Here's a post just to dump some food porn pictures into cyberspace. While my computer has been in the shop, this has not stopped me in the kitchen, so here are some recent goodies. Enjoy.
1. Peppers stuffed with a black-eyed pea, veggie, seitan mixture. I make this dish differently every time I do it. I usually use quinoa instead of rice, I may use tofu instead of seitan, black beans instead of black-eyed peas, and so forth. You get the picture. I found my base recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance, but have made a few important alterations. For one, I eschew tomato sauce for homemade veggie broth and fresh cut tomatoes. For another, I cut my peppers in half instead of stuffing each one whole. They sure look cool stuffed whole, but I have found the filling-to-pepper ratio works out better if I just stuff the pepper halves.
2. This was a kickass tofu sandwich, fixin's courtesy of Hong Kong Market. They carry amazing tofu, which is made in not-too-far-away Houston. You can buy it fresh (not even packed in water) or fried. I believe we used the fried tofu for these sandwiches - sliced and fried again in a skillet with some oil and soy sauce. Then we sautéed onions, mushrooms and (just barely) snow peas. Additionally, we dressed the sandwiches with fresh tomato, cucumber and basil leaves. The mixture of fresh and cooked fixin's really made this sandwich enjoyable.
3. Here are a couple of shots of the world's (almost) greatest baked potatoes. Baked unwrapped in the oven and then covered with soy butter, salt, pepper, purple onions, broccoli, cheese (a soy cheese for Nick), and scallions, the only thing that could have made these potatoes better is sour cream. Holy mackeral!
4. I found this garlic roaster secondhand for $1.99 and could not have been more excited. Nick's love for garlic approaches the mythic and I hoped he would get plenty of use out of it. Tin foil certainly works, but a little roaster looks so cool and, well, is made for the job.
Look at that garlic! It's like butter!
5. Just last night I made my best coconut curry yet. My photographer was at the store getting wine when the dish was finished and served up, so there are no dazzling end pictures. Instead, I include one of the nearly-done sauce. Ingredients: Coconut milk, a cabbage variety related to bok choy, red pepper, purple onion, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, snow peas, tofu, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, agave nectar, muchi curry powder, sambhar curry powder, garam masala, cumin, coriander, and finished with basil and cilantro leaves. We served it over rice and I am looking forward to leftovers as I type!
6. One weekend around Mardi Gras, I concocted the plate pictured below. The orange sesame tofu is out of Eat, Drink and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton, which is the best vegan cookbook I have come across so far. The recipes render truly delicious dishes as they are written. I find I usually often end up altering written recipes to suit ingredients I would rather use (or have at hand) and sometimes to suit taste, making them spicier or adding additional herbs. But the recipes in Burton's book come out perfect and flavorful as she has written them. It's also a cool looking book. This orange sesame tofu is my first attempt at baking tofu and it turned out wonderfully with a great texture. I plated the tofu with rice and scallions, broccoli with lemon and butter, and kale with garlic (we love greenery). We devoured it and watched Hair with Treat Williams. Our lunch was better than the movie.
7. Finally, last weekend Nicholas and I made ourselves a breakfast of champions. Fried red potatoes with thyme and rosemary, tofu bacon to die for, and biscuits with garbanzo bean gravy. The gravy recipe comes from Vegan with a Vengeance (again), and Nicholas has mastered it, only this time he discovered a delicious substitution - creole for yellow mustard! The biscuit recipe is one I have compiled from several recipes. It combines, what I think is, the perfect proportion of ingredients and gives you high, fluffy, melty biscuits.
2 c flour
2/3 c almond milk
1 t lemon juice
3 T vegetable shortening
2 T Earth Balance "butter"
3 t baking powder
1 t salt
Whisk lemon juice into milk. Set aside.
Mix flour, baking powder and salt.
Cut the shortening and butter into the flour. I use a fork.
When the milk is good and curdled, mix it slowly into the flour.
Knead until you have a smooth, soft dough.
I pat the dough out by hand, as opposed to rolling it, and fold it several times. That's what makes the delicious layers that rise so beautifully.
I cut my biscuits out with a wine glass rim - a perfect size!
So anyway, we cooked up this wonder of a breakfast and oohed and aahed over it as we ate.
Incidentally, we watched The Botany of Desire that morning, which I highly recommend. It's a marvelously fascinating documentary based on the book by Michael Pollan and it tells the story of four domesticated plants from the plants' perspective: apples, tulips, cannabis and potatoes. So, so cool!
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