Heart Beets

St. Valentine's greetings!
 

Like many, I enjoy taking this opportunity to make heart-shaped food, and beets seem especially conducive to this type of thing. Heart-shaped dining commenced early, with a heart beet salad and some pizza with heart-shaped beetaroni :

Beetaroni pizza with mushrooms, red onions, and Daiya vegan cheese

Beetaroni? Yes, it's so cool. I'm sure many of you already know about it, but if you don't, you'll have to check out Ricki Heller's original post about this ingenious idea.  It's basically thinly sliced beets slow baked in a smokey, spicy, garlic-y marinade. The end result really does go well on pizza: lightly smokey, spicy and tender..adds a nice color too. I never ate or liked pepperoni before going vegetarian (seemed suspect to me), but beetaroni...now, that's another story.

I didn't have a cookie cutter, so I made a little stencil to guide the heart-shaped cuts...cutting the raw beets was much easier than cutting the cooked ones in my experience. (I'll use the cut-out scraps in salads throughout the week.)

Here are the beets in the marinade, pre-baking:

And then out of the oven. The marinade bakes into the beets and as the liquid evaporates, the little beets curl up a bit:

Sorry, no heart-shaped dessert, but we did enjoy some raspberry beer: Lindemans Framboise Lambic. It's like raspberry soda, but with a little punch. The apple flavored one is good too. According to barnivore.com, Lindemans' beers are vegan friendly.

Happy Valentine's Day!! 

Roseann Laponte Tobin

Broccoli Corn Muffins

Is it bizarre to put broccoli in corn muffins? Mr D thinks so...his exact words were: "that's beyond bizarre". 

...he might be right, but I think you could add almost any veggie and it would be innocuous at worst. Actually, the broccoli didn't add a lot of flavor, but it was fun. I used about 1/2 cup corn kernels and 1/2 cup chopped broccoli, but if I were to make them again, I'd add in about 1 cup of each...they disappeared into the batter somehow. 

Needs more corn and broccoli!

Corn Muffins (makes 6)

1 cup sweetcorn kernels (this is upped from 1/2 c. I used above)

1  cup other veggies of choice, (blanched if desired), chopped small (upped from 1/2 cup used above)

egg replacer for 2 eggs (3 teaspoons egg replacer + 4 tbs water if using EnerG brand)

1 cup non-dairy milk + 1 tablespoon lemon juice (vegan buttermilk)

1/3 cup oil or melted Earth Balance or other vegan margarine

1 1/4 cups unbleached flour

3/4 cup yellow corn meal

1/4 vegan sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400 F. Grease and flour your muffin tin. 

Whisk together the egg replacer and water until well combined, add the vegan buttermilk mixture, oil, and whisk. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, corn meal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Toss in the veggies to coat. Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and fold in gently until the moist mix is just incorporated. The dough will be thick and lumpy.

Fill muffin tins...I filled mine to nearly full because I wanted a large cap...(didn't work). Bake for 20 minutes or until a wooden stick comes out clean.

Bizarre as they may be, they're pretty tasty with a little red pepper jelly.

As I was taking the muffin photos, this guy came running along the sun roof:

View above the corn muffins

(Please ignore the dirt...that's on the outside of the glass and I don't have a ladder tall enough to get up there and clean it, plus I'm afraid I might fall through or something.)

Cheeky watches from below:

Treats! Treats!

...Cheezy Baco Treats!

Here's Scamp (aka Daffodil). She's a little on the rotund side...ahem... see how she fills up her play tube so nicely?  But as you can also see, she's dutifully eating her carrot sticks--she's on a little weight loss plan at the moment. Notice her good-natured, sweet demeanor in spite of it all.

Diet or no, everyone deserves a treat sometimes, especially when they are healthy, delicious treats like these from Molly at It's a Vegan Dog's Life. The recipe was for muffins, but she also gives conversion instructions, so you can make them into cookies, bagels, etc. (Very handy)

I'm sure a lot of you already know about Molly's recipes and her recipe book of vegan dog treats, but if not, definitely check it out! The treats are rat approved too! :D

Cheezy Baco Biscuits

Look at those cute little toes and fingers...or is it just me?

Here's Scamp as she finds the cheezy baco treats and tries to get two big pieces in her mouth at once:

Treats in mouth, she runs up to her nest to hoard them...that's what she does with prize booty:

I tried to get a sweet picture of her happily munching away on one of the biscuits, but her sweet demeanor seemed to vanish...

"Back off, These are my treats!" 

Karentika, Garentita

**Post Factum:** 

This is one of a series of posts for Vegan MoFo 2010; my theme was a 'Virtual Random Road Trip', where I used random.org's random geographic location generator to select locations around the globe, I then attempted to cook a few dishes from the traditional cuisine of that place. I didn't have a lot of time between generating the locations and coming up with recipes (~ 1 day). So, lacking time to do proper research, I can't vouch for the authenticity of anything I came up with. However, they are what they are, and it was a fun theme. 

Although Algeria boasts many wonderful sweet pastries and desserts, I just wasn't in the mood for more sweet stuff. So, the last taste of Algeria is a savory one. This is  called either Garentita or Karentika, depending on how it's pronounced.  According to what I read, this recipe is prevalent throughout Algeria.

It's sort of a soft cake/pastry made with chickpea flour and lightly flavored with cumin. According to the recipe I used, the basic formula does not vary too much, but everyone adds their own personal touch. Mine was a sprinkling of nigella seeds over the top before baking. It's common for this to be baked as one large cake, but the recipe I found baked it in individual-sized portions. I thought that was a good idea, so I followed suit.

Here's the basic recipe (you can find the original recipe here):

200g chickpea flour (I don't know how many cups because I'm crap at all the conversion stuff...it was probably about 1 generous cup worth)
600ml water/ 3 cups (that was easy because the conversions are right on my liquid measuring cup)
1/2 teaspoon salt (you could probably bring it up to 3/4 teaspoon if you wanted it a little saltier)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
3 tablespoons olive oil
harissa to garnish

Ad Hoc Note: Looking over a few more recipes online, I see that many call for milk ...so if you do make this you might want to try subbing in all or part of the water with a non-dairy milk, it would probably turn out a little tastier.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Put the chickpea flour in a large bowl and add half of the water (1.5 cups). Whisk very well, or blend with mixer until smooth. Add the salt, cumin, and add the rest of the water until you get the consistency of crepe batter. (I ended up using only 2.5 cups instead of 3.) Continue to mix until smooth. Finally, incorporate the oil and pour the batter into ramekins. Bake for ~ 30 minutes. A nice crust forms around the outside.

Allow to cool and remove from ramkins. Garnish with harissa.

In an effort to get pictures taken before the daylight faded too much, I took them out of the ramekins while they were still warm, and they crumbled a bit. I don't think that would happen if you allowed them to cool completely first. Although, on second thought...the recipe says to eat them warm out of the oven, so the crumbling was mostly likely just me. 

What are they like on the inside? Well, let me try to find the words...they're sort of dense and soft. The flavor is mild and is very nicely complimented by the harissa. I thought they were ok, but to my surprise, my husband really liked them; he ate 3 all in one go.

I think if I made these again, I would mix them longer and with an electric mixer instead of a whisk,  in hopes of a slightly fluffier texture. And I would only fill the ramekins 1/2 full instead of 2/3 full. 

The cakes came out a bit darker than the pictures I saw, perhaps it was due to the fact that I used a combination of chickpea and fava flour...but I couldn't say for sure.

Do check out some these photos to get a much better idea of what you'd be aiming for, as opposed to what you see in this post.

Now for the next destination. 

It seems like I've been seeing so many wonderful MoFo'ers whipping up delicious Ethiopian meals lately...my mouth just waters when I see a selection of savory legumes and veggies spread out across a big piece of injera...so I was hoping to land in Ethiopia for this stop...

But no.

At first glance, it looks like Slovakia, but when I zoomed in, I saw that the pointer was in Hungary.

Next stop Hungary.

Pizza, and...More Pizza

Who says a good pizza necessarily involves cheese?

Not me. In fact, even before my vegan days, I always preferred pizzas with more sauce than cheese.

Now, don't get me wrong; I love a pizza with some good old vegan cheeze as much as anyone. But sometimes, cheeze-less is fun too. Over the weekend,  I threw together a couple of of those very specimens--it was a pizza-fest; we ate pizza twice!

The first pizza had tomato base with grilled mushrooms, fresh basil, and mustard mizuna:



This combo was based on a pizza I posted about here, and had been wanting to recreate at home ever since. The mushrooms were a little pricey, but I splurged a little and bought a Chef's Sampler from Mycopia.

The sampler contained these tasty varieties:

Buttons and crimini are great, but they don't begin to compare with any of these. Just upon opening the pack, a robust mushroom scent fills your nostrils. The velvet pioppini were very fragile to touch, but had the most full-bodied flavor. They were my favorite and well worth the splurge.

(For some extra browning action before adding them to the pizza, I grilled the mushrooms under the broiler with a little olive oil, black pepper, and a pinch of garlic powder for 1 - 2 minutes.)

Sauce

Normally, I whip up a quick pizza sauce with pureed tomatoes that doesn't involve pre-cooking. This time, I made a cooked version, which added extra flavor and fragrance. The following makes a generous cup/enough for liberally saucing one 14-inch pizza:

2 large garlic cloves, sliced thin

1 large tomato, chopped

red chili flakes to taste

oregano to taste

1.5 cups strained San Marzano tomatoes, or whatever kind you want

olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Saute the garlic and chili flakes over medium-low until garlic begins to become fragrant, toss in chopped tomato and oregano, continue to saute for another ~ 5 minutes until the tomato starts to break down. Add the strained tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste and allow to simmer for another 15 - 20 minutes. You can allow it to cool before putting it on the pizza.



Pizza II
The second pizza feast involved spinach-walnut pesto, thinly sliced red potatoes, red onions, and chili flakes topped with fresh walnuts and rosemary:



The key to success in getting the potatoes to cook through in the same time it takes a thin crust pizza to cook is to slice the the tatoes very thin (as with a mandolin) and then soak them in warm, salty water for an hour or two before putting them on the pizza. In this way, the potatoes become softer and cook up more quickly.

If the potatoes are nice and thin and the pesto is rich and tasty, this pizza is not "too starchy" in the least...though it may sound like it would be.  This is the kind of pizza you take in your hands, fold in half, and eat like a sandwich:

Spinach-Walnut Pesto
(makes about 1 cup)

Blend in food processor:

2 cups fresh spinach, rinsed
handful of fresh basil ~ 1/2 cup ( or more to taste...I would have used a little more, but that's all I had)
1/2 cup raw walnuts (or other nut of choice)
1 garlic clove
1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (optional)
1 generous tablespoon nutritional yeast
olive oil, water or veggie broth to bring up to desired consistency

The Dough
Last week, I found some Tipo "00" (zero zero) pizza flour in the store, which is what put pizza in my head in the first place. I had never used it before, so it was kind of exciting. This is a soft, finely milled flour containing very little gluten that is traditionally used in Neapolitan-style pizzas. From what I understand, a Neapolitan pizza crust should be made with "00" flour, fresh yeast (not the granules) and fired in a wood oven...Well, I got one out of three.

When elaborated according pizza-purist guidelines, a "pizza napoletana" crust is meant to have a soft edge with a very thin layer of crunch. I seriously doubt mine would be up to snuff for the pizza police, but it did come out with a nice crispy finish.

Here were the rough measurements I used for this dough:

~ 4 cups flour

1 1/3 cup water

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

2  1/2 teaspoons yeast
cornmeal or semolina for dusting pizza pan

I always use a wooden spoon for making bread--not sure whether it make a difference, it's just the way I was taught--: Dissolve the yeast in 1/3 cup of the water, warmed to just above body temperature, it should feel quite warm to the touch but not hot. Stir in the sugar and allow to sit for 10 minutes or until you can see the yeast reacting and foam develops on the top.

Toss about half the flour in a large bowl, add the salt, then pour in the yeast/water mixture and the remaining cup of water. Stir it up into a shaggy mass. Add in more flour in 1/4 - 1/2 cup increments until you can bring the dough up into a ball and it is no longer sticky.

Turn dough out onto a floured board, and knead the dough for a a few minutes, adding in more flour as you go to take up any stickiness. With plain white pizza dough, I usually don't bother kneading for more than 2 or 3 minutes, but it's up yourself.The end result should be an elastic texture that is not at all sticky.

Form a dough ball and place it in a lightly greased bowl (w/ olive oil) brush the top of the dough with a very light coating of olive oil, place bowl in a warm place and cover with a cloth or some plastic wrap. Allow dough to rise until it's doubled in size.

At this point, you can punch the dough down and let it rise again, or shape it onto your cornmeal dusted pizza pan, add your ingredients and bake. This makes roughly enough for two *thin* 14-inch pizzas.

Seitan Braciole and Coconut Cake

Growing up, braciole was a typical Sunday/holiday meal in our house. My mom used to make it by rolling an egg filling in pounded flank steaks, browning off the rolls in olive oil and then braising them in a tomato-based sauce. She made the filling with raw egg, parmigiano cheese, garlic, parsley, and black pepper, and I think possibly some bread crumbs-- the egg would cook up with the braciole and make a cheesy/slightly omelette-like filling. I haven't eaten my mom's version in well over 20 years, but this past weekend, I decided to give my own vegan version a try.

Here's my version; it looks much like what I remember from my childhood (in a vegan way):

For the filling, I used lemon pignoli "ricotta" ( the recipe for which can be found by scrolling down on this page). I added garlic and parsley to it, so the filling ended up being  pine nuts, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper. For the seitan, I used my old standby: easy baked seitan, and added some ketchup and vegan worcestershire in an attempt to make it somewhat beef-like.

I rolled several pieces of seitan out  to about 1/4 - 1/2-inch thickness and spread the pine nut filling across them....not knowing what to expect, I went sparingly on the filling...next time I'll use more. Then, I rolled up the seitan much like you would roll up loaves of  bread. I used kabob sticks to "weave" them closed, but in retrospect, I'm convinced that the rolls would have stayed together without them.

I used Vegan Epicurean's method of steam-baking the seitan...I find this method works great for cooking seitan. Thanks Alicia!

I baked the rolls for about an hour or so, pouring water on to the baking sheet as it evaporated and turning the rolls periodically so they browned evenly on all sides. They browned nicely and stayed much more moist than if they had been dry-baked in tin foil. About a half an hour before serving, I added the rolls to a pot of tomato sauce that had been cooking for many hours and let the rolls heat through and absorb some of the sauce:

The braciole went nicely on a plate of pasta with herb-roasted tomatoes. (Note the cute bunny in the background.):

Final verdict...the filling is "garlicky" and pine-nutty...very good, can't say it mimics mom's egg filling exactly...but it provided a similar rich dimension. My mom thought it was good, though did not go into detail by way of comparisons...

The seitan itself was tender and tasty...any seitan of choice would be good. I'm thinking of future versions  with chicken-style seitan and a sun-dried tomato filling...so many possibilities, so little time.

Now for the cake part: there were a good few people slated for our Easter gathering, so I volunteered to make a coconut cake. I used a recipe for coconut-lime cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I've made many of the recipes from this book and have always been happy with the result.

I quadrupled the recipe to make two, 9-inch round cakes. It's been so long since I've baked any goodies, I had forgotten how much fun it is.

Here's the final cake:

I topped it with thick coconut flake (some toasted). We ate it with the Dark Chocolate flavor of Coconut Bliss. (Incidentally--and I'm not a sweet tooth by any stretch of the imagination--the Pineapple-Coconut flavor of this same brand is pure ambrosia.)

Apparently, I lied when I said no photos were taken of the cake served out...I just found this one on my camera that someone must have snapped unbeknownst to me...or maybe I did unbeknownst to myself:

UPDATE:

When I eat cake, it often make me think of Alice and her looking-glass cake:


"I'm sure I don't know," the Lion growled out as he lay down again. "There was too much dust to see anything. What a time the Monster is cutting up that cake!"

    Alice had seated herself on the bank of a little brook, with the great dish on her knees, and was sawing away diligently with the knife. "It's very provoking!" she said, in reply to the Lion (she was getting quite used to being called "the Monster"). "I've cut several slices already, but they always join on again!"

    "You don't know how to manage Looking-glass cakes," the Unicorn remarked. "Hand it round first, and cut it afterward."

(From Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland  and Through the Looking Glass.)

Original illustration by John Tenniel

Whole Wheat Tea Brack

Tea Brack, also called Barm Brack, is a traditional Irish tea bread. "Breac" means "speckled" in Irish, and that describes this bread, which is speckled with dried fruits. It is traditionally eaten with butter and a nice hot cuppa tea...I like it slathered in orange marmalade.

The first time I had it, I was at my husband's cousin's house just outside of Clonmel, Co. Tipperary.  Her name is Veronica, and she wrote the recipe down for me, but I've never used it until now. I've veganized it here, and used whole wheat flour to make it a little healthier. If you use white flour, it will turn out more tender and moist, and will raise better. Actually, in Veronica's version, she calls for self-raising flour...if you use this, you can omit the baking powder and salt listed in the recipe below. Also, note that with the egg replacer, it is a fat-free recipe.

For the fruit, I used a combination of raisins, unsulphered apricots, and bing cherries (which, when dried, taste like prunes not cherries in my opinion). The whiskey is optional, and it wasn't in Veronica's original recipe, but I was feeling cheeky. And, one last note: I've spiced this mildly to suit my honey-hubby's tastes (he doesn't like cinnamon or cloves or other things like that if they're pronounced) so feel free to add more spices  and suit your fancy.

Ingredients
1 cup mixed dried fruit
1 cup hot black tea ( I made it strong, w/ 2 bags of Tetley's British Blend)
2 tbsp Irish whiskey (optional, but good)
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 cups whole wheat flour (or all-purpose flour for a lighter texture)
1 tablespoon baking powder
pinch of salt
2 teaspoons all spice (or more and other spices to your liking)
Ener-G Egg replacer for 2 eggs

In a large mixing bowl, soak the dried fruit in the hot tea and whiskey for several hours, perhaps overnight. After the fruit has soaked for several hours and has become nice and plump,  preheat the oven to 350ºF, grease a loaf pan, and line it with baking parchment.

Add the sugar to the bowl of soaked fruit and mix it up until dissolved, then mix in the prepared egg replacer. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and allspice together, and add the flour mixture to the fruit and sugar mixture.

Bake in the loaf tin for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until firm and and a knife inserted in comes out clean. Check on it periodically, and cover with parchment or aluminium foil if it's in danger of getting too brown.

For best results, let it cool a while before cutting and serving.

I'm starting the Eat to Live 6-week Plan from Dr. Joel Fuhrman tomorrow, which means that processed grains like flour are out, as are dried fruits. So, I ate my fill of brack today, and my honey-bun hubby will just have to finish the rest off himself.

Pie Post_ Pumpkin and Walnut Raisin Pies

Just wanted to post a Thanksgiving update, starting with desserts. I brought the pie to our celebration: vegan pumpkin pie, and vegan apple walnut pie. I decided to do 4-inch tarts rather full size pies, because small desserts are just cuter than big ones.

I made simple short crust pastry: 1:1 flour to shortening with a pinch of salt. I used 1.5 cups flour to 3/4 cup Earth Balance, with ~ .5 teaspoon salt...(I'm not sure exactly how much, as I just eye-balled it.) I think the key to good pastry is ensuring that the fat is very cold and remains so throughout the mixing process.



I found recipes online for vegan pumpkin pie with tofu, but that didn't appeal to me, so here's what I used instead:

Vegan Pumpkin Pie Filling
2 cups organic pumpkin puree
1 cup rice milk
1/3 cup turbinado sugar (this is nice, because it retains some of the molasses flavor)
1/4 cup corn starch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each: nutmeg, allspice, and ginger

Mix all ingredients together in a mixing bowl until well incorporated and smooth. Fill the pastry with the filling and bake in a 425 degree (F) oven for 10 minutes, then turn oven down to 350 and continue baking until the filling is set, approximately 30-40 minutes.

The filling came out smooth, pumpkiny, and nicely spiced...my husband liked it and he usually doesn't eat anything with cinnamon in it....so the flavors were subtle, but well balanced.



As good as the pumpkin pie was, I have to say, that the walnut raisin was my favorite. For this one, I used Bryanna Clark-Grogan's New and Improved Reliabe Vegan Pecan Pie recipe, but used walnuts and raisins instead of pecans. In the recipe, she gives a couple variations for the sweetener; I went with maple syrup option and it came out lovely and mapley. If anyone makes this pie, I definitely recommend going with the maple syrup option.



And one last note that I have to preface with saying: my mom was a stay-at-home mom, excellent cook, and everything we grew up eating was made from scratch...so a spray can of whipping cream would have never come within miles of our house....

But all that aside, my mom (whose not vegan, but was totally cool about eating a 100% vegan Thanksgiving dinner) found a can of vegan rice whip at WholeFoods and bought it to go with the vegan pie. I normally wouldn't buy anything like this, nor would she, but given the circumstances, I had to commend her efforts.



We used this stuff on the pie, and it really wasn't bad, but I was a little scared to read the ingredient list. It's basically rice milk and rice syrup packed in nitrous oxide. It's made in Germany.