Slow-Cooker Seitan Pot Roast

I don’t have the best picture of this because of low lighting, but it did come out pretty nice looking! Photo is of a vegetarian roast with a few slices taken out, surrounded by veggies.

I’ve been wanting to make Vegan Planet’s Slow-Cooker Seitan Pot Roast since the moment I heard about it, and that was ages ago. Over a year ago, for certain. It just sounds so delightful – pretty much, the part of Thanksgiving that’s been missing for me the past 15 or 17 odd years, namely, the turkey, but more importantly, the ridiculous sandwiches of turkey and cranberry sauce and whatever else you could cram between two pieces of lovely bread the next day.

Finally, finally, Bo and I took on this project. It really wasn’t hard to put together at all. In fact, the wheat gluten worked in quite magical ways, as one minute it was this powdery dry stuff, and the next, when you poured the liquid in and stirred maybe two or three times, it had become a solid-ish, bouncy sort of object. SCIENCE!

Anyway, I’ll be totally honest here. This seitan roast was not the seitan roast of my dreams. It came out pretty darn rubbery, and I can’t say whether we overmixed it in trying to get it to look sort of like a roast (or at least one contiguous blob) or if we left it in for too long or not long enough. Slow cookers are a little wonky as you’re never quite sure if yours is the same as the person’s who wrote the recipe, and times can vary quite a bit. There’s even a note to that effect in the recipe.

But hey. This blog is subtitled “recipes and experimentations,” right? I’ll give this another chance, and if that still doesn’t work out, I might try it in the alternate/oven method, especially since our veggies that roasted in the oven came out far superior to the ones in the slow cooker. But you know, we had a veg*n Thanksgiving roast, and we had leftover sandwiches (albeit rubbery ones) and that was pretty cool.

Note: Since we were roasting a whole tray of veggies separately, we did not put the full amount of veggies in.

Ingredients

1 yellow onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 pound carrots
1 pound small red-skinned potatoes, halved or quartered
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup vegetable stock
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
2 cups wheat gluten flour
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 1/2 cup water or vegetable stock, or more as needed
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon ketchup or tomato sauce

Directions

Note: You may need to adjust your cooking time according to the quirks of your own crockpot. The one I used for this recipe cooks fast — if I had used one of my other slow cookers, it would have taken nearly twice as long.

Arrange the onion, carrots, and potatoes in the bottom of a lightly oiled slow cooker. Season the vegetables to taste with salt and pepper and add the stock, garlic, and 1/2 teaspoon each of the thyme and marjoram.

In a large bowl, combine the wheat gluten flour, onion powder, garlic powder, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon each of thyme and marjoram, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper. Add the water or stock, soy sauce, and ketchup. Mix well, adding a little more water if the mixture is too dry, then knead for 2 minutes until smooth. Shape the gluten to fit inside your cooker and place on top of the vegetables. (You can place it on top of a piece of aluminum foil or wrap it in cheesecloth, if desired, to keep its shape). Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook on LOW for 4 to 6 hours (or longer, depending on your slow cooker – we did about six), or until the seitan and vegetables are cooked.

To serve, remove the vegetables and seitan from the slow cooker. Cut the seitan into slices and arrange them on a serving platter. Surround with the vegetables and spoon the cooking liquid over all or transfer the cooking liquid to a saucepan and thicken into a gravy.

Serves 4, more when you’re making Thanksgiving dinner with lots of sides!

Epic Midnight Snack (Grilled Cheese with Red Onion and Avocado)

Sorry for the crappy picture, folks, it was, indeed, midnight, and I got a new device that I’m not used to yet!

Today was our annual pie eating contest, and we had a long, busy day, especially since a huge storm knocked out our power last night and cut out quite a bit of our prep time. By the end of the night, we just wanted to relax. Our September issue of Real Simple magazine magazine came in the mail today, and I paged through it. It had a delicious looking page of recipes about how to jazz up grilled cheese sandwiches in three different ways.

One suggestion was to add currant or fig jam, bacon (I’d use tempeh bacon!), and a thinly sliced pear to the basic cheddar on white bread sandwich. Those flavors sound amazing together – I’ve eaten baked brie with pears on Christmas with my family, and cheddar and chutney sandwiches when I lived in the UK. Another suggestion was hugely appealing to Charlie, who loves pesto on just about anything – add pesto and thinly sliced tomatoes to the sandwich.

But the sandwich that I had for a midnight snack tonight was to take thin slivers of a red onion from our farm share, pair it with slices of avocado, and get that sucker grillin’. It was super delicious, and I definitely want to eat this again. You’d think that I’d have eaten enough during the pie eating contest, but since I don’t compete, and I was hosting, I spent about half the day making pies, then half the day making sure people had enough food, and by that time, I barely ate anything myself! I definitely tasted a bunch of the pies, but I need to pay more attention to feeding myself on days like this… or making really delicious midnight snacks like this. Yum!

Filipino Garlic Fried Rice

Fried rice is a great dish when you’re running low on food, you want to clean out the vegetable drawer, you’re broke, or you don’t want to do a lot of dishes. It’s not complicated and has pretty basic ingredients, but it’s really delicious. Tonight we had a little bit of the first and the last happening. We didn’t want to make anything super laborious, but we wanted a homecooked meal since we’ve been getting a lot of takeout due to Charlie’s hectic work schedule. I even got those green onions that I showed you that are growing in the garden.

Charlie tells me that his mom always used to make this when there was leftover rice in the fridge. It was often a meal made for breakfast, but sometimes for dinner. Tita* often made it after making something like pork chops, where there were lots of drippings left in the pan. This version is vegan, but if you feel like it, you can fry an overeasy egg and throw it on top, letting the yolk get all gooey in the dish. It can stand alone as a meal, as we had it tonight, or be served as a side dish.

This dish is a little healthier than your standard fried rice because we used brown rice and a TON of vegetables. When we make fried rice or stir fry, the vegetables to protein & starch ratio is pretty ridiculous. We probably had about 6-7 cups of veggies, a scant 3 cups of rice, and I don’t know what you’d call a package of tofu, 2 cups? Anyway, the important thing to note about this is that fried rice is like stir fry and stone soup. Almost any vegetable you have will do. I’ve written down what we used in what quantities so that you have an idea, but certainly, if you have 4 cups of broccoli and 2 cups of snow peas and no carrot and you have no idea what a kohlrabi is, just go with it. My advice on this matter is to try to cut everything to roughly the same size, unless you know that it cooks drastically differently, and to separate your vegetables into two bowls: Stuff That Cooks Slowly, and Stuff that Cooks Really Fast. It will be awesome, I promise.

*That’s what I call Charlie’s mom – it’s the Tagalog word for “aunt,” but it’s used as an affectionate term for female family friends or other ladies who are around your parents’ age.

Ingredients

5 (or more) garlic cloves, minced
1 small onion, chopped

Veggie Prep Bowl 1:
2-2 1/2 cups of broccoli, finely chopped (about 1 large floret)
1 1/2 cups of carrots finely chopped
1 medium kohlrabi, peeled and finely chopped

Veggie Prep Bowl 2:
1 cup of snow peas, cut in half
1/2 cup yellow squash or zucchini, chopped a little bigger than the other stuff since it’s softer (you could do more, but Charlie likes it less than I do)

Total Vegetables: about 6-7 cups, chopped into small pieces

2-4 cups cooled white or brown rice (day old rice is perfect for this)
1 block of extra firm tofu, drained, pressed, and cubed
a generous handful of green onions, snippped into pieces with scissors
soy sauce
salt & pepper to taste
garlic powder (optional)

Directions

Heat a large pan (nonstick is best) for a few minutes until it is hot, then add a few tablespoons of vegetable oil. Place the tofu cubes into the pan. Flip and stir frequently. Cook until the outside texture is crispy and brown. Remove the tofu from the pan and drain on a paper towel.

Drain some of the oil from the pan, leaving just a coating. Saute the garlic and the onion for 2-3 minutes or until the onion is soft. Add the broccoli, carrots, and kohlrabi. Do not add the squash and snow peas yet or they will get soggy. Cook for about 5 minutes or until tender, depending on the size of your pieces, stirring occasionally. Add the squash and snow peas, cooking for 2 minutes or until the snow peas are bright green and the squash is soft. Add the rice and cook for 2 minutes or until it is heated through. Add pepper and soy sauce to taste. If necessary, add salt and garlic powder to taste.

Garnish with the green onions.

Tea Tasting: Mock Tuna Sandwiches

Thanks to Traczie for the great photos from the tea tasting!

We had a whole bunch of vegetarians coming to our tea tasting, so I decided to try out a mock tuna salad that I’ve been reading about all over the internet. (Seriously, there’s a version on The Happy Herbivore, on AllRecipes, on vegweb, and they’re all essentially the same.) Basically, canned chickpeas stand in for tuna, and I must say, it’s a pretty remarkable substitution. My friend Kira helped me prep this, and we saw it taking shape, and marveled at how much it looked like tuna salad. Then, we tasted it.

“That’s kind of weird how much it tastes like tuna salad,” I said.

Kira tasted it. “That’s just creepy,” she said.

“Yum,” is what our guests said the next day.

Ingredients

15 ounces chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 whole celery stalks, finely chopped
1 pickle, finely chopped
1 small red onion, finely chopped
2 tsp nutritional yeast
2 tbsp mayo or veganaise
1/4 teaspoon brown mustard
splash of lemon juice (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

In a small bowl, mash the chickpeas (a pastry blender is really good for this!). Add the nutritional yeast, mayo, and mustard. Mix well. Add the celery, pickle, and onion. Stir. Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes or overnight for best flavor.

For tea sandwiches, spread a very thin layer of Earth Balance on both pieces of bread (to keep it from getting soggy). Add mock tuna salad and cut into triangles.

Black Bean Bonanza

In this recipe, you’ll get a night of black bean tacos, plus a night of delicious black bean burgers, all out of the same pot of beans!

Charlie and I have been trying to live more frugally and more healthily, and one of the things that means for us is trying to use less processed fake meats.

Why less processed fake meats?

• They’re more expensive than some proteins. Even at the most expensive store I can think of in the area, organic black beans are $1.99 for a pound, and there are places that you can get them for half of that, at least. The Gardein Crispy Tender Strips that I love so much are $3.99 for 9oz (and are much less filling).

• Fake meats are less sustainable than legumes since they’re more processed, so more fuel, electricity, etc, has to be used to produce them.

• Dried beans & legumes can often be purchased in bulk, which eliminates the need for wasteful packaging. If you’re cool like me & Charlie, you might even bring your own bulk and produce bags made out of old teeshirts.

• Fake meats may be healthier than real meats, but they’re definitely not whole foods, and we want to eat as healthy foods as we can.

Now, one of the problems that I face in terms of using dried beans is that a lot of them have to be soaked overnight, especially my favorite, black beans. (Soak overnight if you’re planning to slow cook in the morning. Soak all day if you’re planning to cook on the stove at night.) Between typical human forgetfulness and fibro fog+lyme brain, I almost never remember to do this. On Sunday, I even woke up early and said to Charlie, “Hey, I’m going to go soak the beans! I’ll cook them on the stovetop instead of the slow cooker, and we can eat them for dinner tonight!” I then promptly forgot for at least three hours.

After that fail and some googling, I learned that if you find yourself in this situation, you can boil the black beans for two minutes, then let them soak in the hot water for two hours instead of all day. I’d say that the cook time was a bit longer than usual, but it definitely worked out well.

Anyway, my plan for our Sunday night dinner was black bean tacos. We eat tacos fairly often, but usually with refried beans from a can. We made a big pot of black beans and used about a third of it for tacos. The next night, I made black bean burgers, which were pretty incredible. We still have four patties left to freeze. Charlie, though he is a tofu-loving meat eater, is not a big veggie burger fan, but he ate the whole thing. He said that it wasn’t quite a burger, but it was definitely a good sandwich.

I served the burgers with cheese and avocado on top, and with carrot sticks, orange slices, and kale chips. It was an easy meal that was really healthy. If you want to make things really easy on yourself, keep a few burger buns in the freezer along with your burgers so you’ll be ready to go.

Ingredients – Black Bean Mixture Base

2 cups dried black beans
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 large roma tomato, chopped
4 oz mushrooms, finely chopped
1/2 packet natural taco seasoning
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cumin

Directions

In a medium to large pot of water, bring the black beans to a boil for two minutes, then let them soak for a minimum of two hours. (If you have the time, soak in cold water overnight as this retains more nutrients.)

At the end of the soaking time, drain off the water and replace with about 4 cups of water. Simmer on medium-low heat for about an hour, then add the onion, tomato, and mushrooms. Simmer for another 30 minutes or until the beans are soft enough to eat and the water has reduced. If you prefer your burgers to have a plainer taste or a different spice, you can remove a portion of black beans (probably 1/3) for tacos and leave the rest for burgers, but keep in mind that the seasoning amounts here are for the entire batch.

Use what you will for tacos. Store the extra black beans in a container in the fridge until the next night, when you’ll make the black bean burgers (unless you’re feeling super ambitious and want to do it immediately). When transferring the bean mixture to a container, use a slotted spoon so that any excess liquid does not transfer to the container.

Yield: Enough for tacos for two hungry people who really like tacos, and six large black bean burgers.

Ingredients – Homemade Black Bean Burgers

3 cups seasoned black bean mixture
1 large egg
3/4 cup breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon dried cilantro (use 1 tablespoon fresh if possible)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
3/4 cup fresh or frozen corn

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375*F. Using a potato masher or a pastry blender, smash the black bean mixture in a medium bowl until it is the desired consistency (I prefer to leave some beans whole). Add the egg and mix well. Add breadcrumbs, cilantro, and parsley and stir, ensuring the they are evenly distributed. Finally, add the corn. Shape the mixture into patties (we got six large patties out of it) with your hands.

Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. Fry briefly in a pan with olive oil until browned on both sides if desired.

To store in the freezer, place a sheet of wax paper in between the burgers so that they don’t stick together. To reheat from frozen, let sit on the counter for about 5 minutes (ok, this just happened because I was prepping other things last night). Bake at 375*F for 10 minutes on each side, then fry in a pan with a bit of olive oil until browned on both sides.

It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I bet adding some nutritional yeast (perhaps 2 tablespoons) would be a great addition when the breadcrumbs go in. Next batch, I’ll experiment!

Dahl with Spinach Rice

When I was growing up, we never ate Indian food. We actually hardly ever ate any regional foods except for Italian (part of my heritage) and Chinese takeout (when we were sick of pizza). I didn’t try sushi until high school, hadn’t had Korean food until college, and even many European specialties never crossed my plate until I traveled there.

One type of food I was really hesitant about was Indian food. I’d figured out at some point during my life that I don’t like what we traditionally think of when we say “curry,” and for a while, I was one of the folks that thought Indian food=curry, which is totally incorrect. The great thing about Indian food is that there’s often a ton of vegetarian options, so really, once I figured out what I liked, I was golden. (I just have to watch out for the super spicy stuff! I absolutely can’t do really spicy things – I think it has to do with sensory overload in relation to my fibromyalgia.)

My favorite Indian dish is dahl, which is a spiced (but not too spicy) lentil dish, usually served over rice. Sometimes it’s got some veggies like cauliflower or spinach in it, though it comes plain, too. Where we live, there aren’t many Indian restaurants, and the ones here are kind of pricey, so it’s a rare treat to be able to go out for Indian food. Funny enough, we’re actually kind of broke this month since we just bought a used car from a friend, so we turned to our bulk foods like lentils and rice instead of expensive fake meats. And then… our attempt at dahl was born.

Since I was busy baking cookies for a cookie contest, Charlie took the helm on this recipe. And, as usual when Charlie cooks, he estimates a bit more than I do (since he’s not used to writing down exact quantities for a blog, haha), so you might need to adjust these all a tiny bit to taste.

Ingredients: (Dahl)

sesame oil to coat pan
1/2 onion, chopped finely
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon ginger, minced
4 cups vegetable stock
1 cup lentils, soaked in water for 45 minutes
1 1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon corriander
1 teaspoon tumeric
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cayanne
2 small tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons lime juice
dash cilantro
salt and black pepper to taste

Directions: (Dahl)

In a medium stock pot, saute the onion, ginger, and garlic in sesame oil until the onions are translucent. Add tomatoes and cook for one minute. While stirring, add the stock and lentils. Add the spices, including the salt and pepper. Cook covered for 20 minutes. Cook uncovered until it reaches desired consistency (we like it less runny). Stir in lime juice. Serve over over spinach rice and/or with naan.

Ingredients: Spinach Rice

4 cups of cooked white or basmati rice
1/2 onion, chopped finely
4 cloves of garlic, microplaned to create a paste
1 tablespoon ginger, microplaned to create a paste
2 tablespoons lemon
2 cups of spinach, finely chiffonaded
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground corriander seed
salt to taste

Directions: (Spinach Rice)

Saute the onion in a bit of oil in a large pan. When the onion is translucent, add the garlic and ginger pastes and cook very briefly. Add the spinach, lemon, cumin, and corriander seed, and cook for about a minute. Add the rice and stir. Salt to taste.

Lentil Leftovers Hand Pies

Usually I try to post things that are my own brilliant ideas, creative creations, or invented recipes, but this week, I saw something someone else had made and I just had to make it and share it with everyone.

First, a confession: I am the worst person at making the most ridiculous, giant pots of soup on the planet. They come out delicious and wonderful, but… in obscene quantities. I put on some stock simmering, then chop up some of this vegetable, then decide that some of that vegetable could go in, then, OOH, I didn’t realize we had some of this left! and so on and so forth. And then the beans and the grains expand more than you thought they would, you have to transfer to a bigger pot, et cetera, et cetera. Even when I try to make a small batch of soup, we have leftovers for days.

And that’s what happened this week. It had been raining for days and the forecast said more rain. It was cold in our house. So I made a thick lentil stew with veggies from the farm share. (This is your recipe, if you’re wanting one…) An onion. Some garlic. A potato. A couple of carrots. Some miscellaneous greens (beet greens and something else that I’ve never been able to identify but tastes mildly cabbagey). Some barley. A giant, ripe heirloom tomato. Most of a cup of lentils. I threw it together with some bullion cubes and a few bay leaves, some parsley and thyme from the garden, and let it all cook down for a long while.

The soup was great, and incredibly filling, which is why there was way too much soup. Another contributing factor was that Charlie stopped by our favorite local bakery to pick up some hearty marbled rye bread to go with it. So, in our fridge there was a big container of leftovers.

And that day, The Cast-Iron Darling posted a recipe for Chili Hand Pies made with leftover chili.

Brilliant! Perfect! It’s a rare treat to find empanadas that are vegetarian, let alone hand pies. I thought about mixing in some cumin and making the lentils more like a taco filling, and I thought about putting some cheese in there, but in the end, I just left them alone. I made a pie crust from scratch using (you guessed it) Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust, except I used half whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour. I would have tried out The Cast Iron Darling’s recipe, but it required eggs and we had zero, which is also why there is no eggwash on my hand pie.

I got about six out of Charlie’s recipe, though I still have lentil stew left and am thinking of making another round.

Charlie and I had them for dinner one night, and I also had one for a snack after I’d frozen them. I put it in the microwave for two minutes and it came out perfectly. The crust stayed crusty and everything.

Thanks, Cast-Iron Darling, for this awesome idea!

Slow Cooker Heirloom Tomato Sauce

No, I still haven’t learned how to can.

Yes, I am seriously considering buying stuff to can with, especially since I love apple picking and Charlie can’t really eat raw apples, which leaves us with dozens and dozens of apples for hahas.

But, that has not stopped me from making tomato sauce! Two or three times now, actually. It’s even more worth it since we have a slow cooker that does the majority of the work for me.

You see, we’ve been getting a ton of tomatoes in our farm share nearly every week. Sometimes they’re in beautiful condition, and sometimes they’re a bit soft. We’ve been averaging at least two pounds a week, and sometimes we’ve been getting as many as four pounds a week, and that is a lot of tomatoes for two people to go through. Seeing as the strongest cultural background that I have is Italian (I have other roots, too, but none of those relatives are really around or celebrate their backgrounds), I figured that I should really learn to make an awesome tomato sauce.

This tomato sauce is pretty awesome.

Starting with really flavorful tomatoes is key. The heirloom tomatoes we’ve been getting from the farm are beautiful, in all different colors – yellow, orange, green zebra, deep reds. All of them have deep flavors. If you don’t want to go through the trouble, you can start with tomatoes from a can, but whatever you do, don’t pick sad, pale tomatoes from the store. Pick ones that are vibrant, like romas or on-the-vine tomatoes.

Now, the part that’s the biggest pain in the ass is peeling the tomatoes. Most of you probably know the trick of boiling a pot of water, dunking the tomatoes in for about a minute, and then fishing them out. The skins come right off after that. It works even better if you slice an X into the bottom before you stick them in the pot.

If you’ve got a decent food processor or immersion blender, though, and you’re low on spoons, time, or energy, you can make a more rustic sauce by just throwing the tomatoes in with the skins on. Yeah, skins, seeds, whatever. I had Bo’s immersion blender that he forgot at my house and decided to go for it, and it turned out just as awesome. Make sure you wash the tomatoes first if you’re going to go this route, cut out the stem, and this would be a good time to choose organic, since you’ll be eating the skin (tomatoes are a good time to choose organic, anyway, since the skin is so thin that the chemicals are said to leech through, as opposed to something like an orange or a banana that has a tougher skin that we usually don’t eat).

Here’s what my tomatoes looked like one of the times that I decided to peel them…

Ingredients

3-4 pounds fresh heirloom tomatoes, chopped (skins removed/seeded if you’d like)
1 stalk celery, minced
1 whole onion, finely chopped
4 mushrooms, chopped
1/2 small pepper, finely chopped
3 large cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh basil
3 tablespoons fresh oregano
1/4 cup fresh parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon earth balance (you can use butter, too)
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup wine
1/2 can of organic tomato paste (optional)

Directions

As always, slow cookers have vastly different times, so take this with a grain of salt and do what you think will be best for your slow cooker. Usually when I try a new slow cooker recipe, I stay at home for the first time making it, and then I’ll “set it and forget it” for future excursions.

Sautee the garlic in a pan in a bit of oil on medium heat for about one minute. Add the onions and cook for 2-3 minutes or until translucent. Remove from heat.

Dump the tomatoes, celery, onions, garlic, mushrooms, pepper, olive oil, wine, and bay leaves into the slow cooker. Wait until later on to decide if you want the tomato paste.

Cook on low for about 6 hours. If your sauce is looking pretty soupy (mine usually does), remove the lid and cook on high for about an hour, stirring occasionally.

I keep telling myself that I’m going to put in some tomato paste, and I have a can stashed in the cupboard, but the tomatoes have been so flavorful and rich that I haven’t had to. If yours come out a bit bland, though, it’s a good way to give it a bit of a concentrated punch.

Once it’s cooked down, you can salt and pepper to taste, add the tomato paste if you need it, toss that little pat of butter or earth balance in, and add in all your fresh herbs. You can let it simmer for a bit longer, but not too long, as you don’t want to degrade the herbs too much. Use it immediately, freeze it, or put it in a jar in the fridge and use it in a couple of days.

Vegetarian Filipino Tempeh Adobo

One of the dishes that is fundamental to Filipino cooking is a dish called adobo. It varies depending on the chef, and on what’s in the house, but it generally consists of some kind of meat, soy sauce, onions, vinegar, bay leaf, and a potato “if you’re poor and don’t have much meat,” Charlie explains. I think the potatoes drenched in the salty, vinegary sauce are crucial to the delicious factor, so they are going in our version no matter what! The meat used is generally chicken or pork, or sometimes both used at the same time, and it’s served over rice. When we searched for vegetarian versions, we found an eggplant adobo, but I was looking for something closer to the real thing, so we planned a tempeh version. We were a bit concerned about the tempeh breaking down in the liquidy sauce, so we fried it first to help solidify it.

As with any time Charlie is supplying the recipe for me, it’s a little less specific than when I do things. He does say, for this recipe, that “the amount of ‘soup’ you put in depends on your preference,” so it’s really more of a ratio than a measurement.

Ingredients

1 block of tempeh
1 medium onion, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
2 large potatoes, peeled and chopped
3 cups of water
1/2 a bullion cube
60%/40% vinegar to soy sauce ratio – in this case, probably about 6 tablespoons vinegar, 4 tablespoons soy sauce, but that’s from my glancing at what he was doing not any actual measuring!
2 teaspoons oyster sauce (yes, they make a vegetarian version)
1-2 bay leaves
black pepper to taste (Charlie’s taste is about 2 teaspoons)

Directions

Cut the tempeh into six pieces and fry until golden brown on both sides.

Fry the onion and garlic in a large stock pot until the onion is translucent. Pour the water, soy sauce, vinegar, and oyster sauce on top and stir. Add the bullion and the bay leaf. Add the potatoes. Season with the black pepper. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and let simmer for at least 30 minutes. Add the tempeh somewhere along the way, depending on how soft you want it – make sure it gets at least 10-15 minutes in there so it can soak up the juices. We put it in for the whole time and it was only a little crumbly.

Serve over rice. Lots of rice.

Lactose Overdose: Cream of Broccoli Soup

Charlie loooooves broccoli, so when the weather went chilly again this week, I pulled out this recipe I created long ago. This soup went along with my Lactose Overdose: Spinach Cheddar Muffins. I managed to use up some Bibs and Bobs Vegetable Stock that I had in the freezer, so this batch really turned out quite lovely.

All I need now is an immersion blender!

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter
1/2 onion, chopped finely
1 stalks celery, chopped finely
2.5 cups vegetable broth
more water if necessary
3 cups broccoli, about half chopped finely and half coarsely
1 potatoes, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
Several shakes of garlic powder (or 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced)
1.5 tablespoons butter
1.5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
chives for garnish

Directions

In 1 tbsp butter, saute the onions and garlic on medium heat in a large pot for 2-3 minutes or until soft. Do not brown. Add the 1.5 tablespoons of butter, and when melted, add the flour. Stir this mixture together and cook for one minute, again, not allowing it to brown.

Add the vegetable stock on top of this. Stir until the flour mixture is incorporated into the stock. Bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat. Add the remaining vegetables (celery, carrot, potatoes, broccoli) and stir. The stock should cover the vegetables. If it doesn’t, add a bit of water.

Simmer the soup for about 15-20 minutes. Add the milk, cream, and garlic powder (if you did not use fresh garlic). Stir. Let simmer for another 3-5 minutes. Add the shredded cheddar cheese. Stir until it is completely mixed in. At this point, you may use an immersion blender to make the soup smoother, or a potato masher failing that – this step is optional. Add fresh black pepper to taste.

Serve with fresh chives on top if desired.

Felicia & AJ’s Enchilada Casserole

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Charlie had surgery recently, so we haven’t been doing a lot of cooking. Our wonderful friends Felicia and AJ, however, came all the way down from Western Massachusetts to help us out one Saturday. They did some laundry, entertained us, and made us an enchilada casserole.

These are the awesome people who gave us the recipe for this dish. We only tweaked it a little.

Normally, I’m terrified of anything with the word “casserole” in it. I didn’t grow up eating “tuna noodle surprise casserole with crunchy potato chip topping” or anything like that. It just isn’t something I’m used to eating. I have been slightly envious, however, of the people who seem to be able to just line up a bunch of ingredients, pop them in a dish, and have dinner piping hot out of the oven a little while later. Plus, with those darling faces reassuring me, how could I have not believed that it was delicious?

I know that most of my posts feature extremely scratch-baked items, but this meal was too delicious to pass up. It’s a quasi-homemade dish that freezes really well, and it would also be a great potluck dish.

As Felicia mentioned in an email responding to me begging her for directions on how to make this, you can change the proportions, add extra veggies, leave out something you hate, make it spicier if you want, and so on. It’s just a great base and an easy to assemble meal.

This quantity makes two 9×13″ pans, but believe me, you’re going to want them. You’ll want seconds, and then you’ll want to put some in the fridge and some in the freezer to eat very soon.

Ingredients

1 zucchini, chopped
3/4 cup frozen (or fresh, if you happen to have it) corn
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 green pepper, chopped
1/2 container of mushrooms, chopped
16-24 oz sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cans of refried beans
1 large can enchilada sauce
2 packages (of eight) whole wheat tortillas

If you want to go wild, you could throw in a couple teaspoons of cumin and/or garlic powder, a little chili powder, and a hint of coriander when you assemble your bean mixture. (I added all of those things.)

Directions

Sauté the garlic and onions in a pan with a bit of olive oil until the onions are soft. Add the zucchini, green pepper, and mushrooms, and continue cooking briefly. Do not overcook.

Remove from heat. In a large bowl, combine refried beans, cooked vegetables, and any spices you may desire. Mix well. Add the corn.

Assemble the enchiladas by adding a small scoop of the bean mixture to each tortilla, sprinkle a bit of cheese, then roll it up. Do not tuck in the ends. Place the tortilla face down in the pan so that it does not unroll, then move on to the next. You should be able to fit two rows of four. (You’ll repeat this process in a second pan, or later if you only have one.)

Once your tortillas are all in the pan, pour half the enchilada sauce over the top until none of the tortillas are showing. You may need to spoon some from crevices to ensure complete coverage. Sprinkle more cheese on the top.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until the cheese is melty and the sauce is bubbling.

Lentils for Lamb Shepherd’s Pie

Finally updated with a picture! It’s not the most gorgeous thing to photograph, but it tastes amazing!

When our vegan friend Milo from California was living in New York for a few months, he came to our house often. We made some righteous rice and beans on numerous occasions, and maybe had a stirfry once or twice, but we were looking for something more innovative one night, so I came up with this. I remembered seeing a jar of red lentils in my cabinet at the time, so I figured I could substitute them for the meat that’s usually found in a traditional shepherd’s pie.

When we made this originally, I did most of the research, and Charlie did most of the cooking, and we all (me, Charlie, my sister, and Milo) did lots of eating. This recipe was delicious, and the portions were hearty. We all had seconds, and Milo and my sister each took a portion to work the next day. It was great for us for four hungry people and leftovers, so if you want a less serious amount, I’d suggest cutting it in half. The yield was about two 9-inch square casserole dishes.

One of these days I’m going to try to convert this recipe for my crockpot, because I think it would be amazing, even if it came out a little… less neat? Heheh. I’ll update when I do.

Here’s what it looks like during the assembly process.

Ingredients

1 cup of red lentils, soaked in cold water for 40 minutes
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 medium carrots, chopped
2 sticks of celery, chopped
1/2 package sliced mushrooms
1 small can of corn (or 1 cup of frozen corn)
[1Tbsp of finely chopped fresh parsley - we didn't have this ingredient, but I'm sure it's tasty]
1 28oz canned of whole tomatoes, chopped
1 teaspoon of dried rosemary
1 teaspoon of dried thyme
1 1/2 cups of water
1 1/2 tsp of sea salt
2 Tbsp olive oil

Special equipment: baking casseroles or ramekins

6 large yellow potatoes, peeled and quartered
1-2 tablespoons earth balance
1 tsp of sea salt
Cheddar cheese for grating (optional, ours was vegan)

Directions

Pre-heat the oven to 350F.

Drain the lentils. Set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until translucent. Add the garlic and fry for 30 seconds. Add the celery, carrots, and corn. Cook for about 5 minutes.

Add the salt and chopped tomatoes to the mixture. Stir well and then simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the water and the red lentils, then lower heat and simmer for about 10 minutes or until liquid reduces. (The recipe called for 25 minutes of simmer, but since we made our mashed potatoes vegan, they were a bit drier so we wanted our lentil mixture to be wetter, and this adjustment came out just fine.)

Add the herbs and stir well. Taste the mixture and add more salt if necessary.

Meanwhile, boil the potatoes until soft (about 20 minutes).

Drain the potatoes and then add olive oil and salt. Set aside.

Once the liquid from the lentils has reduced, spoon them into the ramekins and then gently spread the mashed potato on top. Grate on the cheese, if using, and then bake pies in the oven for 20 minutes or until the potato has formed a crust. If not using cheese, cover with aluminum foil for the first 15 minutes of cooking so the potatoes don’t dry out too much.

Remove the pies from the oven and then serve. To reheat the pies, simply put them in the oven for 10-15 minutes on 350F.

Serve with a mixed green salad.

Jazz Pizza

My friend AJ makes jazz pancakes. Jazz is often about improvisation, and so are jazz pancakes. They started, I believe, when AJ was out of some ingredient or other, and began doing wild substitutions. No baking powder? Beer will have the same sort of effect! The pancakes are now different each time, sometimes including traditional items like chocolate chips or bits of fruit, but sometimes venturing into much more dangerous territory with whatever leftovers AJ can find in the fridge. When we were visiting AJ and Felicia at their house, I got into the spirit of jazz pancakes.

A few weeks later, at our house, I was exhausted and in spoon debt from the day before, and Charlie had a huge research paper to finish up on. We decided to eat a frozen pizza we had, but I wanted to make sure Charlie had enough of a meal to fuel him for what would undoubtedly be a late night.

We knew we’d put some mushrooms on the pizza, and probably spinach, too.

“What about… black beans?” I asked tentatively.

“I don’t know about that,” Charlie said.

“Jaaaazzzzz pizzzzza!” I suggested, drawing out the words.

“I could be into it,” Charlie said, now nodding his head.

We rummaged in the vegetable drawer and cabinets, and even came up with a lone strip of tempeh bacon leftover from the weekend’s most recent brunch extravaganza, with, ironically, Felicia and AJ. A little while later, we had quite a substantial jazz pizza.

Try this one, or rummage for random ingredients and come up with your own improv pizza.

Ingredients (besides whatever you want):

1 12″ frozen cheese pizza
1 strip crumbled tempeh bacon
a handful of spinach
a quarter of an onion, diced
a couple of mushrooms, sliced
a few strips of yellow peppers, finely chopped
1/4 cup or so grated cheddar cheese
1 can black beans
avocado

Directions

Preheat oven according to package directions (ours recommended 400 degrees). Arrange mushrooms, spinach, peppers, and onion on top of frozen pizza. Spoon thoroughly drained black beans over veggies. Sprinkle grated cheddar on top.

Bake according to package directions (you may need a bit more additional time). Ours took about 20 minutes. Let cool slightly, and garnish with slices of avocado directly before serving.

Tobarnut Soup

Tobarnut Soup is Tomato, Barley, and Butternut Squash Soup.

[I should have posted this weeks ago! Oops!]

We had some tomatoes that were accumulating from our farm share, despite the fact that there has been a terrible blight that has affected the tomatoes in our area this season. Somehow, farmer Rich has managed to get us a variety of tomatoes, including some lovely heirloom tomatoes which we really enjoyed. I had about four large tomatoes (three red and one yellowy-orange) and two small yellow tomatoes, so I was plotting a tomato soup. When the butternut squash arrived this week alongside a few of the large tomatoes, I started imagining putting the two together. I’ve got a great creamy tomato soup recipe that I’m sure I’ll post here one day that I finally got around to posting, but for now, I’ve decided to combine tomatoes, roasted butternut squash, and barley for another slow cooker soup.

It may seem like our house is overrun with soup these days, but I like to put the soup in little individual containers and put them in the freezer. We’ve also had pretty much the entire household with some kind of cough and sniffles, though we’re not sure if it’s allergies or what. Either way, soup has been a very welcome meal.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium butternut squash
2 tablespoons flour
3 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped
3 cups vegetable broth
1/4 cup canned pumpkin puree
3/4 cup barley
1 tablespoon fresh basil
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
2 teaspoons fresh parsley
1 bay leaf
1 cup light cream or milk (optional)
1/4 cup or so grated parmesan cheese (optional)
Salt and pepper

Directions

Cut butternut squash lengthwise and place face up on a lightly greased baking sheet. Roast the butternut squash in a 400 degree oven for about 30-60 minutes (depending on the size and shape of your squash) or until soft enough to scoop.

Let cool, then scoop out the part with the seeds and discard. Remove the skin. Mash the flesh, either with a fork, a potato masher, or a blender.

I’ve made this soup twice now, and the first time I made it where I blended the tomatoes before they went in, and the second time I didn’t. If you want a very smooth soup, you should do this, but otherwise, don’t worry about it – being in a slow cooker will break it down a bunch.

Toss the olive oil, onions, and flour together in the bottom of the slowcooker. Ideally, you’d do this in a medium sized pot, heating the oil on medium heat, then adding the onions, cooking for about 3-5 minutes or until soft, then adding the flour, stirring constantly, cooking about one minute, not allowing it to brown. But, since this is a slowcooker, and I was in a hurry and didn’t want to wash another pot, I just threw it all in and it worked out just fine.

Add the onion mixture to the slow cooker. Pour the chopped (or blended) tomatoes over the onion mixture and stir well. Add the mashed butternut squash. Stir well.

Stir the barley, basil, rosemary, bay leaf, and parsley in. Add a bit of salt and pepper, but you may need more later.

Set the slow cooker to “low” and check on it in about 5-6 hours.

When the barley is soft, probably after about 6 hours in the slow cooker, be sure to remove the bay leaf, then add the parmesan cheese (optional). Add the milk or cream*, if desired, and stir. Taste to adjust for more salt and pepper if needed.

*The barley tends to soak up a lot of liquid even once the soup is done cooking, so for my freezer portions, I omitted the milk, and I’ll add it back when I heat the soup.

Foster Cats Tomato Soup

A friend of mine was talking about restaurant quality tomato soup, and I thought I should dig this recipe out from my archives that I never got around to posting here.

This is called Foster Cats Tomato Soup because about a year ago, my sister, Bianca, needed someone to watch her cats for a few months. Our friends Micah and Casey stepped up to bat, and we would sometimes go over to their place in Brooklyn on a Saturday afternoon to visit with the cats and have lunch. We’d take turns cooking, and when it came to my turn, this was one of the first things I made. Served, of course, with grilled cheese sandwiches.

Homemade tomato soup is much easier than you think, and it doesn’t have all the junk that the stuff from a can has in it.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small carrot, peeled and finely diced
2 tablespoons flour
2 pound fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped, or 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, juices reserved (I used crushed for time sake)
2 cups vegetable broth
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon fresh basil or 1/2 teaspoon dried basil (I used dried)
2 teaspoons fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves (I used dried)
1 bay leaf
1 cup light cream or milk (I used heavy cream)
1/4 cup or so grated parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper
(Optional) 1 cup ish cooked white rice (We cooked it in the rice cooker)

Directions

In a large nonreactive saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and carrot and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, 1 to 2 minutes without allowing to color. Add tomatoes with their juices, broth, tomato paste, basil, thyme and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer stirring frequently, 15 minutes. Remove and discard bay leaf.

In a food processor or blender, puree soup in batches until smooth (if you’re particularly lucky, you can use an immersion blender to accomplish this). Return to pan and stir in cream and parmesan cheese. Add rice (if using). Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Simmer until heated through, 3 to 5 minutes, and serve.