Today I awoke with a craving for waffles. And tho’ I loves me some Isa Moskowitz and Terry Romero for all their vegan cookbooks & recipes, I wanted waffles that didn’t require ground flax seeds or pumpkin purée. We had a container of soy yogurt in the refrigerator and it makes a great substitution for sour cream. And sour cream waffles greatly satisfy any waffle craving: crispy outside, custardy inside. When Isa and Terry couldn’t provide me the recipe I required, I went looking online.
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Each loaf measures 14" by 7"
This is my second attempt at baking bread. Before I had a chance to photograph my first attempt, Justin was already in the kitchen with a bread knife making quick work of the loaf I baked in a proper loaf pan. These loaves were permitted to sit on a cool rack long enough for me to snap this photo with my iPhone. Then Justin took to them with a bread knife.
In all my years of cooking and baking, I had never attempted baking bread from scratch. I think it had everything to do with my mom baking whole wheat bread at home. No matter how amazing the bread smelled whilst baking, that loaf came out hard as a rock and resembled a similar density. I know that white flour is eschewed by all proper gay homes but baking with whole wheat flour just ain’t gonna happen. I’d much rather endure the carbs in loaves baked with white flour. Also, I’m not partial to eating rocks.
I have my mom’s copy of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook which, surprisingly, contains many recipes that can be made vegan. The recipe for white bread in the cookbook called for 3 tablespoons shortening which probably meant lard back in Betty’s time. A simple conversion to hydrogenated vegetable oils and I had vegan bread rising & baking in the kitchen. The trick to baking bread is allowing the dough to properly rise twice. During my second attempts, I let the loaves rise for over an hour which created a lighter density when fully baked.
Baking bread loaves bigger than a baby has its advantages:
- One loaf is just the right size for making Roasted Eggplant and Spinach Muffuletta Sammiches from The Veganomicon
- The insides of the bread loaf that need to be excavated for the aforementioned sammiches can be dried and used for the crumb topping of Pumpkin Penne Pasta with Caramelized Onions (also from The Veganomicon)
We’re saving the other loaf, what’s left of it anyway, for French toast this weekend.
Cookbooks, people. They’ll save the publishing industry and destroy the processed foods industry.
Sorry for the lack of recipes, I was busy redesigning my website. You know how those things can be. And, please, don’t even get me started on Google Analytics failing on W3C validation. Jesus.
As much as we use Vegan with a Vengeance and The Veganomicon in the kitchen, I can’t say I’m a fan of their recipes for cookies. Specifically, chocolate chip cookies. The cornerstone of any American childhood if you grew up in the ’burbs and your mom was only eager to bake you cookies unlike some mothers I’ve known that were still sleeping off the previous night’s binger. But I digress.
When it comes to chocolate chip cookies, it’s almost impossible to improve the recipe for Nestlé® Toll House® chocolate chip cookies. Which I’m sure has everything to do with ungodly copyright laws enacted by Nestlé and its cabal of lawyers. So in the interest of fair use, I’ve adapted the original recipe for vegan kitchens with the inclusion of applesauce and chopped walnuts—unless you have a nut allergy, then I can’t with you. I CAN’T!
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One of the best things about living in Seattle is the Vietnamese culture. Unlike Americanized “Chinese” food, Vietnamese dishes rely heavily on fresh vegetables and herbs. One of my favorite Vietnamese classics is bánh mì, a baguette sammich filled with fried tofu, sliced jalapeño peppers, spears of cucumber and pickled daikon radish & carrots, and fresh cilantro. What makes this sammich even better is the cost: $1.75 at my favorite Vietnamese deli. Cheaper than a taco truck and much more filling.
Making tofu bánh mì at home is easier than you think. The most time-intensive part of this recipe is making the pickled daikon and carrot. Everything else comes together quickly if you have all your ingredients prep’d.
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A couple years ago when I visited Milan, Italy I dined at the restaurant Joia where I sampled some of the most inventive vegan meals I’ve ever experienced. It’s a shame, really, that I had to travel to another continent just to enjoy a vegan meal that celebrates vegetables rather than replicate a meat dish. But I digress. Blub (pronounced bloob) is aptly named for the sound the soup makes as you eat it. Yes, Blub is a soup. But not just any soup.
Blub is a layered soup, one that you eat without stirring together the ingredients. In order to eat Blub just right, you will need a tall glass instead of a bowl (a 12-oz glass is perfect for one serving!). I won’t like to you: there is quite a bit of prep work that goes into the making of Blub, and knowing the amount of work necessary totally justifies the 18,00€ charge for the soup were you to dine at Joia.
I should also mention that joia changes the ingredients of Blub with the season. How cool is that? Once you have an idea of how to prepare Blub, you can experiment with it in as many different ways as you choose! This version of Blub uses the ingredients chosen at the time of my dining experience.
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I loves me some Indian food. Ever since high school when I attended Sunday prasadam at the Hare Krsna temple, I made an effort to learn how to prepare Indian-style cooking at home. The smells and flavors of spices in Indian cooking are as vast as the people of India. My favorite dish, when I ate cheese with aplomb, was saag paneer: creamed spinach with cheese curds. The English translation simply doesn’t do this dish justice. The spicy mixture of spinach is tempered with the curds perfectly fried to a golden brown. For years I tried to recreate this recipe at home but never successfully made what I ate in restaurants. Then, one day, whilst shopping at a spice market in Berkeley, I asked a woman in the store how I could make saag paneer at home. Her face lit up like Diwali and she led me through the aisles, handing me items as she recited the recipe from memory.
And this is how we do it—vegan, of course.
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Yesterday as I was cleaning the kitchen I lifted a 50 lb bag of flour without bending my knees. There is such a huge bag of flour in the kitchen because it’s fall which allows for cooking and baking without roasting like root vegetables. My back decided to repay my bad decision-making skills with a humdinger of a lower back ache. So listen when you are told repeatedly by people to always bend your knees whilst lifting heavy objects, for God’s sake listen.
With that said, enjoy this recipe for cookies made with chocolate chips and cornflakes. As you can imagine, substitutions abound. Go crazy.
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Fun facts about vegetable proteins!
- Protein sources for veg*ns come from a variety of sources, the most obvious being tofu which is a cake made from coagulated soy milk.
- Tempeh is the whole soybean which is fermented and pressed into a cake form.
Soybeans and other legumes provide a lot of protein which, when combined with whole grains and rice, become complete proteins and provide veg*ns with essential amino acids.
Another source of protein for veg*ns is wheat gluten, otherwise known as its macrobiotic title seitan. Veg*n restaurants may use seitan to create all sorts of fake meat dishes but it’s almost a little too eerie how well the texture of meat is replicated. I enjoy the versatility of seitan in vegan dishes, and making it at home is not at that complicated. You can follow the time-intensive process of washing vital wheat gluten flour for three days or you can follow this recipe from The Post Punk Kitchen.
You’ll have some mighty large batches of seitan to work with when this recipe is complete. To store the seitan in your refrigerator, make sure you place some of the broth from the stockpot into whatever container you use to store the seitan.
This seitan is not as firm as what you would find in grocery stores but it works well with a variety of recipes.
- Cut the seitan into medallions, dredge in flour, and fry in olive oil.
- Cut the seitan into strips and stir-fry with crushed garlic and a dash of soy sauce.
- Crumble the seitan into small pieces for use as taco meat.
Tonight we are pairing seitan with soba noodles and a spicy peanut sauce. Throw red pepper, green onions, black sesame seeds and mung bean sprouts into the dish and you’ve got yourself a kick-ass dinner!
Last night’s dinner was one of those impromptu meals where you have leftovers in the refrigerator you’d hate to see go to waste: roasted spaghetti squash with plenty left after our initial meal; carrots from the farmer’s market in the crisper drawer; and a large bag of onions. I decided that the best fate for these vegetables was to make patties—a homemade Gardenburger® if you will. Carrots can be spiced in any number of ways but I find that squash has its limits. Thankfully, curry works well with both carrots and squash. With a little ingenuity, and a lot of stuff in the cupboard, I put together the following recipe for curry patties.
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I’ve made vegan chocolate-chip cookies with little satisfaction in the final product. The cookies may have baked in an oven but they tasted a lot like raw cookie dough. If I was looking to nurse mental anguish with food, at least I have a safe alternative to possible e-coli exposure. This recipe for vegan oatmeal cookies, however, is nothing like its chocolate-chip cousin (twice removed, possibly thrice). Every time I have made these cookies, the final product is never the same. The cookies either come out brittle, thin, or with just the right amount of crispy-chewy goodness. Since I never know what to expect, I never feel disappointed. These vegan oatmeal cookies are the sweet epitome of buddhist doctrine: let go of expectations (the cookies will come out tasting good).
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