Things Fall Apart

The centre cannot hold.

Especially when said centre is made of crepes and pastry cream. Behold! The crepe cake!



Doesn't that look lovely(ish)? It's rather a pity that that's not how it looked when it got to the table. This is:



Back in January, my friend challenged me to veganize this cake. It looked complicated, so I decided to wait a while, until I was a bit more comfortable in the kitchen. A while turned into months and then her birthday was coming, so I decided to figure it out and make it her birthday cake. I really wanted to get it right, so I started working on it over a month in advance because the filling kind of freaked me out. This wasn't merely a case of substituting margarine for butter and a little bit of soy yogurt for an egg and I didn't know what to do, so I took it to The PPK. As always, they were very helpful and directed me toward the pastry cream filling of the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I decided layering that with a few batches of the sweet crepes from Veganomicon would do the trick and set to work.

Here's my first attempt:





Failure. The crepes were too thick and not browned enough and the pastry cream was too loose. The reason? I couldn't get my agar flakes to dissolve. I officially hate agar flakes.

A few days later, I tried again:



Per the suggestions of the lovely people on The PPK, I reduced the crepe batter from 1/2 cup to 1/3 per crepe and dissolved the agar flakes in the microwave (which still took HOURS). The crepes still weren't brown enough, but it was only a test, so I was going for speed (as you can see by my ever-so-smooth filling job). It looked good enough to me. The cream was thick and the crepes were thin, so the cream was able to support the crepes, instead of the other way around. With eight crepes, I called it success. But the recipe called for 25 crepes and it never occurred to me that the number would cause a problem.

Though it looked good, I found the taste slightly lacking. It tasted good and it was nice and sweet, but it didn't taste like anything. Just sweet. I wanted to layer in some thinly sliced strawberries, but I thought that would be too much of a variation (read: cheat) from the original recipe, so I decided to substitute chocolate extract for vanilla in the final cake, top it with powdered sugar and write on it in melted chocolate (at first, I wasn't going to write on it at all, then I was thinking of using royal icing or something similarly generic).

The birthday dinner was on Wednesday, so I planned my week accordingly. Monday night, I went home early and made the crepe batter (four times the written recipe) and the pastry cream (six times the written recipe). I knew I'd have the agar issue, so I did that first, working on the batter while the agar sat in the warm/hot soy milk slowly dissolving, then whisking it for five minutes at a time. For hours. My right arm is currently on strike.

This is a lot of crepe batter:



Please notice the box of soy milk in the background. It's right side up, but I'm pretty sure the text on the back is upside down.

More pastry cream than I ever want to see again:



Tuesday night, I went to see The Futureheads do their first US show in two years (which was superawesome. Expect a fall tour. Run, don't walk for tickets!), then went home and made the crepes and put it all together.

Thirty crepes:



I only needed 25, so I put aside the uglier crepes and the best one (for the top) on a cutting board as I worked. I got to 18, paused to wash my hands, looked over at the cake and it looked like a landslide. As I stood there, the crepes were sliding off of the cake, onto the table, then almost onto the floor! I ran over and caught them (part of them were already hanging off the table), then grabbed up the whole cake and dropped it down on the cutting board. Right on top of the nicest crepe. Crap.

Once I got the pastry cream of of myself (and the table) and convinced myself I was neither going to cry nor throw the crepes around the room, I started reassembling the cake crepe by crepe, using my hands to smooth the filling, instead of my spatula. Since half the filling ended up on the table, cutting board and me, I thought the cake might hold together better with the thinner layers of filling. Since it was already covered with pastry cream, I included the "best crepe" in the cake and topped it off with a clean one, so the cake ended up being twenty crepes instead of 25. That was good enough for me, so I dusted it with powdered sugar and wrote on it with the melted chocolate.





That's how it looked when I put it away. This is how it looked when I woke up:



Appetizing, isn't it? (No)

I IMed the birthday girl when I got to work and basically apologized for completely ruining her birthday (because that's how it felt to me) and tried to brainstorm how to fix it. A coworker noticed I was upset and when I showed her why, she laughed at me. When she was done laughing, she suggested I just move the top of the cake to the center of the pile and trim it around, so that's what I did.

Here it is, with the trimmings my coworkers and I ate throughout the day:



And here's the finished product:



Obviously, it's not nearly as attractive as it started out, but it was presentable enough. And everyone seemed to enjoy it. Even the wait staff at the restaurant tried some, but they didn't tell me what they thought of it, so maybe that was their polite way of not telling me they hated it.

Wow, this post is sort of epic (read: too damn long). Sorry about that. But if it took you this long to read it, think of what it must have been like to do it!

And if you're reading this, happy birthday, Shar! (that's what the cake says, in case you can't tell)

Catching Up

Last week, I did a whole mess of cooking for the holiday of Shavuot (Jewish people celebrate being given the bible. It's customary not to eat meat because supposedly meat wasn't eaten until after we received the rules for kosherness in said bible). I was also commissioned to make my boss' birthday cake. I don't have any pictures of the holiday food, but here's the cake (frankly the best part anyway):



I tried to convince my family to go vegan for the holiday (it's only fifty hours), but it didn't work so well. One of the few things my mother actually cooks is a cheese dish that she only makes this time of year and she insisted on making it. Also, someone gave her a baked ziti, so she wanted to serve that. However, it turned out to be crap, so they stuck with her dish. I made the rest of the food for the holiday and it was all vegan.

Blintzes are traditional, so I made the Veganomicon crepes and made some of them into Potato-Mushroom Blintzes. My brother hates mushrooms, so I halved them and made plain potato blintzes as well. I also stuffed some with the Tofu Ricotta, also from Veganomicon. I made the Cherry Compote from Yellow Rose Recipes for dipping.

I love the Veganomicon crepes. I'd been nervous about making crepes because everyone always talks about how delicate and easy to ruin they are, but I had been practicing making them for something else and these are really easy. At first, I was annoyed that the batter had to be refrigerated for an hour before using it, but now I love that I can make the batter the night before I want to make the crepes and just get right down to the cooking when I'm eager to get down to the eating. I don't even have a crepe pan. I use a regular little non-stick pan and it works quite well.

The potato-mushroom filling is amazing. Everyone (except my brother) loved the blintzes. And he said his plain potato ones were some of the best he'd ever had. The filling couldn't be more simple, but it's one of those things that come out tasting very restauranty and people are impressed.

The Tofu Ricotta has the ricotta texture, but definitely not the taste. Everyone liked them, with the "This tastes nothing like cheese" caveat. To me, they taste strongly of nutritional yeast, so I was surprised my family liked them as much as they did (they liked them enough to honestly say they're enjoyable - they don't spare my feelings - but not enough to take seconds).

Making the blintzes themselves takes a bit of practice. I couldn't get a nice shape going, even at the end (I made about fifteen), but only one lost structural integrity and fell apart, so that's not too bad.

The Cherry Compote is very nice. My father has been putting it on everything. It's a bit more sour than I expected it to be, so I probably just used too much lemon juice. It went quite well with the cheese blintzes. I think I'll make it again next time I have a container of vegan ice cream in the house.

My mother requested something with eggplant in it, so I made the Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream, also from Veganomicon. Dudes, that pine nut cream is so rich and awesome and...creamy. I'm always amazed by the ability of nuts to act like dairy. It's so weird. This cream is double great because it doesn't require overnight soaking or anything like some of the other nut "dairy" recipes I've seen. If you don't like eggplant and zucchini and whatnot, just make the cream and put it on...everything. I also got many compliments on the sauce. The shallots make it stand out a bit from jarred stuff. And, of course, there's nothing to not like about eggplant, zucchini and potatoes, so this recipe is a total winner.

I also made Potato Spinach Wedges, a test recipe for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming brunch book. Isa describes them as knishes without the dough, and that's basically what they are. They're tasty and easy. It's great that you can just throw it in a baking dish and be done, instead of making little, individualized items.

Dessert is the most important part of any holiday and I didn't pull any punches. I made Pain Au Chocolat (another brunch tester), Chocolate Almond Cheezecake with Graham Cracker Crust from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook and Strawberry-Rhubarb-Peach Pie from Vegan With a Vengeance.

Everyone went nuts for the Pain Au Chocolat. I stuffed them with raspberries, strawberries and blackberries and served them warm. The chocolate oozed all over everyone's faces and made a wonderful mess. This dessert is wonderful and best eaten 1. warm and 2. with other people. Make them with a few different kinds of fruit, share them around and laugh at the chocolate on each other's faces.

The Chocolate Almond Cheezecake was sort of like a really firm chocolate pudding pie. A really good, a really firm chocolate pudding pie. Serving it with cherries somehow enhanced the almond flavor. It would probably go nicely with a vegan whipped cream, but I haven't mastered one of those yet.

The Strawberry-Rhubarb-Peach Pie was amazing. It really hit the spot, serving it on the first hot days of the season. This was my first time having rhubarb and it really heightened all the other flavors. I love this pie. There have been requests to make it again and I will not hesitate to fill them.

Some of you may remember my birthday cake from last month. If you don't, that's OK because my boss and office manager did. It was Blackout the Forest Cake: a cross between blackout cake and black forest cake. To make it, I adapted parts of Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance. They requested I make the exact same cake for the office celebration of my boss' birthday. Taking advantage of any opportunity to feed people yummy vegan food, I complied. The only change was to the decoration: I halved the cherries and removed the pits so people didn't have to spit while enjoying the cake. I liked how the stems looked like candles on my cake, but I think it was worth sacrificing that for the convenience of a spit-free party. Unfortunately, I made it and carried it to work when the temperature was over eighty degrees. Ganache doesn't like to behave at temperatures like that, so it looked a little funny, but everyone agreed the taste more than made up for it.

Dont Fear the Seitan

So I was all psyched up to make Julie Hasson's famous sausages this weekend when my friend said she'd gotten BBQ seitan at a restaurant. Follower that I am, I wanted BBQ seitan too, so I made the BBQ Seitan and Crispy Coleslaw Sandwich from Veganomicon. Isa and Terry say the sandwich is based on one they had at 'Snice and few things can recommend a recipe to me more strongly than a comparison to 'Snice, so I was sold. I made Simple Seitan, Backyard BBQ Sauce and Home-Style Potato Rolls (all from VCON), put it all together with some coleslaw (included in sandwich recipe) and a bit of Vegannaise and died and went to heaven.

I know a lot of people are wary of making seitan. After The Lambs' Brains Debacle of '08, I understand why (thanks to Trina for that visual). But this was my second time making the Simple Seitan, and it's wonderful yet again. Clearly, it wasn't beginner's luck. This is just a fool proof way to make seitan. And to prove seitan making isn't scary or difficult (just time consuming), I'm going to take you through it with pictures (I think I did this last time, too, but I definitely took more pictures this time). In case you're not interested in all that, here's what my mouth is going to see as soon as this is posted:



The beginning of making seitan isn't much different from baking. Mix your dry ingredients (in this case, vital wheat gluten and nutritional yeast):



Mix your wet ingredients (oil, garlic, soy sauce and some other stuff):



Combine your wet and dry. Mix it up, knead it for a while and cut it in thirds:



Throw it in a pot with some broth, bring it to a boil, simmer for a while, drain:



Tada! Your seitan is done and ready to be used in the recipe of your choice. It was my choice to slice it up:



And grill it in a grill pan brushed with peanut oil:



I think grill marks are sexy:



I tossed the grilled seitan in the Backyard BBQ Sauce and re-grilled:



Hot grill lines:



Don't forget to make your coleslaw:



Then, slice a roll in half, give it a little shmear of Vegannaise, a drizzle of BBQ sauce if you have bigger balls than me (the Backyard BBQ Sauce is too spicy for me plain, but it's perfect in the sandwich), pile on your coleslaw, top that with seitan, squish down the top bun and have the best lunch ever. It's one of the many recipes I've found in Veganomicon that leave me thinking "I can't believe this came out of my kitchen!"

This is How I Roll

I figure if I keep using that joke, someone is bound to find it funny, sooner or later.

Right?

Whatever. Even if you don't share my sense of humor, I bet you want to share my Veganomicon Home-Style Potato Rolls.



I was really nervous about making these because they were my first time working with yeast. I thought something would go wrong for sure and I'd end up with flat, hard non-rolls. And if that was the case, I wouldn't be able to make sandwiches and I'd just have to go hungry all week. Or something.

Luckily, everything went well and I now have two dozen tasty potato rolls (well, probably 20ish, by now). I didn't think the cupcake shape would be conducive to sandwich making, but didn't know if the rolls would come out OK if I just put them on a baking sheet, so I did half in the pan like the instructions said and half straight on a sheet. I also braided three to see if I could make challah rolls out of them. That didn't go over so well, but the cupcaked and flat rolls are both great.

The recipe is very easy to follow, but I had to use way more flour than indicated to get the dough to stop sticking to my hands and dough mat. And these aren't like the Vegan With a Vengeance biscuits that you can make really quick, if you're feeling sort of bready. The dough needs to sit two hours before being formed into rolls, then another 30ish minutes in the cupcake pans, then they bake for 30ish minutes. That's not including the time you spend actually working on them. They're well worth the time spent, though (and you can go out and do whatever you want while they're sitting around rising; it's not like you have to watch them the whole time).

Before they hit the oven:



The cupcaked rolls, minus a "tester":



All the rolls. The semi-failed attempts at challah are at the top:

Passover, Post the Fifth

It's over! Someone pass me a bagel because Passover is officially over. Let's talk about what I ate for the last two days.



Pictured above is the Broccoli-Potato Soup with Fresh Herbs from Veganomicon. What a nice soup. Someone used the last of my dill, so I used a tablespoon or two of rosemary instead and I couldn't find dried tarragon, so I used fresh, but it was still very nice. The herbs are added at the end, so you can still taste each individual flavor instead of just having a mass of taste. Nice.

I also steamed up some asparagus with some garlic and lemon in the water, then threw it in the oven with some olive oil, salt and minced garlic. As usual, that was inhaled by my family in less than no time. I learned a valuable lesson from this holiday: to get my family to eat vegetables, all I need to do is add oil, garlic and heat. Spiffy.

For lunch today, I heated up some of the leaves left over from my artichoke hearts and made a dipping sauce for them from a bit of softened margarine, one clove minced garlic, the juice of one-quarter lemon and a bit of salt. It was my family's first time eating artichoke leaves and they seemed to like it enough (though it didn't drive them wild or anything).

Remember those Brussels sprouts I thought I'd be able to eat with dinner, just not in large quantities? I was wrong. They were SO bitter that I was only able to eat about two halves, then had to stop. Even with mashed potatoes (which make the whole world better) and the portobello mushrooms from Yellow Rose Recipes. What the hell? I have no idea how that happened and don't even know if it's possible to salvage the things. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thus concludes our five-part series on my first vegan Passover. Thank you and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Passover, Post the Second

After I finished making everything I did on Friday, I pretty much fell into a coma and didn't wake up until around 6 PM Saturday and did nothing but eat and read for the rest of the day. Awesome. I got myself all rested up for the cookfest that was Sunday.



The first thing I realized was that I hadn't done anything with all those portobello mushrooms from Thursday night/Friday morning; they were still marinating. I grabbed them from the fridge, and at first I thought they'd frozen because the contents of the container was one solid block. Then I thought they went bad. Turned out the oil I used had solidified in the fridge. Whew! I stirred it all up a bit and it all broke up and was fine. Not realizing the Yellow Rose Recipes recipe makes way more marinade than the Veganomicon one does, I followed the Veganomicon instructions for roasting portobello mushrooms, doubling the cook time because the oven was set to 250 F and I couldn't change it. About halfway through, I realized I was being dumb and that the mushrooms would never really roast while sitting in the soup they were in. Maybe they'd boil, but not roast. So I ladled out about half the marinade, which improved things.

The texture of the mushrooms came out very good, but the taste was a little weird. Kind of sour. I love sour food, so that's fine. My parents tried them and decided to leave it all for me, though.

Next, I made the Broccoli Vinaigrette from The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook. Here's the weird thing about this vinaigrette: there's no vinegar in it. There is, however, plenty of garlic and a huge portion of awesome. This is another one of those did-I-really-need-a-cookbook-to-tell-me-that sort of recipes. Super easy, yet, because it's me, full of fail. I didn't have a steamer basket for Passover, so I decided to try steaming my broccoli in a strainer. A plastic strainer. Well, I hope my mother likes her new abstract strainer sculpture. Even if she doesn't, she liked the broccoli, so that's OK. My father liked it so much he asked for seconds, even though he usually can't stand to look at the stuff. My brother had to be restrained so I'd have some left to photograph. Good stuff.

Here's a mushroom, the broccoli and the Green-Wa. A very nice meal:



I also made the Diner Home Fries from Veganomicon. Those were too good. They didn't even last until I was able to use my camera! The cooked pepper made my grandmother worry about her agita again, but it didn't bother her at all and again, my brother didn't eat around the green bits. The peppers and onions cook just long enough to be tender but still maintain some crunch, which is great when mixed in with the soft potatoes. I'd eat these every day if I wouldn't have to fight my family for them.

I really pulled out all the stops for dessert.

First, there were Tea-Poached Pears in Chocolate Sauce from Veganomicon. This is the perfect dessert to make if you're cooking for someone special and/or are serving a really heavy dinner. Most people I know are impressed by desserts that come with sauce poured on the plate. There's just something classy about it (unless it's a mess). If you have the skills to make designs around the edges, even better (I don't, but when I accidentally dripped, I decided to drip all around to make it look intentional). Also, it's nice and light. It's not really rich, or fudgy or a heavy cake. It's just fruit. Really, really good fruit. It takes a few steps to make, but it's not difficult (though whoever you make it for will probably think it is).



And I made The Conscious Kitchen's truffles. They're going to get another post all to themselves, so for now, just know they're lovely. Delicious, rich, impressive-looking and easy, though time consuming.







Don't worry, I'm not done with Passover yet!

How the Blog Saved Passover

Passover, the traditional holiday for matzo balls, is next week. Unfortunately, it's traditional to make matzo balls with eggs. Also unfortunately, it's traditional for vegans to replace the eggs with tofu (e.g.: the Vegan With a Vengeance recipe), one of the many foods forbidden on Passover (according to my family's tradition). I was ready to spend my first matzo ball free Passover when someone showed me Tofu Mom's recipe. I just tried it tonight and I think it made the best vegan matzo balls I've had yet.



As I'm sure I've mentioned in all my other matzo ball related posts, my family likes their matzo balls very firm and we've always found the vegan tofu-based ones to be softer than our preference, but good enough. They don't turn into a huge glob of mush in the soup (the first batch I made did!), but they don't really have any bite to them either.

Until now. This whole baking soda/potato starch thing is brilliant. As you can see in the picture above, the balls can actually be picked up and held between the fingers without oozing or denting or falling apart. Amazing. My family is thrilled. We're so pleased with the consistency, I think we may stick with these even when it's not Passover. Wooha!

Speaking of Passover, I don't know how much activity this blog will see over the next couple of weeks. I've cleaned out the fridge and probably won't be cooking again until the holiday. I've already got my menu planned and will be cooking up a storm (think roasted portobellos, stuffed eggplant, matzo ball soup, braised cauliflower, green-wa, diner home fries, broccoli potato soup, herb-roasted potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts with toasted garlic, roasted garlic artichoke spread, beginners curry, broccoli vinaigrette, baked apples, tea-poached pears in chocolate sauce, and raw apple pie), but photography will be limited since I'm not allowed to use a camera (or a computer) for about half the holiday. I'll be sure to review all the recipes when I'm done, though (and since most are from Veganomicon and Yellow Rose Recipes, I'm prepared for loads of positive reviews).

Seitan the Second

Many moons ago, I tried the Simple Seitan recipe from Veganomicon with much success. More recently, I tried the Seitan Cutlet recipe from the same book with significantly less awesome results. However, I paired it with the fantastic Sauteed Spinach and Tomatoes so all was not lost.



I don't know if it was the nutritional yeast in the Simple Seitan that made the difference, but this seitan looked and felt different right from the start. It was very elastic and wouldn't really knead, even when I added some extra water. When it was time to put the cutlets in the baking pan, I couldn't even flatten them out into cutlet shapes; they just snapped right back to being blobs.

When I tried to eat them, cutting was a chore and they stretched almost as much as hot melted cheese (though they got less stretchy after sitting in the fridge for a while). I was able to feel the lemon zest in them, but didn't know that was what it was at first, and kept picking it out of my mouth. Even when I knew what it was, it still felt gross in my mouth. I made these a few weeks ago and still have four (of twelve) in the fridge. I ended up ordering take out on two days because I didn't want to eat these. I suspect the last four will go in the trash, but I'm hoping some sort of saving inspiration will strike before that happens.

Spinach confuses me. For about a billion years, I was told spinach is high in iron and if I'm not going to eat meat, I have to eat my spinach and my broccoli. Then I read that spinach contains a compound that blocks iron absorption. The more I Googled, the more confused I got, so I brought the question to the PPK and here's what I learned, in brief:

Cooking the spinach helps break down the compound that blocks iron absorption.
Vitamin C aids iron absorption so eat it with tomatoes or orange juice or something.
Kale is better*.

This recipe gave me two of the three: the spinach was cooked and some tomatoes were thrown in, so I think it was OK, ironwise. That's good news because it's amazing, tastewise. It's chock full of onions and garlic and awesome. And it's super fast to make, so please do.

When good seitan goes bad:



Doesn't that look tempting (the correct answer is no)?



*At the time I made this dish, I hadn't cooked kale yet, but I have now and they were correct. I now love kale. It'll be a June wedding.

The End of the Affair

I got so many cookbooks during the holiday season that it feels like eons since I've made anything from my favorite one, Veganomicon. I almost feel dirty. Like I've been having one night stands with all my other cookbooks. This weekend, I was back to my Veganomicon and I'll never forsake my darling again!

I made the Red Lentil Cauliflower Curry and Sauteed Collard Greens.

OH. MY. GOD. THAT CURRY! AMAZING!



If you have this book, go make this curry right now. If you don't have it, go buy it, then make it. If you can't afford it, tell me and I'll get it for you for your birthday...or just send you some curry. YOU MUST HAVE THIS CURRY!

I put it over basmati rice and every forkful has me thinking "I made this? Me? This is crazy. I know I didn't get it from a restaurant, so I must have made it. WOW." I used purple cauliflower, which is all kinds of pretty, but I think the parsnips really make it. The sweetness of the parsnips combined with the spiciness of the dish is just crazy good. I could eat it by the pot.

The collard greens are really good too. My father has said he hates collard greens many times. He almost refused to taste these, but I finally talked him into it and he was shocked. He works in the food industry, so he had to know what I did to make them so good, so he could go tell the cook what to do (I've seen the collard greens they make where he works. They start frozen and are boiled or steamed to death. The look more like collard greys. Nasty.). I think the liquid smoke is what really gave them their kick (I didn't have the seitan broth mentioned in the recipe, so I used vegetable broth, shoyu and liquid smoke). Yum.

As you can see, my Veganomicon reunion was a happy one. I'm not allowing myself to buy any new cookbooks until I've made five things from each I already own, so you can expect cooking from some of my other books in the coming weeks, but I shall never stray to far from my Nomnomnomicon, I swear.

Soup, Moroccan Style

The most recent issue of Vegetarian Times had two awesome things in it:

1. A positive review of Veganomicon.

2. A soup feature.

I love soup. Could probably live on it, given half a chance. Hell, I'd marry it. I made the Moroccan Harira and pretty much fell in love with it. Expect a June wedding.



(unfortunately, all the photos I took of this soup are pretty grody-looking because I couldn't get the noodles in the bowl without them smearing the sides. Whoops!)

The soups in the feature were all from different countries and were supposed to be healthy and somewhat medicinal. VT provided a bit of cultural background for each soup, which was quite interesting. Harira sometimes has a bit of lamb or other meat and egg in it and is usually eaten to break the fast during Ramadan. This particular recipe obviously didn't have any meat or eggs in it, but it did have chick peas, cilantro, green lentils and a cinnamon stick.

This was my first time cooking lentils. I was worried I'd keep them on too long and they'd turn to mush, but they were nice and firm, even in the last portion of the soup. The cinnamon stick gave the soup a nice bite and really complimented the cilantro (which I think is one of my new favorite herbs - the idea that I have favorite (legal) herbs blows my mind. Four months ago, I didn't even know what cilantro was!). I stored the soup in two containers and left the stick in one of them. I ate that one first, then transferred the stick to the other.

With a bit of whole wheat pasta thrown in, this soup totally qualifies as a meal. It's packed with protein and other nutrients and it's low fat. And did I mention it's delicious? The only bad thing about this recipe is that I didn't double it.

All You Need is Smlove

Smlove is all you need.

Happy holidays!

I'm Jewish, so I didn't have plans for Christmas beyond spending 4.5 days knitting and cooking with the music up really loud while everyone else was at work. Then a friend invited me over for the holiday. Friends from out of town were going to come by for a while, then we'd go visiting with her assorted family in the area. And we'd get to play in the kitchen. How could I say no?

We made the Smlove Pie from Veganomicon to bring to her aunts and made some Vegan Bailey's (recipe in post #22 and below) for ourselves. Guh!



I'm so proud of that pie. It looks...like a PIE. Like a real pie you can get in a store. If you've read more of this blog than this post, you know that while my food may taste good, I haven't really been able to get presentation down yet. Obviously, making a pie with someone with a degree in art helps there.

The pie is delicious, but very rich. You can easily be satisfied with a super-small slice, making the fact that we brought one pie for roughly 30 people not so much of a problem.

The most fun part of making this pie is drizzling the chocolate over top. The most impressive part, to me, is that we candied our own pecans. Who the hell candies pecans?! We do! And we had about half of them left over, so we got to eat them plain as well, which was a real treat. We also had plenty of chocolate drizzle left. Candied pecan/chocolate drizzle sandwiches with a side of homemade gingerbread men (I made those the day before, but didn't take any pictures because it was just practice for later) is the breakfast of champions.

This is a great pie to bring to a gathering, vegan or omni. It looks so much like a real pie that people will be impressed just by looking at it. Add the taste, and they'll worship you. I don't know which they'll have more trouble believing: that it's homemade or that it's vegan.

The Bailey's was a little strong for me (I don't really drink), but we cut it with some of the Frangelico we bought for the pie and then it was nice and tasty. And there's something inherently funny about whisking whiskey. Bring it to a holiday party and you won't feel bad at all about not being able to partake of the nog.

Naked pie:



With peanut butter caramel and candied pecans:



Macro!



Sliced:



The slice:



Showing off:



Bailey's, in an appropriately festive cup:



Vegan Bailey's

1 can coconut milk
2 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs chocolate syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup whisky

Whisk it all together with a whisk. That's it.

Waste Not, Want Not

I hate waste when I cook and try to put every little bit of every little thing to use. I eat all the vegetables after I make veggie broth (even the greens!) and have boiled potatoes in pickle juice, so I obviously needed to find some use for all of my leftover seitan broth. The first thing I did was go back to my old standbys: jerky and mashed potatoes. This time, the jerky was a more meat-like color but was pretty bland. The potatoes tasted like they were unseasoned but had been sitting on a plate next to meat for a while.

So that wasn't very impressive, but then I remembered that I'd bought mochi and there was a recipe on the package.



The recipe called for onions, carrots, cabbage, soy sauce and mochi. I used onions, parsnips, spinach, seitan broth and mochi. It was actually quite nice, but then again, I'd marry a parsnip if you let me, so I may not be the best judge of the quality of this recipe.

Jerky before and after:

Seitan Said SEITAN

Given the name of this blog, it has taken way too long, but I finally made seitan two Sundays ago! Damn, was it tasty!

I made the Simple Seitan from Veganomicon in the morning and cooked it up in Sauteed Seitan with Mushrooms and Spinach (also from Veganomicon) when I got home that evening. I doubled the recipe and ended up eating it cold most of the time because I brought it to work for lunch and still wanted to marry it.



If I knew it was so easy to make your own seitan, I would have done it weeks ago (I randomly bought a package of wheat gluten flour when I first started cooking, not that I knew what it was for or anything like that).

Somehow, I missed the part where it said to add the garlic in the instructions and didn't realize my seitan was garlicless until I already had it kneaded up in six balls. So I added roughly one-sixth of the garlic to each individual ball and re-kneaded them. I don't know if it would have been more garlicy if I'd done it properly, but the taste didn't seem lacking, so I'm not overly concerned about it.

The only other change I made to the recipe was that I used real vegetable broth, made from the Vegan With a Vengeance recipe. This made me feel bad about throwing the broth out when I was done boiling the seitan. So bad that I didn't throw it out at all. I've come up with two uses for it so far that I'll write about at some other time.

The Sauteed Seitan with Mushrooms and Spinach is ridiculously fast, easy and tasty. Now that I have the food processor, my mushrooms were sliced in about two seconds and the rest of the recipe is a "cook for five minutes" "cook for eight minutes" kind of thing, so it was done less than no time. I ended up with extra seitan so I made it again on Wednesday. I never cook during the week, but the time investment was so minimal and the tastiness so huge it was well worth it.

Mixing the seitan (not very appetizing, but as you can see in the above picture, it gets better!):



Seitan balls, pre-boiling (I just stuck in the garlic):

Holiday Cupcakes

This blog is significantly behind my bloggable life, and for that, I apologize.

Let's rewind to Saturday, December eighth, shall we?

I spent the evening baking two dozen of the Veganomicon's Jelly Donut Cupcakes for my family's Channukkah party Sunday.



These cupcakes are SO easy to make. And so unique! Also, they don't use a mixer, so you can make them at 3 AM without waking anyone. And they're so fast to make that you can bake them at 3 AM without killing a whole night's sleep. Most of my cupcakes were left with holes in the top, but most jelly donuts have holes in the side, so people actually preferred them that way. The texture and flavor were very different from the previous cupcakes I'd made (all from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World). They were a bit more dense, and definitely donuty.

When I finished making the cupcakes, I met up with some friends to go to Strawberry Fields. On my way to see them, I got the idea to add a butternut squash to my vegetable menorah, but didn't think anything would come of it because I was out. When we got together, we realized we hadn't brought anything for John, so we stopped at Whole Foods for onions. I also bought a ten-pound butternut squash. And carried it around ALL NIGHT. I think it enjoyed Barcade.

I also brought the Veganomicon Spiced Yogurt Sauce to the party as an alternative dip for the veggies (someone else brought one with a sour cream base).

Cupcakes: ready for the jelly



Jellied



Baked



The Cavern O' Jelly



Powdered



From the inside



My date for the evening: the butternut squash

Happy Channukkah!

I still have food from last week to discuss, but the holiday is almost over and I want to post this before I miss it.



Vegetable Menorahs! A cute idea, executed less than skillfully. I probably should have asked someone who can cut in a straight line to do it.

Made of butternut squash roasted with rosemary and thyme, zucchini roasted with garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper and asparagus grilled with garlic and salt, according to the recommendations in Veganomicon.

And in case anyone's wondering, my parents got me a food processor for Channukkah and I love it. My life has changed already!

(kinda)

My First "Ethnic" Dish

I can't believe I'm still posting about what I made Sunday on Friday.

Anyway, before I cooked the Big Family Dinner (now to be known as the BFD), I made my food for the week: Cornmeal-Masala Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Spiced Yogurt Sauce over basmati rice, all from Veganomicon. This was my first time cooking with anything beyond the typical parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. I'd picked up a couple of packets of garam masala at The Brooklyn Kitchen (they have a nice selection of spices, one tablespoon for $1. That way you get to work with the spice a little and see if you like it before committing to a whole jar. I love the idea. I used less than one packet in everything I made Sunday, so it may seem expensive, but it's actually not a bad value for spices that aren't usually used by the boatload) and was really excited to have the opportunity to use some.



See that picture up there? I wish you could taste it through your screen. Hell, I wish I could taste it through my screen because I ate the last of it on Wednesday and could go for more right this minute. I don't know when I'm going to make it again, though, because I'm trying to get myself to keep trying new things. But I will be making the Spiced Yogurt Sauce on Sunday to accompany a vegetable plate for my family's Channukkah party (I'll also be making other things, but my mother is bringing a dairy dip for the vegetables, so I decided to whip up something quick that I can eat too).

My family was not pleased when I told them I was making Brussels sprouts. My mother complained that the whole house would stink while my father whined that he hates Brussels sprouts (he had no answer when I pointed out this was to be my lunch for work, not for him. He's gotten used to having some of whatever I cook, which is great, really). I told them to shut up and wait until it was all done before complaining.

I'm not sure if I did the Brussels sprouts right. When I mixed everything together for the crumbs, I didn't get crumbs. I got a mush similar to the consistency of matzo ball batter (is it called batter?). I added some extra cornmeal and chickpea flour to dry it out a bit before adding it to the sprouts. I also kept them in the oven significantly longer than indicated in the recipe. This was partly because my mother kept saying "They can't be done, I don't smell them yet!" and partly because the crumbs didn't seem to get brown. I took them out of the oven when the sprouts' top leaf layer started scraping off when I mixed them around. I don't know if that's considered overdone, but I really liked the texture they came out, so I think I'll be using that as my personal guideline from now on.

The consistency of the sprouts was great, but the crumb topping was sometimes a bit too gritty for me. Again, I'm not sure if I did something wrong, but I felt like it was exfoliating my teeth. It wasn't uncomfortable to eat, but it did feel a bit weird. I probably just need to get used to it.

Tastewise, it was AMAZING. My father tasted one sprout after telling me a long story about his traumatic childhood sprout-related event and started laughing because he liked it so much (but not as much as the asparagus) and couldn't understand how something could taste like such crap when one person prepares it and so much awesome when someone else does. My mother really liked them and kept going on and on about how they taste like they came from a restaurant. My brother kept coming down to the kitchen to try to steal more while I was preparing dinner.

The Spiced Yogurt Sauce takes about 15 seconds to make and tastes just like the sauce you get at an Indian restaurant. I wanted to drink it out of the prep bowl (but didn't!). I've been putting it on everything, all week (it's great with the Brussels sprouts, other vegetables, bread and melba toast but didn't suit rice cakes so well).

And I love basmati rice. It's so buttery and fluffy and...perfect.

The funny part of all this is that as I started cooking, I asked my mother if she likes Indian food. She said no, of course. As soon as I opened the packet of garam masala, I thought "Oho! That's Indian food, right there, in this packet. This is going to be great" and held it up for my mother to smell. She liked it. And when I cooked everything, put it all together and had her taste it, she liked it. I asked her what happened, I thought she doesn't like Indian food. She shrugged and replied: "And I thought you couldn't make matzo ball soup without chicken and eggs, that asparagus is gross and cheese made from nuts is disgusting."

Plated:



Raw:



Braaaaaaains:

Beets Dont Fail Me Now!

I once said beets freak me out and challenged myself to try them this month, so I did. I made the Autumn Latkes (page 53) with Horseradish-Dill Sour Cream (page 208) from Veganomicon, with a side of Sauteed Beet Greens.



I knew beets would be an adventure from the time I picked them up at Whole Foods: they were wet and muddy and pretty damn gross. I try to use as few plastic bags as possible when I shop, but I had to bag them all by themselves to keep everything else from getting filthy.

Despite their drippy nature, they didn't smell or anything, which was awesome...until I rinsed them off and started to peel them. As soon as the peel broke, I smelled garden (to put it nicely, or dirt if you want to be blunt). That kind of freaked me out because it meant the smell was coming from the beet itself, not the dirt or the peel and they'd therefore taste like shit (logic!). Thankfully, they didn't smell dirty enough to make me give up on my cooking plans for the day.

Autumn Latkes (AKA Beet Cakes): YUM! I don't own a food processor, so I had to shred the beets, carrots and sweet potato and chop the shallots by hand. Ow. Each beet took a little under fifteen minutes to shred and the other things were even faster, but it was still unpleasant. After that, the recipe went smoothly and was done pretty quickly.

This was my first time frying since I started all this cooking stuff and I was shocked by the amount of oil (and paper towels) I used. I ended up having to pour some down the sink when I was done, which made me feel wasteful, but better in the sink than in my belly!

The sweetness of the beets is countered really nicely by the fennel (which I don't think I chopped small enough for my taste) and frying them with the exact timing indicated in the book gave the latkes really crispy edges and nice, chewy centers (just how I like them). I still have one beet and most of the other ingredients left, so I think I may do a half batch baked this weekend.

Horseradish-Dill Sour Cream: Not my favorite thing I've made so far. It's OK, but I think I may not have used enough dill because it had started to turn. Despite the fact that this doesn't really count as giving it a fair chance, I don't think I'll make it again, just because I'm kind of meh about horseradish, like dill and hate sour cream. There's nothing about this recipe that made me jump up and think I needed it ASAP; I just made it because it was recommended with the latkes.

Sauteed Beet Greens: I don't think it's possible to go wrong with greens, garlic, onion and olive oil, do you?

Autumn Latkes, AKA Beet Cakes:

Makes about 2 dozen beet cakes

I serve these with an apple chutney or horse radish sauce but I don’t have those recipes handy, I just wing it so make up an apple sauce (the roasted apple sauce in VwaV will do nicely) or serve with apple sauce or tofu sour cream. I also sauté the beet greens in sherry and garlic. Yums.

2 cups peeled shredded beets, (about 3 average sized beets)
1 cup peeled shredded carrot (about 1 average sized carrot)
1 cup peeled shredded sweet potato (you guessed it, 1 average sized sweet potato)
1 shallot, finely chopped (about ¼ cup)
½ cup flour
¼ cup corn starch
½ teaspoon salt
several dashes fresh black pepper
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, chopped
1/4 cup water
Olive oil for pan frying

Combine the shredded veggies in a large mixing bowl and mix them up. Add the onion and combine. Add the corn starch, flour, salt, black pepper and fennel seeds. Use a wooden spoon to combine everything, the flour should coat all the veggies. Add the water and combine again, until all the flour is dissolved.

Preheat a heavy bottomed non-stick or cast iron skillet on the low side of medium high heat. Add about ¼ inch layer of oil. Let the oil heat up for about 2 minutes.

Form the beet mixture into quarter sized balls, then flatten out into 1 ½ inch medallions. Add to the oil, and fry for 5 minutes, flip the beet cake, flatten a bit with the spatula and fry for another 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel or paper bag to drain. Serve!

Sauteed Beet Greens

1 bunch beet greens
2 tablespoons oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped onion
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and onion, and cook for a minute. Tear the beet greens into 2 to 3 inch pieces, and add them to the skillet. Cook and stir until greens are wilted and tender. Season with salt and pepper.

My shredded and chopped vegetables. Oh how stratified!



Shiny, garlicy greens:

Flesh-Free Friday

I may want to revisit Thanksgiving at some point and write a bit about how that all went down (quite well), but at the moment I want to write about a tradition my family started this year: Flesh-Free Friday. From now on, my immediate family will go vegan for the Friday after Thanksgiving (I will do all the cooking, obviously). This time, we brunched on three dishes from Vegan With a Vengeance: Asparagus, Olive and Mushroom Frittata (page 14), Baking Powder Biscuits (page 26) and Tempeh Bacon (page 23). We dined on two from Veganomicon: Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Croutons (page 81) and Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic and Navy Beans (page 137). We obviously love garlic.



My mother loves biscuits. Almost more than she loves her children. When I first started cooking and baking, her reaction was almost "Pretty cupcakes are great. Yeah. Whatever. Can you make biscuits?" So when we decided we were all going to finally sit down and have a vegan meal together, I knew I had to include biscuits. She loved these babies before they even went in the oven. She just sniffed the raw dough and deemed them worthy (by comparing them to a memory of the Pillsbury dough, I believe). By the time they were ready to come out of the oven, she and my brother were practically dancing around in front of it waiting. They weren't disappointed. She said these fulfilled her biscuit craving perfectly, while my brother deemed them "professional quality". My father liked them as well.

Not only are they tasty but the texture came out absolutely perfect and they're so easy to make they're almost impossible to mess up. Fast, too. And you don't need a food processor or blender or anything. I think I'm going to make them with whole wheat flour soon (I like to follow recipes exactly the first time I make them, if possible).

Tempeh isn't bacon. However, after being marinated per the VWAV instructions, it's damn tasty. It's also thick, chewy and definitely "meaty". Almost the entire plateful disappeared before I finished making the frittata!

Speaking of the frittata, I lost my tumeric so I made it without. I also kept it in the oven quite a bit longer than indicated. I baked it in Pyrex and just kept it in the oven until bubbles stopped coming up the sides. My family likes things very well done. So well done that I have a friend who used to joke that because of how I prepared food, he thought the only way to give kosher, vegetarian food flavor was to burn it.

I made it with asparagus, fresh cremini mushrooms and black olives. My brother is deathly afraid of mushrooms, but he finished his portion anyway. He said it was the first thing I'd made that wasn't fantastic (but it was still edible, so I consider that a victory). My father said it was a winner (it was his first time eating olives) and my mother loved it and would like to eat it again.

Just like with the biscuits, the bacon and frittata are incredibly easy to make (but take a bit more time) in addition to tasting fabulous. It's the sort of food that people will assume you totally stressed out over, which earns you points when you don't feel like taking out the trash.

My brother loves Caesar salad almost as much as my mother loves biscuits. He's had it in so many different places, I consider him a bit of a connoisseur on the subject. He loved the strong dressing and the spicy croutons, doing everything but lick his plate to get the last of it. My mother is still raving about the croutons. I'm just angry at myself for serving it with romaine lettuce only; my spinach was old and I thought my arugala was basil.

I've already discussed the soup, so I won't go into much about that here, but just know that my family absolutely inhaled it. I swear, I dished out the soup, blinked, turned around and all the bowls were empty and mouths were smiling.

So yeah, if you're ever looking for a few easy, omni-approved vegan recipes, look no further. Here's your salad, your soup, your protein and your carb, all in one place (well, two books, really).

Seventeen biscuits go into the oven:



I take them out, blink and there are fourteen left:



Bacon:



Extremely well done frittata:



Mmmmmm....croutons:

Seitan Said Survey

Thanksgiving may be over, but I'm still cooking more than ever before. I have a mteric assload of vegetables to shred without a food processor tonight (I'm making the Autumn Latkes from Veganomicon), so instead of taking time to upload pictures and write real things, I give you the Food Snobbery survey (and apologies for not writing anything yesterday; when the sun sets early and I'm cooking all day, there's no time to blog before the sabbath!).

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?

I never drank milk, so I haven't really tried many non-dairy milks. Most recipes I make call for soy milk and Silk is the easiest to find, so I usually get that, so I guess that's my answer.

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?

a - Autumn Latkes

b - Mac Daddy, also from Veganomicon

c - I think it's time for jerky, AKA left over tofu + an experimental marinade + my dehydrator = an accident waiting to happen.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?

I like it plain.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?

I haven't had any serious disasters yet, unless you count things that are ready about six hours after I expect them to be. The thing that's come out the worst so far would probably be the VWAV matzo balls, though.

5. Favorite pickled item?

Cucumbers! (Yes, I'm boring)

6. How do you organize your recipes?

An email draft full of links.

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?

Trash.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?

Jerquee, bread and....something sweet. Cupcakes? Cupcakes.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?

Finally getting to order food for myself at a fancy restaurant. I wanted fettucini alfredo and asked for "fettucini al-scaredo" (alfredo sounds like afraido in Brooklynese).

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?

I've only had Tofutti. It's OK.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?

Blender. Makes me think I maybe don't need a food processor.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?

Garlic.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?

Jewish Vegetarian Cooking by Rose Friedman. Have never used it.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?

Strawberry, I think.

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?

Tofu Pumpkin Pie.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?

Tofu. I still haven't tried to cook seitan (which is stupid since it's in my blog name, I know. Sorry).

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?

Brunch.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?

Asparagus and onions.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.

A tofurkey, leftover VWAV vegetable broth and leftover Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic and Navy Beans from Veganomicon.

20. What’s on your grocery list?

Tumeric, black cocoa powder, soy milk powder and golden raisins.

21. Favorite grocery store?

Sunac in Williamsburg.

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.

After reading this, egg rolls.

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?

I kind of go with ones with easy to remember names, so I check Fat Free Vegan, Vegan Chicks Rock and VeganYumYum nearly (and sometimes more than) dail