vegan nacatamal pie

A friend of ours recently left Colorado to travel the world and teach English. Her first destination will be Nicaragua. In the process of lightening her load, she left us with her crock pot. I thought it would be nice to expand my own horizons and make a Nicaraguan dish for our first crock pot meal. I honestly had no idea what Nicaraguan food was like until I looked it up. It's interesting how we seem to be satisfied with a certain number of ethnic foods (Chinese, Thai, Indian, Italian, Mexican) and ignore inspiration from other parts of the world.  Anyway, I made Nicaraguan nacatamal pie - a crock pot version of nacatamales which are fairly similar to Mexican tamales. Instead of using pork butt I made these vegetarian and added anasazi beans though small red beans would have been more authentic to Central American cuisine. Speaking of food diversity, wouldn't it be interesting to have more bean options on our grocery store shelves?

Filling Ingredients:
anasazi beans, cooked
rice, cooked
potatoes, sliced
bell peppers, sliced
tomatoes, sliced
onions, chopped
green olives, minced
achiote paste
mint
salt
black pepper

Topping Ingredients (adapted from The Cooking Bride):
2 c. instant Masa Harina
1 t. baking powder
¼ t. salt
2 c. veggie broth
½ c. olive oil

Mix the filling ingredients in a 6 qt. crock pot.  Mix the topping ingredients and glop it on top of the filling.  Cover and cook on low for 5 hours or until potatoes and masa dough are cooked.

tofu misozuke pt. 2

Six months ago we made tofu misozuke (miso-cured tofu), a magical transformation of tofu into a crumbly cheese-like spread. This time we tried adding red pepper flakes to the miso paste, which added a subtle spiciness to the final product. We also improved the process by being diligent about changing paper towels every day and checking on it often (since we got some mold last time). It was done in about two weeks.

Still wrapped in cheesecloth and miso/sugar/sake paste:


Unveiled:

tofu misozuke

I encountered tofu misozuke (miso-cured tofu) at a farmers' market stand in California and was kind of blown away. It is tofu that has been transformed into a creamy cheesy spread simply by coating it with a mixture of miso, sugar, and sake. I knew I had to try making it. Here is the recipe from Rau Om (you can try/buy Rau Om's tofu-misozuke at several markets in the bay area and Oklahoma, or buy it from their online store).

Our first attempt at making tofu misozuke was semi-successful.We changed the moisture-absorbing paper towels every 1–2 weeks. After only 4 or 5 weeks (as opposed to the 2 months recommended by Rau Om), the tofu was cured all the way through. Maybe it went quickly because of the fridge temperature or altitude... Unfortunately, there were some mold spots growing on the outside of the cheesecloth/marinade, and one of our two blocks had to be composted because it was too moldy. The other one was delicious though. For our next attempt, we will check the paper towels more often and check the doneness after 3 or 4 weeks. And maybe we will try some variations that include red pepper flakes, nori, or tea.

raw flaxseed crackers

I've had flaxseed crackers at a few restaurants and decided to try making them myself. I followed this recipe: 2 c. flaxseeds, ~2 c. water, 1/4 c. tamari, and whatever flavorings you like. Mix all ingredients and soak flaxseeds for 2 hours or more, adding additional water as necessary. You'd like the soaked mixture to be a pourable goo, but not too runny. Then spread thinly (~1/8") on plastic dehydrator sheets ("paraflexx" or "teflex") and set to 110ºF. Dehydrate for 4–6 hours, then flip and dehydrate for another 3–4 hours. Our used dehydrator only came with one sheet (fine for a halved recipe), so I had to improvise: I cut parchment paper into circles with holes in the middle.

 
The parchment paper actually ended up working better than the plastic sheet! It allowed the bottom to dry more and made flipping much easier. A doubled recipe (4 c. flaxseed) will fill 5 levels of the dehydrator.

My favorite flavorings to add are lime juice and chili powder. I did one batch with lots of black pepper, liquid smoke, and fennel, and I swear it tasted like beef jerky (or at least tofu jerky).

dilly bean potato salad with garlic miso aioli

This is the best potato salad I've had.  There was recently a dilly bean potato salad recipe in Bon Appetit magazine. However, mayonnaise is pretty gross and I can't bring myself to make it. So I used our recipe for miso mayo (vegan) instead, but used olive oil, lemon juice, and lots of garlic; and then I called it aioli to make it sound fancy.

Even though I think of potato salad as a summer picnic food, our canned dilly beans and local potatoes make this a hearty wintertime treat!

(makes 6-8 servings)

Ingredients:
3 lbs potatoes
1 c. dilly beans 
1 T. brown mustard seeds
few dashes paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Garlic Miso Aioli:
1 c. olive oil
10 T. white/yellow miso
2 T. lemon juice
2-5 cloves garlic
2 t. soy sauce

Boil the potatoes and let them cool to room temperature or colder. Make the aioli by adding all ingredients and mixing with a whisk, fork, food processor, or immersion blender. Add aioli to potatoes until salad is desired consistency. Then mix in cut dilly beans and mustard seeds and add paprika, salt, and pepper.

vegan curried vegetable pot pie

For added inspiration, the hosts of Dark Days Challenge are posing smaller themed challenges (one-pot meal, valentine sweets, vegetarian meal, breakfast) within the larger challenge of eating local, sustainable food in the middle of winter.  This week's themed challenge was to create a one-pot meal and because I love my cast iron skillet and I love that you can pan fry with it or bake with it, I decided to do both with it.  I also decided to use coconut milk which is a very non-local choice, but it makes this dish vegan. Who knows, if I did the math, it could possibly have less of an environmental impact than dairy.  Has anyone done the math?

Filling Ingredients:
2 potatoes, diced
1 red onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 oz. mushroom
1 c. frozen peas
1 c. frozen corn
black garbanzo beans, boiled
canola oil (not local)
salt (not local)
black pepper (not local)
1 T. sweet curry powder (not local)
1 T. hot curry powder (not local)
dash of apple cider vinegar (not local)
1 (14oz.) can coconut milk (not local)

Dough Ingredients:
whole wheat flour
cold water
canola oil (not local)
ground flax seed (not local)

Unfortunately, I ended up having a few extra dishes to clean up: a small pot and mixing bowl.  The small pot was for boiling the garbanzo beans but that was an easy clean.  I had to use a mixing bowl to mix the dough.  I also used the mixing bowl to pour out the cooked filling while I laid out a bottom crust though you could easily go with just a top crust.

sweet potato patties

The last batch of farmers market sweet potatoes I bought spoiled pretty quickly.  This batch stored just fine.  Strange...  Anyways, I was compelled to use these sweet potatoes in a comforting, colorful meal.  Why?  To somewhat compensate for the week I spent sitting through non-stop meetings and to slightly make up for the darkness I encountered every time I set foot outside.  So, there you have it!  Orange, yellow, green, and purple! And vegan!  And mostly local!  (thanks Self for freezing spinach and corn this summer)


Sweet Potato Patty Ingredients:
1 1/4 lb. sweet potato, pealed, cubed, boiled, mashed
1 T. honey
1 T. margarine (not local)
1 t. salt (not local)
1 t. cumin (not local)
1/2 t. corriander
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 c. frozen spinach, thawed
1 c. frozen corn, thawed
1/2 a small red onion, diced, caramelized
2 eggs worth of Ener-G egg replacer (not local)

Mix it up, refrigerate, shape patties, and pan fry in oil.


Sweet and Sour Cabbage Ingredients:
1 small purple cabbage, sliced thin
honey
apple cider vinegar (not local)
salt (not local)

Basically just steam the cabbage in honey, vinegar, and salt.

eric's super vegan stuffing

Stuffing is one of my faves. I think this stuffing came out really good. The secret? frying the bread cubes in margarine. Also, I used two types of bread--one a cranberry walnut bread--for added interest and texture.

Ingredients:
10 c. bread cubes (4 c. cranberry walnut, 6 c. sourdough/white)
at least a cup of margarine
a few stalks celery
1 carrot
1 small onion
1 apple (granny smith) (diced into small pieces)
1/2 c. dried cranberries
1 c. walnuts
2 t. sage
2 t. thyme
1 t. salt
black pepper
2 T. apple cider vinegar
2 c. veg. broth
1 T. vegetarian mushroom oyster sauce
sugar (for candying walnuts)

First, make your bread cubes. Then melt 1/2 c. or so of the margarine and fry the bread cubes until they are crispy and golden (you may have to do this in two batches).

Second, cook the celery, onion, and carrot in margarine until soft. Add the sage, thyme, salt, and pepper, followed by the fried bread cubes, cranberries, and apple (diced into small pieces). Mix well.

Break the walnuts into pieces and toast them in a little bit of oil, adding sugar so they get caramelized. Add half of them to the bread cube mixture, and save the other half to sprinkle on top.

Heat up the vegetable broth and add the apple cider vinegar and mushroom sauce, mixing until dissolves. Pour this over the bread cube mixture and mix until the broth has been soaked up by the bread cubes. Transfer to a baking container. I used two loaf pans, which kept the whole thing from drying out too much, yet allowed the top to get nice and crispy. A casserole dish would work fine also.

Sprinkle the rest of the candied walnuts on top and bake for 15-30 min at 425°F.

kofta balls

One of the things I miss about living in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois is Monday night all-you-can-eat Krishna dinners at the Channing-Murray Foundation/Red Herring. I recently made vegetable kofta balls, which were frequently served at the dinners. Here is the recipe I used: Baked Kofta Balls. Basically it is grated vegetables, flour, and spices. I was really surprised at how well the balls held together without any eggs or egg substitute. Along with grated cauliflower, I chopped up some sauerkraut that Julie made recently, since we didn't have any cabbage. I'm sure any vegetable will work—I plan on trying it with winter squash.

happy birthday julie!

I made Julie this vegan rainbow cake for her birthday, using a vegan cake recipe from our friend Susan and batter coloring instructions from Omnomicon.

Here it is in all of its frosted cloudy glory:

Sorry no slice shots--it got eaten too fast!

Also, we had a veggie chili cook-off, so chili recipes are forthcoming!

broccoli rabe

What is broccoli rabe anyway? It's certainly not broccoli... It's more like kale or mustard greens. I suppose you eat it when you want to sound interesting or when you're eating so many greens that even a change in name sounds appealing...

Well, who cares, it was delicious. I followed a recipe in Veganomicon entitled "spicy tempeh and broccoli rabe with rotelle (pasta)." I would do it again. The tempeh flavoring was stellar. If you want the recipe, you should go to the library!

spreading the love

I am on a new mission to invite people over for dinner. I'm hoping to make it a regular habit, like once a week. So watch out, you may be next!

For the inaugural event, Eric and I made a creamy vegan spinach soup (spinach, sunchokes, scallions, carrots, roux, soy milk, spices) and a millet polenta with home canned tomato sauce. Our friends brought peach crisp made from frozen peaches harvested from a family tree.

Yay local, seasonal, organic, vegetarian food! Yay community!

spaghetti and nutballs

Eric recently made really tasty nutballs for a vegetarian meatball sandwich. I had a craving for more except this time on top of spaghetti.

I went to work in the kitchen and I wrote down a recipe for what I did and everything but I have to say that Eric's nutballs were a lot tastier than mine. He made his nutballs with TVP (texturized vegetable protein), walnuts, bread crumbs, etc. I made mine with navy beans, peanuts, walnuts, bread crumbs, etc. My nutballs were crumbly and dry. His held together and and had a nice texture. Alas. I will not bother you with my recipe, just a nice picture. Oh, but I do want to say that fennel is key no matter what you do.

pumpkin swirl brownies

Happy Thanksgiving! Perhaps these vegan pumpkin swirl brownies will satisfy your sweet tooth? I followed the recipe on Eating Appalachia.

bike trip to fort collins

Over Labor Day weekend we went on a bike vacation to Fort Collins (50 miles each way). We rode Saturday morning, stayed overnight Saturday and Sunday nights, and rode again on Monday morning.

On our way there, as we got closer and closer to downtown Fort Collins, we encountered more and more costumed people on bikes. It turned out that Tour de Fat was going on that very day. We caught the tail end of things but at least we got to see a giant puppet of Tony Danza give the crowd a hug!

In addition to New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins has Odell Brewing Co and Fort Collins Brewery. After checking out Tour de Fat we headed over to Odell's to sample 12 of their beers. Aww yeah!

It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that we ate tempeh for every meal. Avogadro's Number makes their own tempeh which they serve in their restaurant and distribute across town (picture from the Fort Collins Food Co-op).

We ate at many veg friendly restaurants. One of the restaurants we ate at was Tasty Harmony. We were excited by their raw menu items so we got the raw vegan cheeseburger with onion triangles and sprouted chickpea hummus followed by a slice of raw coconut cream pie. We decided it would be fun to start preparing more raw foods so you might be seeing more of that kind of thing around here.

Other than eating and drinking in Fort Collins, we mostly just relaxed and meandered. We happened upon a bike show in an art gallery and a film at Lyric Cinema - an independent movie theater. Maybe someday Boulder will have an independent movie theater...

On our ride home, we slowly approached what at first was a funny little cloud behind a mountain. Later the cloud consumed the entire horizon. It was from the wild fire in the mountains just west of Boulder. So spectacular and solemn!

sesame noodles with tofu steaks and bok choy

I just read an article in the New York Times magazine that basically implied that cookbooks are way passé . I don't get it. I love my cookbooks. They are sources of inspiration and they get me out of cooking ruts. True, you can look up any recipe on the internet, but you need to know what you want in the first place and then you need to wade through all of the mediocre looking recipes. Quality food blogs are definitely a great middle ground, but they can't entirely replace cookbooks, at least not for me, because uhhhh... sometimes its nice to not look at a computer?

Just the other evening I was feeling a little uninspired by spring produce. I pulled out my two favorite seasonally focused cookbooks "A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen" by Jack Bishop and "Fresh Food Fast: Delicious Seasonal Vegetarian Meals in Under an Hour" by Peter Berley. I paged through the recipes and eventually landed on "sesame noodles with tofu steaks and baby asian greens" in "Fresh Food Fast." Yay for mouth watering inspiration!

nacho ordinary cheese sauce

"Hey, what kind of sauce is that?" "It's nacho ordinary cheese sauce." Ahhahahah...

My architecture firm has season tickets to the Colorado Rockies which means Eric and I get to go to 2 games a season. I am not all that into sports but I do enjoy sitting outside, eating peanuts, and drinking beer. The experience could only get better if a concession stand sold veggie dogs or quality nachos, but alas they do not. No worries though, because the stadium allows you to bring in your own food so we brought nacho chips and a vegan nutritional yeast sauce.

Nutritional Yeast Sauce Ingredients:
3/4 c. soy milk
1 c. nutritional yeast flakes
2 T. olive oil
1 t. apple cider (or other) vinegar
1 t. garlic powder
1/2 t. onion powder
1/2 t. paprika
1/2 t. black pepper
1/4 t. salt (or to taste)
dash cayenne

Combine everything and blend with hand blender, stand blender, or fork. You can heat if you want, but it's not necessary.

rhubarb pie

I know, I know, all of the food here lately has included spinach or asparagus. What can I say, it's early spring. So onto another early spring classic - rhubarb pie. Strawberries aren't in season yet here in Boulder, Colorado (it snowed last week?!), so this pie is straight up rhubarb. I personally enjoy the tartness. If you insist on cutting the tartness, serve the pie with ice cream.

Pie Crust Ingredients:
2 1/2 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. sugar
2/3 c. canola oil
1/3 c. cold water

Pie Filling Ingredients
1 1/2 lb. rhubarb, chopped
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. all purpose flour

Mix together the pie crust ingredients until they come together. If you have the time, you can refrigerate the dough for a little while to reduce shrinkage during baking. I didn't.

Preheat the oven to 425. Grab 2/3 of the crust dough and roll out on a lightly floured counter. Roll the dough into a circular shape to fit your pie dish. Put the dough in an oiled pie dish. Finish off the edges. Mix together the pie filling ingredients. Fill the pie crust with pie filling. Roll out the remaining 1/3 dough into a rectangle and cut into strips. Form a woven lattice top pie crust with the strips of dough. Put the pie in the oven on the lowest shelf. Bake 15 minutes at 425 degrees. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake another 30-45 minutes.

spinach ravioli

Yet another way to eat spinach - sneak it into your pasta dough! Earlier this week, I made a batch of 40 spinach raviolis stuffed with spinach, mushroom, onion, and tofu. Right after forming the raviolis, I put them in the freezer. The frozen raviolis make a great tasting instant dinner option - just boil them for 3 minutes and top with pasta sauce.

Spinach Pasta Dough Ingredients:
4 oz. spinach, chopped, steamed
2 c. semolina flour
3/4 c. water
1/4 c. olive oil
1 t. salt

Blend the pasta dough ingredients in a food processor for a minute. The dough should clump up into a ball. Take out the dough and knead in additional flour or water as necessary. Divide the dough into 4 balls. On a flour dusted counter, roll a ball out into a sheet. Rotate and flip once in awhile to make sure it doesn't stick. Mark a grid. Layout whatever filling you choose within the grid. Lay another sheet over the top. Press to seal along the grid. Work your way from the middle-out pressing out air pockets on you way. Slice to form individual raviolis. Throw them onto a flour dusted cookie sheet and put them in your freezer until frozen. Once frozen, you can transfer the raviolis into a bag or some other storage container.

vegan croque-monsieur aka savory french toast

I've had a thing for open-faced croque-monsieurs after I had an amazing one at Tartine in SF. I recently learned that croque-monsieurs include Béchamel sauce along with gruyère. I had this idea to make a vegan croque-monsieur with lots of Béchamel (just margarine, flour, and soymilk) and no cheese. The sauce browns nicely, but stays nice and gooey in all of the holes in the bread. Essentially, this is like a savory French toast, and it's great as a quick snack.

Vegan Béchamel Sauce Ingredients:
2 T. margarine
2 T. all-purpose flour
1/2 to 1 c. soymilk, depending on desired thickness
salt to taste
optional: nutmeg or cloves (ground)
optional: a splash of vinegar (cider or wine or hopped-up honey vinegar) adds some nice tanginess

Melt the margarine, mix in the flour (you know, like making a roux), add some soymilk and seasoning, and stir and cook until it's at a desired consistency. It should be pretty thick and come away from the pan. Spread it on a slice of nice chewy and holey bread and toss it on the frying pan like you're making Texas or French toast.

Then make a sandwich or top it with large chunks of caramelized onions and mushrooms soaked in wine. I bet sun-dried tomatoes would be great too.