idea, if I do say so myself. Retained some of that kugel creaminess, but had little bits of crispy goodness to make those noodles forget how much time they’d spent in the freezer.

Spiced Lentil Dal

Mark Bittman of the New York Times ran a feature on simple dal recipes awhile ago, and I’ve been trying them out one by one! This was the first one I made (recipe here), substituting Earth Balance for butter, of course. As you can see it’s extremely stripped down– you boil the spices along with the lentils. I should have known: with a recipe this simple you can’t leave out the sauteed onion because you are out of time to go to the store. The final dish lacked depth and sweetness….. the exact depth and sweetness a sauteed onion would have provided. Ah well, it was perfectly serviceable, and to the leftovers I added a bit of acorn squash soup that I’d been unable to finish for lunch and was keeping in the fridge. Problem solved! I am getting much more resourceful and experimental with age– there was a time I measured everything to the 1/8 teaspoon, and never would have added a bit of leftover squash soup to a dal. Oh well: I think all that precision was good training for knowing what kinds of experiments would work once I grew into my wacky devil-may-care late twenties.
As accompaniment we have roasted brussels sprouts, a.k.a. winter candy, and a cashew/raisin pilaf I made up.

Blackstrap Gingersnaps

From Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar! Now, it says that this recipe is not for soft ginger cookies, but thin crisp ones. I thought that was alright, even though I really do prefer the soft type. Good news! They hardly spread and were delightfully soft in the middle. A great cookie.

Green Rice!

Oh, this was such a delicious dinner. I made my own salsa and guacamole, and then the chipotle black beans from Veganomicon with the chipotle drizzle mixed right in, and then from Gourmet Today, Green Rice. So good! Rice cooked in a puree of cilantro and parsley and onion and roasted poblanos. A lot more work than regular rice, but such a great, warm taste. I would definitely make this again. As you can see, I’m cooking a lot out of Gourmet Today: it’s the kind of book that inspires a kind of Julie and Julia “I’m gonna cook the whole thing” sentiment in me. A sentiment which meshes interestingly with the veganism thing. It would be a whole lot of veganising, and even then there are so many recipes that just plain wouldn’t be worth the effort. Like Pork Rillettes.

French Tomato Soup with Rice

Ack: time flies! Here is French Tomato Soup With Rice from Gourmet Today. In the preamble it promises to be no ordinary tomato soup–that with saffron, orange zest, basil, etc. etc. it will be more of a Mediterranean-French pow to the senses. Or something like that. I love all those things, and soup and tomatoes and rice, so I went for it. I don’t really know what happened– the finished soup had a very peppery, astringent quality that goes beyond what I find pleasant (and it’s not like I don’t like peppery or astringent things!) I wonder if there was just too much orange zest for soupy purposes, with an effect similar to my neighbour’s stew ruined with too much rosemary, he said? I think maybe we have to be careful with strong astringent ingredients when they will be infused in liquid? I don’t know. I still have some in the freezer. I’ll eat it eventually.