Vegan Apple Bread

Love quick breads. Love them.

Yesterday, in an effort to warm up our kitchen and use up some of the nearly inedible apples in our crisper, I made a vegan version of apple bread. It was fabulous.We have been enjoying it all week for breakfast.

Here's the recipe:

-In a small bowl combine 2 cups cooked apple chunks or chunky apple sauce or just apple sauce, 1/4 cup oil, 1/4 cup honey. (I also had some grated zucchini on hand so I threw that in. It was about a scant 1/4 cup.)
-In a larger bowl combine 1 cup white flour, 1 cup wheat flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/4 cup brown sugar, a few dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg.
-Add wet to dry plus 1 cup soy/coconut/almond/rice milk. Don't over mix.
-Pour into greased loaf pan and cook at 350 for about 1 hour.

Miso Tofu

 

The other day I saw a recipe for Grilled Tofu Salad with Miso Dressing on Steamy Kitchen. It looked delicious, so I gave it a try. But of course, I didn't really follow the recipe. Not exactly anyway.

Here's what I did:
-Slice a block of extra firm tofu into about 7-8 slices. Press them between dish towels to get out some of the moisture.
-In a small bowl, I mixed:

• 4 tsp miso paste
• dash of soy sauce
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 1tbsp rice vinegar
• juice of 1/2 lime
• juice of 1/2 orange
• 2 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp warm water
• dash of sriracha 

-Then I put the dish in the microwave for 20 seconds to warm it all up - it needs to be warm to dissolve the miso and honey.
-Season to taste and then pour half over the tofu.
-I broiled the tofu for about 7 min/side, but you could fry or grill it too.
-For the salad, I just made a basic salad. But I added the juice from the second half of the orange and little sesame oil to the remaining marinade to convert it to salad dressing.

Falafel Night!

Sunday night is often Dave's night to cook. Not only is it nice to have a break from being the family cook, but I can always count on Dave to try something new. Dave, unlike me, is good at following an actual recipe, and I can count on him to research his dinner idea with his typically meticulous attention. So when he decided to give Falafel a try a few weeks ago, I was psyched. Unfortunately, it didn't really come out the way he had hoped. The falafel tasted good, but in the frying up process, many of them fell apart. And despite his best efforts, he couldn't quite get the temperature of the oil right. Bottom line, it wasn't the best falafel ever. Welcome to the world of home-cooking, hon!

So when Dave offered to cook again this Sunday, I encouraged him to climb back up on that falafel horse. (Sorry for that horribly strained metaphor.) This time he used a recipe from Fresh, a new cookbook I bought recently - which is a great source for vegan and vegetarian recipes. This time he was completely successful. These little patties were amazing. Flavorful, tender and just the right consistency. They fried up perfectly.

Here is the recipe. We played a little fast and loose with the amounts for the herbs. And we didn't have any mint, so we just left it out. You don't need to be especially precise to make good falafel.

-In a food processor combine: 2 cloves of garlic, 1/2 cup cilantro, 1/2 cup mint, 1/2 cup parsley. Transfer to a large bowl.
-Put 3 1/2- 4 cups of cooked chickpeas in the food processor. Blend until chopped but don't puree. You want the mixture to be coarse.
-Add chickpeas to bowl with herbs and add: 1/2 cup bread crumbs, 1/2 cup flour (the recipe called for spelt flour but we just used whole wheat), 1/3 cup finely diced onion, 4 tbsp tahini (you could substitute peanut butter, I suspect), 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp coriander
-Mix it all together and then use hands to form small patties.
-You can fry them or bake them right away of refrigerate until you are ready to cook.
-If you are frying, use a heavy skillet and about 1/4 cup oil. If baking, set oven to 350 and cook for about 20 min. We tried both methods and thought they were equally yummy.

We served them with fresh made pita, lettuce, cucumbers and tahini dressing. The kids weren't that into the falafel, so we substituted hummus for them. A super-healthy Sunday dinner. They made fabulous leftovers on Monday, too.

Thanks, Dave, for conquering your falafel fears and making us a wonderful meal. You rock!

Latkes - Old & New

In honor of Chanukah, I made latkes last night. Let me start by saying that I love latkes. Simple, savory comfort food. Makes me feel like I am channeling my Jewish ancestors.

The traditional way to make these potato delights is to grate up some peeled potatoes and some onion. Add salt, pepper, flour and egg to bind up the mixture. Then you fry up the mixture like pancakes, preferably in a cast iron skillet. That's it. Easy peasy, as Kara would say.

A few notes on the basic recipe: Many people let their potatoes drain before mixing them up with the rest of the ingredients. I never have the time/patience for this, and I think my latkes are still pretty darn good. Also, many people - like my grandmother - would insist that latkes be made by grating your potatoes, and knuckles, on a box grater. I have done this many times. But I find that you can get an equally authentic product using a food processor with the shredding attachment. 

Because my mom and I have been participating in a fall CSA this year, I have an abundance of butternut squash. And if I am honest, I don't really like butternut squash that much. It's good as soup - for about a day. And I usually roast, puree and freeze up cubes of it to add to the instant mac and cheese my kids love and therefore assuage my guilt about feeding them instant mac and cheese. I was struggling to come up with uses for the all of the squash that are languishing in a box in our garage when I came across this recipe from Cooking Light that I had torn out and shoved in my recipe folder last year. Last night I gave it a try and found it to be excellent. I didn't follow the recipe to the letter, big surprise, but even as a blueprint, it was great. The curry makes these latkes a little spicy and very aromatic. I served them up with the traditional sour cream and added a side of mango chutney. They are hearty, too. I ate them as a main course last night and tonight.

Give latkes, of any variety, a try. They are incredibly flexible. Nearly impossible to screw up. Easily made vegan (no egg, use soy/rice milk instead) or gluten free (no flour, use corn starch or any gf flour). Happy Chanukah!

Vegan Dumplings

A couple of weeks ago my friend Katie brought her new boyfriend over for dinner. Once again, I was struck by an irrational need to really impress her new guy. (This neurosis was exacerbated by the fact that said boyfriend in French. Not fair, but true.) It turns out that David, the new guy, is a vegetarian which fits right in with our current eating habits. In any case, I decided to use this occasion to try something entirely new: Vegan dumplings.

After much combing of vegan and vegetarian websites, I finally settled on this recipe for Vegetarian Potstickers on Herbavoracious (an awesome site, btw). My issue with veggie dumplings is always that they are too mushy without any meat to give them some firmness. This recipe seemed like it could counteract the mush factor by using tempeh in the filling.

This recipe is "easy" in the sense that it is straightforward; it doesn't require strange ingredients or any advanced cooking supplied. However, it is time consuming. Folding all of those little dumplings took at least 45 min. While the filling tasted delicious, I added more cabbage than he calls for plus some shredded carrot an finely chopped mushroom. I was pleased that the tempeh did, in fact, make the filling nice and firm. Not a trace of mush.

As I was frying up dumplings, chopping ingredients for our main course of bi bim bop, and whipping up the sauce for both dishes, Dave commented that this might be the most high-maintenance dinner ever. He may have been right, but it was worth it. How often do you get to cook for your friend's French boyfriend? If ever there was a time to go all out...

Peanut Butter Noodles

I was perusing Dinner a Love Story, one on my favorite blogs, and Jenny mentioned that the recipe for peanut butter noodles was one of the most often viewed on her site. Considering that I check out her blog pretty much every day, I wasn't sure how I missed that recipe. Not only did I read it, I made it last night. Fabulous.

A few notes on the recipe:
-I found that 2/3 cup water was a little too much, so I just added a little more peanut butter.
-I also added a splash of mirin. If you like cooking food with Asian flavors, Mirin is a great thing to have in your pantry.  Mirin is Japanese sweet rice wine, though Kikkoman labels it as "Sweet Rice Seasoning" which is pretty accurate. I first learned about mirin when I was working in New York and one of my coworkers told me that, "Mirin is the thing that makes Asian dressings taste, well, Asian." She was right. Like the carrot-ginger salad dressing that comes with your pre-sushi salad? It probably has mirin in it as a sweetener. Enough about mirin. Get some. It's great stuff.
-This recipe makes a pretty good sized batch of sauce. Plenty for two meals.
-Sadly, this recipe did not have the magical effect described in the post -- my kids didn't really like it. Dave and I thought it was phenomenal, however, which makes it a success in my book.

Tahini Dressing

Another lesson from the vegan adventure: It's all about the condiments. If you are going to put grains, beans, tofu and veggies in the center of your diet, you better have some good dressings and marinades to go with it all.

In my vegan research I read Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Life. Don't laugh. While it is enthusiastic in the extreme, she has some good tips and more than a few good recipes. One of the best was her tahini dressing. Tahini is sesame seed paste. It is delicious.

Of course, I am not a big follower of dressing recipes, so I will just give you the gist of it.

This one is most easily made in a food processor. I used my Mini-Cuisinart.
-Put in the food processor 2 cloves of garlic and a chunk of ginger. Chop up.
-Add 2 tbsp tahini, a squeeze of lemon juice, a dash of soy sauce, a couple of tablespoons of rice vinegar and mirin. Blend until smooth.
-Finally add olive oil until you get the consistency you like. Blend. I also added a little agave to sweeten it up. Honey would work well, too.

This will keep in the refrigerator for several days. It is great on salad, cooked vegetables, rice, beans, falafel, tofu. You name it.

Eleven Madison Park Granola

I saw this recipe for granola in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday. Ok, I am pretty skeptical about most granola recipes. I am really wary of recipes that come from super fancy New York restaurants. This formula is not so different from the Mark Bittman template I usually follow. But something about including olive oil and coconut chips just inspired me to give this a try.

It turned out that I didn't actually have any coconut chips, and neither did Trader Joe's. But I did have pepitas, oats, grated coconut and a variety of dried fruits. The key to this granola is the brown sugar, maple syrup and olive oil that make up the coating for the oat mixture. When you bake the granola, this sugary mix becomes heavenly.

Hands down, this is the best granola I have ever produced. It is definitely sweeter and richer than my typical recipe, but I am still willing to bet that it is far healthier than the average store-bought granola. Give it a try.

Oatmeal Revelation - Part II

A while ago I posted about my realization that you can make oatmeal over night by just soaking the oats. Duh!

In my new (mostly) vegan diet, I have been eating lots of oatmeal in the morning. It's warm, nutritious, filling and endlessly adaptable. Nonetheless, I love getting new ideas for ways to jazz up this very traditional breakfast. Here are a couple:

-Add a bit of another grain to the oatmeal mix. On Sunday I made oatmeal on the stove and added, because I am wacky like that, a 1/4 cup of barley. Delicious. Dave noted that it gave the cereal a little more of a nutty flavor. Millet would work. So would brown rice or bulgar (cooked first). I suppose you could use quinoa, but I fear that would taste a little too nutty for me.

-Add a fruit butter. This is a derivation of a suggestion by Marissa on her wonderful blog Food in Jars. She tried adding applesauce to her oats and loved it. I took it one step further and added apple butter. Since I had just made apple butter, this was easy inspiration. Wow. It tasted so good. My kids liked it, too. If you like the store bought "apple and cinnamon" flavored oatmeal, give this a try. This morning I added pumpkin butter. Yum. Just yum.

New and Noteworthy Veggie Burger

Our vegan adventure has led me to several products that I otherwise would have missed in my grocery store trips. One of the best discoveries has been the Trader Joe's Vegetable Masala Burger.

These little gems are made of potatoes, carrots, beans, bell pepper and spices. That's an ingredients list I can get behind. It only takes a few minutes to cook one up on the stove and they are especially good on a slice of multigrain bread with a .

Even Dave, who has spent more than a few minutes of his life making fun of his sister for eating veggie burgers, admitted that these were pretty tasty.

These are definitely worth a shot, whether or not you are vegan. 

Vegan Challenge

Confession time: For the last three weeks Dave and I have been...vegan. Not just vegan, but no-booze vegan. No booze, no meat, no dairy for three weeks. I am prepared to say that the no meat and dairy has been easier than the no drinking. Turns out I really like that 5 PM glass of wine while cooking dinner. Dave was not especially surprised that giving up beer was harder than giving up animal products in our food.

Why did we do this? Well, I had been feeling just gross at the end of the summer. Bloated, tired, grumpy, with a side dish of frequent migraines and indigestion. So I wanted to do a kind of "cleanse" but not the kind that involved drinking only lemonade and cayenne pepper like Beyonce. Veganism seemed like a good, and not completely unreasonable, choice. When I broached the subject with Dave and said I was "thinking about trying it," he responded, with less snark than I probably deserved, "Whenever you say you are 'thinking about' something like this, we are totally doing it."

So we jumped in. I invested in quite a few vegan-friendly products. The beans, greens and tofu have been great. And I love the coconut milk hazelnut coffee creamer I found at Whole Foods. The vegan "cheese" was a little scary, however. Which leads me to a couple of realizations I have had over the past three weeks:

-Being a rookie vegan has been a challenge. Not so much because I felt deprived of previously beloved foods, but because I have had to cook in a totally different way. When a bean product becomes your protein source, you have to really mix it up or you will go crazy. And since I am incapable of cooking less than 8 servings of beans at a time, apparently, I have had a lot of leftovers in my fridge.

-If you are going to go vegan, you gotta go all in and you can't rely on vegan alternatives of animal based foods. Vegan meatballs are pretty good. Veganaise is fine on a sandwich. And I could learn to like non-dairy milks. (Again that hazelnut creamer rocks.) But vegan cheese, sour cream, cream cheese...icky gross.

-Being vegan, and dry, has actually made me feel "cleansed" in many ways. I certainly feel less bloated. I did lose a few pounds. And for the first time in years, I have had none of my typical indigestion issues,.

So what now? We are breaking our vegan/booze fast on Saturday when we celebrate Josh's birthday at one of our favorite spots, Earth Bread & Brewery. Phenomenal beer and pizza - if you in the Philly area, check it out. After than, I will remain booze free during the week. But it is playoff baseball, so I think it is legit to have a beer on the weekend while watching the game. Also, Dave and Josh brewed amazing pumpkin beer which I am dying to have on a cool fall night. I will maintain many of the vegan ways we established these past three weeks, as well. I have learned to really like lentils and come up with more than a few ways to serve tofu. If nothing else this cleanse has re-affirmed my commitment to only eat humanely raised meat and dairy. I had sort of gotten away from this vow in the interest of time, money and convenience, but I am back on track. Now I know that if I can't get chicken or eggs or cheese from a sustainable source, I have lots of vegan recipes up my sleeve.