Friday, March 28, 2008

Caesar Salad and other goodness


So nothing today comes from Veganomicon but they're still worthy of mention.

So for lunch today I had a burger and a Caesar Salad. I have heard AMAZING things about the Living Caesar Dressing recipe from Dreena Burton's Eat, Drink and be Vegan. Normally, Caesar dressing is made out of raw egg and anchovy paste, among other non-vegan ingredients. Dreena's recipe is made out of cashews and pine nuts blended together with a few seasonings and thinned out with lemon juice and water.

I was skeptical. I how on earth could this list of ingredients create anything vaguely resembling caesar salad dressing? Well, I have no idea, but this dressing is AMAZING. If this were served to unsuspecting diners in a restaurant I seriously doubt anyone would guess that it wasn't just a regular, fabulous caesar dressing. I think I could drink the stuff. It should be called Caesar crack or something. I can't wait until dinner so I can have some more.

I have never made my own veggie-burgers and intend to try it out sometime soon, but today I just paired the salad with a Gardenburger Black Bean Chipotle burger on a bun topped with salsa and sliced avocado. If you've never tried veggie-burgers and are wary of the idea, I think these are a great place to start. In no way do they attempt to resemble beef, so there are no "this doesn't taste like a REAL burger" issues. They aren't supposed to--they have black beans, corn and chipotle peppers in them and are very nicely seasoned. Also, it only takes a few minutes to heat them up, so they're a great thing to have stashed in the freezer for when you need a quick meal.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Couscous

So usually, my starch of choice in the humble sweet potato. Easy, tasty, healthy. While a sweet potato serves as an excellent base for chili or a tofu scramble, most of the time I just eat them plain with perhaps a dash of salt. I used to always just microwave them, but I've been dabbling with macrobiotics lately, which eschews microwave cooking, on the grounds that it is sooo completely unnatural and that nothing should cook that fast. Overall I agree, though I'm not tossing mine anytime soon. But it is kind of freaky if you think about it. I mean, SHOULD something that takes an hour at 300 degrees F to cook in an oven be ready to eat after five minutes in a microwave? And what, exactly, is a microwave? (come on science geeks!) What is it really doing to the food? Anyway, so recently I started baking my sweet potatoes and OH MY GOD what a difference. Even the skin is delicious. I just can't go back.

All of this is just a really long way of saying that 1. I like my sweet potatoes, 2. I like them BAKED in the oven, 3. tonight my oven was otherwise occupied so I had to come up with another starch to round out my meal, and 4. I didn't have time to make rice. And then, I remembered: couscous!

Couscous is a tiny little round "grain" that is actually a pasta made out of wheat. And it cooks in five minutes. My only problem is that I have a difficul time seasoning it so that it tastes good if I'm not using as the base for some sort of pilaf. So, I turned to Veganomicon, and found a recipe for Tomato Couscous with Capers (p 117).

Now, I am weird about tomatoes. I don't like them raw, and I don't like big chunks of cooked tomatoes. I like tomato everything: salsa, as a base for soups, pasta sauce, etc... But I like them finely diced or pureed and I like them cooked. And yes, I have had amazingly fresh straight-off-the-vine tomatoes (my grandparents are farmers) and I still feel this way. So instead of mixing in the diced tomatoes later, as the recipe indicates, I pureed to the tomatoes and cooked the entire can with the juice/water/couscous. I also doubled to total amount of liquid, just because the recipe calls for a 1:1 liquid to couscous ratio, while the directions on the couscous calls for a 3:1 liquid to couscous ratio, so I compromised with a 2:1 ratio.

Taste-wise I enjoyed this dish. I think it might still need some more seasoning or something. Or more texture. Next time I might just chopped up the tomatoes so the diced chunks are smaller instead of pureeing them. And I might add some toasted pecans or something for a little extra flavor and crunch. Oh, or maybe ground flaxseed for a little texture and some omega-3s. Hmmm. But still, it was a really easy, quick recipe that would definitely go well with a lot of different things. It would also be great as a base for a pilaf with chickpeas and some lightly sauteed chopped spinach mixed in. I have lots of leftovers, so if I try anything that truly makes me go WOW! later this week, I'll let you know.

Monday, March 17, 2008

I'm BAAACCCKK!


Hey all you vegan freakies and other well-wishers: I am back with a vengeance! With yummy goodness to share!

So I had a friend in town not too long ago who requested that I experiment on her. So, in honor of having someone around to appreciate my efforts, I busted out the Braised Seitan with Brussels, Kale and Sun-Dried Tomatoes (p. 182) and served it with the oh-so-tasty Broccoli Polenta (p. 114).

This was my first attempt at making homemade seitan and I think it came out pretty well. I used the Simple Seitan recipe in the book (p. 131). I don't think I'm a big nutritional yeast fan, so in the future I might leave that out, but who knows. I'll experiment. I really don't eat a lot of tempeh or seitan, as I love legumes of every shape and form and could live on lima beans if I had too, but it was fun to try something new.

I do however looove polenta, and I love broccoli, and the Broccoli Polenta was so easy and so tasty that you must make this right away. I basically ate the leftovers like muffins or cupcakes or something. Mmmmm.

Once the seitan was ready, the recipe itself was simple and fast to prepare. The sauce is very basic, just a little red wine, veggie broth, and a few spices.

This dish seemed to get more interesting as we ate it. At first, both my friend and were like, hmmm, it's ok, not that much to it. But the more we ate, the more we both liked it. And it's so colorful and it full of nutritious goodness, what's not to love? I may try it with baked tofu instead of the seitan in the future, but that's just a personal preference.

Fresh Direct came today, so I'm browsing through Veganomicon deciding what to conquer next. (For you non-NYC'ers, Fresh Direct is basically an online grocery store where you click, order, and then have food magically appear at your doorstep the next day. If you never shopped in a NYC "grocery store" or had to lug said groceries up five flights of stairs, you may not fully appreciate the magic. But it's about as close to waving a magic wand and having food just appear as you can get.) So check back soon!