Golden Pasta and Cauliflower Salad

Golden Pasta and Cauliflower Salad
Originally uploaded by wbajzek

This is almost exactly as in The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook, except we didn't have bell peppers or water chestnuts, so I didn't put them in. They would have been nice for a bit of extra contrast but I enjoyed this as it was.

Sauteed Cauliflower Greens, Bok Choy, and Chard
Originally uploaded by wbajzek

Angeline made the greens with contents from our CSA box, to go with the salad.

I also made the "Colby Cheez" from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook, which is currently chilling in the fridge. I'll post about that when it's done.

Holiday stuffs

Nothing surprising here. Stuffed acorn squash much like last time, but substituting replacing the channa masala spice blend with basil, oregano, and sage from the garden. It was a hit at the party we went to! Today I'm making another veggie pie/tortiere with onion, carrot, fennel, and those same garden fresh herbs sauteed together. At the end, I added cashew butter and nutritional yeast to try to make it gooify, as a "problem" with this type of dish is that it tends to fall apart when serving. This stuff lined the bottom of the pan, with a middle layer of cooked green lentils and black beans and topped with mashed potatoes from yesterday. I smeared on a bit of olive oil in hopes that the top will brown a bit.

As for the fennel, I used both the bulb and one of the stalks, which took on a surprisingly different flavor once sauteed. I think this will be one of my best dishes yet.

stuffed squash

Tonight's dinner was one of those "what can I make with what I have in the kitchen?" creations. It began with baking a squash of unknown variety. Then I decided to stuff the squash, so I had to see what I had. I ended up making a goo of:

• margarine
• channa masala spices
• red onion
• minced kale
• cashew butter
• chopped almonds
• raisins
• orange blossom honey
• salt
• nutritional yeast
  
• water

Sounds bizarre, perhaps, but I incorporated some ideas from some past squash stuffings and followed my taste buds, and it came out well. The last steps were to add cashew butter and nutritional yeast, then stir in water little by little until it took on kindof a creamy consistency.

indianish food again

We got another box from the CSA the other day... It took me a while to work up the inspiration to prepare some food, but it turned out pretty well. I sauteed some some usual-suspect spices in ghee (almost gone now) and threw in a few chopped onions and the whey from my soy-yogurt cheese experiment. To this, I added chopped potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, and some frozen peas. Eventually I added more water and then a bit of peanut butter and nutritional yeast to thicken it up. I have to admit that it's not immensely flavorful in spite of having a more salt and cayenne in it than I normally would put, but it is pretty good and has a nice texture to it. Panir or lemon-marinated tofu would have been a nice addition. We're eating it over rice.


Yogurt cheese? Yogurt cheese. I made some soy yogurt as I often do, and am straining it in a sieve lined with cheese cloth. I think that for the full effect, it would need to sit for a few days, but it thickened up pretty well. After I finish dinner, I'm going to mix in some sugar, saffron, and cardamom and serve it as dessert.

Tonight's adventures: burritos & muffins

First, I made stuff to put in burritos... Leftover brown rice, a rinsed can of pinto beans, salsa, and "sour cream uncheez sauce," which basically consists of cashew butter, fresh lemon juice, and a touch of nutritional yeast. This mixture really hit the spot for me.

Unfortunately, the tortillas were a flat out (ha ha) disaster. I think I got the dough to the right consistency, but the recipe (basically 2 to 1 and a bit masa harina and water) said to roll them out between two sheets of wax paper, and I found it to be nearly impossible to transfer them from the wax paper to the skillet without them falling apart. I got ONE good one, which of course wasn't really ideal for a burrito anyway, because it was too crispy. I might try this again to make gorditas or crispy tacos, but it really didn't work for the burritos, so I guess I will have to get some store-bought flour tortillas to finish the burritos... It's too bad, because I was hoping to share them with a gluten-allergic friend.

I made some muffins, too, partly because I was annoyed at my defeat at the hands of the tortillas. Roughly 2 cups of flour, all purpose, brown rice, and almond, in some reasonable proportion favoring the first two, combined with some cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder and soda, all vaguely like a recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. I put a banana, some soy yogurt, soy milk, oil, and cashew butter in the blender and pureed it, and then stirred all that in to the batter. Filled the muffin cups and baked for 20 minutes at 400 and they came out quite nice... A little on the dense side, but tasty... I couldn't bring myself to use as much sugar as the recipe called for, so they're not as sweet as they could be, but I think with the banana and the cocoa they have a very good flavor. They stick to the muffin cups a bit too much; I'm not sure what to do about that.

I will probably edit this in the future and put in some links, but for now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow morning I plan to ride my bike at least part of the way to work, for the first time in a long time. It's an awful long and dangerous commute entirely by bike (15 miles each way, give or take) but I am excited about it... I need the exercise, I miss riding, and I will be burning less gasoline.

I'm back! With broccoli!

I just made cream of broccoli soup, following the gist of a recipe from Savvy Vegetarian. I boiled the broccoli and some herbs in 4 cups of stock until it softened, and then pureed it. Then I made a roux with olive oil, brown rice flour, a bit of nutritional yeast, and almond milk. There wasn't enough of that, so I had to resort to regular milk to finish off the sauce. Then I stirred the puree back in, added salt & pepper to taste, and called it done. Verdict: delicious. And another mysterious food has become ... less mysterious.

More NYC

I went to Good Karma again tonight, but they didn't have the mac & "cheese" because they weren't pleased without how it came out last time. I encouraged them to keep working on it, because frankly, if someone had told me I'd enjoy eating a bunch of yeasty goo, I'd have told them they were crazy, but I trusted the GK folks and I thought it was great. I told them I'd made some of said goo and put it on potatoes, and it was really nice.

One of them recommended using kamut flour for making hearty cookies or other floury things. I have never knowingly had kamut, so I'm curious. I have some friends who are allergic to gluten, and I have tasted pancakes and birthday cakes prepared by/for them with alternative flours, and so far have been very impressed. As far as I know, I'm only allergic to papaya and cats, but why make everything with the same old bleached white flour? I always have my favorites, but I really enjoy variety occasionally going through phases where I explore different cuisines, unfamiliar veggies, almond milk instead of soy, etc.

I admit I'm still dumbfounded by my meat-eating friends who can't bear to eat a meal that didn't have meat in it. Their diets are often based around 3-5 varieties of meat, prepared in two or three different ways, with insignificant amounts of anything else. BORING!

I <3 NYC

A week ago I had "macaroni and cheese" at Good Karma Vegan Cafe in downtown San Jose (plug - it's one of my favorite restaurants and I've made a weekly routine of going). The "cheese" was made of this mysterious nutritional yeast stuff I have heard much about but never encountered. My impression was that it tasted somewhat like cheese, perhaps a bit more like gravy, with maybe a hint of peanut butter. Weird? Yeah, but lately I have been interested in weird vegan foods.

As luck would have it, I needed to pick up some stuff at Whole Foods, and they had nutritional yeast in the bulk bins, so I bought a bunch. Angeline has been requesting "breakfast for dinner" for the last few days and had even pre-cooked some cubed russet potatoes for this purpose. So, for dinner tonight, I made eggs and potatoes for dinner, and for my taters I made a batch of NYC.

I used 1 part NY flakes, 1 part flour, and 2 parts water, plus a bit of margarine and salt. I whisked it over a low flame until it took on a velveeta-esque texture, and poured it on the taters. This was not exactly how the guy at Good Karma said they made theirs, but it tasted almost exactly the same to me... I suppose that's mostly due to the NY's flavor.

Conclusion? I liked it so much that I wanted to lick the pot clean. But, I'm weird. Angeline said she could see why it would be used for gravy (which she generally doesn't like) and didn't feel inclined to comment any further on the subject...