Sorry about the break in posting, but its been a busy week. Last week I had a vegan pizza party, went to the green festival at Navy Pier with Priya (and volunteered afterward sorting through trash to recycle everything and stabbed my finger on some broken glass), worked, had a day of translation meetings (which went awesomely), cheered Michael on at a 5K, cooked, and visited my dad for the weekend. It's been a lot of fun, but not a lot of time for posting. So anyway, here's a much delayed post on my awesome pizza party.
Priya graciously made the crust while I was still at work, using wheat flour, which turned out pretty tasty and seemed to compliment the tons of vegetables pretty well. I just read an article that basically said if you want better, more flavorful crust, you have to make it the day before and let it rise more. As it was, we let it rise for at least two hours, so I will have to try this next time.
Crust:
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 package active dry yeast
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 cup warm water (not too hot or cold or the yeast won't grow, around 110 degrees)
Combine flour, salt, sugar, and yeast.
Add oil and water.
It works better if you allow it to rise for a little while, but I've also used it right away, so it doesn't hurt.
Spread this out in a greased pan, using your fingers to gently push it to all corners of the pan.
Using a spoon, spread some pizza sauce around (we used ragu, you can also make your own but I didn't have the ingredients. I think you might be able to use 2 parts tomato sauce, 1 part tomato paste, and then a few tbsp oregano, but that sounds how you start spaghetti sauce so don't quote me on that).
Now comes the fun part. We basically topped our pizza with every vegetable we could think of, so just add what ever you want. I would advise trying new things, if you're not sure you can add something to a corner of the pizza, some other topping to another. You could make it like a pizza venn diagram to explore the intersections of taste. Or you could just do what we did and pile on tons of veggies until the vegetable layer is 4 times as thick as everything else.
Our toppings:
Tomato, red pepper, red onion, white onion, olives, spinach, parsley, garlic, broccoli, mushrooms
Isn't it ironic that I hated any type of vegetable topping on pizza until I became vegan? Now I adore it.
Anyway, we finished by topping it with daiya mozarella cheese, which melted nicely and tasted great.
Bake at 375 for about 25 minutes.
Once I start getting stuff from my CSA (June 11th!), I'll have to make pizza again. This is making me hungry.
I also made peanut butter rice crispies for dessert, but that is for another day.
This strawberry sauce recipe is a great topping for vanilla cakes, and this cheesecake recipe, and probably other stuff too. You need a full pint of strawberries for this recipe.
Put the following into a blender:
Six regular sized strawberries, green tops cut off
2 tsp granulated sugar
2 tbsp almond milk (if it doesn't have enough liquid, add another tbsp)
Blend this together until it is smooth.
Cut up the rest of the strawberries from the pint, put into a bowl or tupperware container, and pour the sauce on top. Mix and keep refrigerated until ready to use.
I love this cheesecake recipe. Its based off some recipe I found on the internet a while ago, I don't remember where from.
1graham cracker pie crust (the one from Aldi is honey free, if you avoid honey. The nabisco honey graham crust doesn't, if you don't. Both are vegan otherwise).
Preheat oven to 375.
Combine in a blender:
2 packs (16 oz total) vegan cream cheese (I use the tofutti brand)
1/3 cup sugar
6 tsp EnerG egg replacer
2 tsp vanilla
Juice one lemon, and zest about half of it.
1/2 pint blueberries (washed)
Blend these ingredients together until thoroughly mixed. Pour into pie crust.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, then chill in the refrigerator for 12 hours (its agony to wait for it!)
I'll post the strawberry sauce recipe later to put on top.
If you want a colorful dish that can double as a pretty centerpiece, try this rainbow salad. I got this idea after I made a salad with as much variety as I could think of, and it ended up looking very pretty and colorful and getting comments when I ate it at work. As always, you can adapt it to personal tastes. One thing a rainbow of colors in your veggies means is that there's also a variety of health benefits, vitamins, antioxidants, and nutrients.
Start with a colorful lettuce mix in the base. Try to find one that has red leaf lettuce and red cabbage, along with the usual mix. If not, you can always get it separate and add it. Chop this and add to large mixing bowl.
Add spinach (good source of iron, especially if consumed with vitamin C (which there will be plenty of), because it helps your body absorb more iron.)
1 pack of cherry tomatoes, halved
2 orange tomatoes, cut up
1 red pepper, chopped
1 yellow pepper, chopped
1/2 red onion, cut up
1 can kidney beans, rinsed thoroughly
1 zucchini squash, peeled and cubed
1 cucumber, peeled and sliced
2 avocados, chopped
1/2 cup sugar snap peas, diced
Mix thoroughly and add your favorite dressing.
Here's an example of a rainbow salad I made last summer. Pretty much all the produce came from my local farmer's market. All the colors came out very vibrant, the sugar snap peas, pepper, and cherry tomatoes added a bit of crisp sweetness that was nice, and it was quite delicious.
This past weekend Michael and I went up to visit his family and we ended up having quite a few cooking adventures.
We made some pretty delicious basil pesto pasta, and I got to experiment a little with my puppy chow recipe. We didn't have enough powdered sugar, so we tried to make more using granulated sugar, a little corn starch (the internet told us to), and a food processor. It did powder it a little, but not all of it, so it was a bit gritty. However, I found out that crunchy peanut butter is really delicious with puppy chow, because the bits of peanut end up coated in the chocolate mixture and sugar as well. I'd add a bit more peanut butter to the mix though to compensate. I also made cranberry walnut bread at Michael's request for the barbecue we would be going to on Sunday with more of his extended family.
Saturday morning Michael and his family surprised me with some vegan waffles and raspberry sauce, which were really delicious. It was a great surprise. I'll hopefully be able to post the recipe later.
On Sunday, we went to the barbecue at his Aunt's. We brought some vegan sausages (the field roast apple sage brand - highly recommended), which were well received, and also some gardenburger black bean burgers. Michael's mom was also nice enough to make a vegetarian version of her pasta salad, which was really good and had lots of veggies in it. All in all, it was a great weekend!
I just got back from a meeting with MFA (Mercy for Animals), and they want me to translate their Vegetarian Starter Kit into Spanish! It's a volunteer position and I have until July 2nd to translate the approximately 30 page booklet, so I'll be busy, but I get to engage in two of my passions - animal advocacy and languages. The booklet has some tasty recipes, so I'll have to try cooking some of them.
In other exciting news, I also got into the University of Chicago Translation Certification Program. Classes start in October, but are mainly online.
MFA website:
http://www.mercyforanimals.org/
The PDF of what I'll be working on:
http://www.mercyforanimals.org/VSK.pdf
Black bean tacos are full of protein and very delicious. I love mine loaded with veggies.
To make the black beans:
Strain one can of black beans and rinse.
Finely chop 1/4 cup white or yellow onion. Saute this in a very small (1 or 2 tsp) olive oil until it softens in a small pan.
Add the black beans and set to medium-low heat.
Add 1/2 tbsp cumin
2 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp tabasco sauce, adding more if you like spice
Cook these for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, dice
1 tomato
2 avocado
about 1 cup lettuce
1/4 cup red onion
Heat up some corn or flour tortillas by either heating them over a frying pan or wrapping them in foil and placing them in an oven on low for a few minutes.
Combine toppings in tortilla, adding some daiya vegan cheese if desired.
I've made quite a few cupcake batches in the past month, and they've all been super delicious. I got the two recipes from a great vegan cookbook, Vegan Lunch Box. It's a vegan mom who's published recipes and photos of what she packs her son for lunch everyday (he's in grade school). It's a lot of very creative stuff. Since I would feel bad simply reproducing the recipes here straight from the book without changing any aspect of them, I'll just put up pictures of them.
These are the triple chocolate ones, they tasted best with the Vanilla frosting.
These are the vanilla ones, they tasted best with the chocolate frosting.
In the last two weeks, between muffins and cupcakes, I think I've made at least six dozen cupcakes/muffins. I've already posted my vanilla frosting recipe, but I've found the most amazing chocolate frosting to go with it. Its a recipe from one of my cookbooks, with adaptations. If you want some really interesting recipe ideas I highly recommend the book, Vegan Lunch Box. I paired this with her white cupcakes in my latest cooking demonstration at work, and everyone loved it. I got a lot of comments about how "you can't even tell its vegan". The frosting is really what makes it though. Here's my adaptation:
4 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup earth balance butter or another Vegan butter
5 tbsp soy milk
2 tsp vanilla
Basically mix all of the above in a large bowl, either by hand or with an electric mixer. It should come out the consistency of that kind of frosting you get in the tubs in the grocery store, thick and creamy. If its too thin, add a little more powdered sugar and cocoa powder in a 1:4 ratio, stirring. If its too thick, add soymilk 1/2 tbsp at a time, stirring. It should give a little resistance when stirring.
Another tip is if the butter is not fully melted and is not mixing well, you might be able to leave it on top of the stove (depending on your type of oven), and the heat from the oven will help melt it.
Anyway, it ends up absolutely delicious. I've noticed that this goes best with the vanilla cupcakes, and the vanilla frosting goes best with the chocolate cupcakes.
I read a lot of vegan news during the day (ex. Did you know Mike Tyson is now vegan? Can you say Irony?), and I found this article about a vegan ultramarathoner. It talks about his diet and helps to dispel the myths about vegan athletes(it also mentions some other meat free athletes). He's pretty impressive (for example he will be running a 24 hour marathon soon to see how many miles total he can do in that time). I barely have the patience to do three miles with Michael (I prefer biking/roller blading).
Just goes to show that as long as you are aware of proper nutrition and give your body what it needs, you can do amazing things (I'm looking at you, Standard American Diet).
Another thing I picked up in Hong Kong is a love for Indian food. For years I've talked people out of going out to Indian restaurants because I wasn't really a fan of curry. But then in Hong Kong, we stayed in a hostel where the base floor was full of vendors, many of whom were Indians or Pakistanis. I found out that I love samosas, and that many other Indian dishes are delicious. Here's something Michael and I made up last night:
In a frying pan combine:
2 cubed potatoes (the kind with very thin skin that are a light yellow color. If you use russet I would suggest peeling them)
1 can Chickpeas
1/2 a bag frozen peas
2tbsp olive oil
Cover and allow to simmer until the potatoes are thoroughly cooked, so for about 15 minutes. Add more oil if needed.
Take a jar of simmer sauce (we used Seeds of Change Madras simmer sauce) and put about half the jar in (more if you like spices)
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Mix thoroughly and allow to simmer on low for another 5 minutes.
I just wanted to jot a quick note to share how finding Vegan food isn't always that difficult. Today I went to the Jewel near my apartment (in Chicago), because they usually have a sushi case near the front. Not only did they have vegan sushi (with an adorable "vegetable only" sticker now residing on my desk hutch), but their vegetable gyoza was egg and dairy free! So I got a great Japanese lunch for less than ten bucks on my way home from class (2 days left!).
It comes with everything you need, soy sauce, ginger, and wasabi. I used the sweet ginger chili that I mentioned in the last post for a dipping sauce for the gyoza. Super delicious, super easy, and vegan!
Also, if you see the little chopstick holder in the picture (under my yellow chopsticks), it's something supercute I picked up from Japan!
Daiya Vegan Cheese - Best fake cheese I've had yet, except for maybe those fermented cashew cheeses at VeganMania, but I haven't seen them anywhere else. It was tasty/melty enough to be made (alone) into a grilled cheese sandwich. I haven't tried the mozzarella yet, but I look forward to turning it into a pizza for my tummy.
So Delicious has a new flavor of coconut milk ice cream - a totally delicious cookies and cream! Sooo much better than the rice milk version. In fact there's some in my freezer now (along with some peanut butter chocolate swirl).
The last one is an "accidentally vegan" item (not marketed for vegans, or replacing something usually not vegan), but its amazing. Its a sweet ginger chili dipping/cooking sauce made by "the ginger people" (I like the name too). It is amazing with pot stickers (Trader Joe's sells a great vegan brand of pot stickers, they come in a green bag and I love them). Its a little spicy, but its sweet and tangy and delectable. I've only seen it in Whole Foods, but I haven't really tried looking anywhere else.
Now back to the Spanish translations I'm working on...
As a child, I loved eating blueberry muffins in the morning. My mom usually made them from a box mix. I decided to find a recipe I could make from scratch, and turn it vegan. The basis for this recipe came from a Martha Steward website. I cannot wait until Jess gets back from China, and we gather up our friends and go blueberry picking again! So delicious, so cheap, and so fun!. Then I will get to eat these, blueberry crisps, and raw or frozen blueberries to my heart's content.
1/2 cup Earth Balance vegan butter (or whatever vegan brand)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tspn baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups fresh blueberries (much better than frozen for muffins)
1 cup sugar
1 ripe banana, broken into pieces for easier stirring.
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup soy or almond milk
For a topping accent:
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
First, preheat the oven to 375. Prep your muffin tins (this made about 18 muffins for me). I have these great reusable cupcake cups made of silicon or something. You just save them from the muffins or cupcakes and wash them, and then you can reuse them (because being eco friendly is caring for people/animals, so its a very vegan thing to do). I've had them for at least 3 years and they have held up great (which also has saved me money, considering how often I bake).
In a medium bowl, add the flour, baking powder, and salt, and mix.
In a separate, large bowl, combine the butter and sugar and mix well. I used my hand held mixed. This or an electric mixer works best I think. Add the banana and vanilla after mixing for about three minutes, ensuring that the banana is mixed in thoroughly. Mix in the dry ingredients from the other bowl, slowly so as not to create a flour explosion. Add the milk and mix until everything is evenly combined.
Fold in the blueberries gently, so that you do not rupture too many. A rubber spatula works best for this (that kind whose only purpose is to push down batter on the sides of bowls). Put about a 1/4th to a 1/3rd cup of batter into each cupcake cup in the pan.
In another, small bowl, mix the sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Sprinkle this on top of the muffin batter in the cups before putting it into the oven.
As you may or may not know, I recently completed a trip to China and Japan with my now-fiance Michael. When I travel, I do my absolute best to eat as a vegetarian, although I do usually forgo being vegan for the duration of the trip. The three places I've traveled since becoming vegetarian (France, China, and Japan) can usually accommodate vegetarians reasonably well, but have usually not heard of vegan. Combine this with living off the hospitality of other, language barriers, and (usually) having a different system for raising animals, I feel that this personal concession is reasonable for myself when traveling.
Vegetarianism is actually much more prevalent in China than I initially imagined. This is mainly due to a sizable population of Buddhists. Not all Buddhists are vegetarians, but many follow a "principle of non-harm". Some may even be considered vegan. This means that most restaurants are at least aware of vegetarianism, and there are many restaurants specifically for vegetarians (I think most ended up being vegan as well).
We first arrived in Shanghai, where we had few problems in maintaining our dietary choices. The friend I was visiting speaks Chinese, so she could tell people that we were looking for food without meat, and then in turn tell us what they had to offer. The hostel we were at had a delicious breakfast spread, with Tang, soymilk, cereal, vegetable buns (with tofu), toast, and fried donuts (which weren't sweet like we have in the States). The vegetable buns, called Baotzu, were common and most restaurants, shops, or street vendors had some vegetarian form. They usually had Chinese cabbage (Bok choy). Soup is also very common. The only problems we ran into is that we usually couldn't tell if the soup broth was animal or vegetable. It was one of those things where we usually just hoped for the best, but fortunately I never got sick. They had some great vegetable noodle soups, with this awesome kind of porous, sponge-like tofu. It was chewy and delicious. I've never seen it before. Mushrooms were prevalent in dishes also.
On our second day, we found a vegetarian restaurant that had some delicious dishes. With over 2,000 years of practice in vegetarian cooking, China has some very authentic fake meat dishes that were unlike anything we had ever had in the US. In a great restaurant in Hong Kong that I was really impressed with, they had this fake fish in a sauce that was quite similar to the real thing. It had the qualities most American seafood alternatives lack; it was flaky and it tasted like seafood. Michael and I couldn't figure out why these recipes haven't been imported to America yet. I had a great sweet and sour "pork" there too.
In Beijing there were street vendors everywhere. I had some delicious vegetable tempura in a Japanese chain restaurant there. We stayed pretty close to Tienanmen square. There were places selling fried sweet buns (a little more like the cinnamon and sugar ones found here) with sesame. We had lots of baotzu. One of the days, we climbed the Great Wall of China on a "secret" tour. We went to an unrestored part of the wall and the members of our group were the only people in sight. We hiked along the wall for a few miles, feeling on top of the world (literally on top of a small mountain), and then our spry guide lead us down into his villeage. They had a banquet for us, and it all seemed to be Vegetarian. Sometimes it was hard to tell if it was meat or expertly prepared tofu (always the mark of a good vegetarian dish). A fair amount of the food was spicy, some was with noodles, some with cabbage or other vegetables, some with rice.
Next we went to Wuhan, which is known for its spicy food. This is where my friend (Jess) lived. She was great, she translated to find us food we could eat and never complained about finding vegetarian restaurants and options. The only time we ever really had trouble eating out was when her friends had previously picked the restaurant, and it ended up having really nothing vegetarian (I think we ended up finding a dish though). She took us to a Buddhist temple and we ate at their vegetarian restaurant (most temples have a vegetarian restaurant attached, so you can always try that option). They had another great fake fish, which was a glazed breading in the shape of a fish filled with rice and small veggies (like peas and carrots). Their "beef" dish tasted like the real thing, but was way too spicy. Jess was sweating from it. They had fried, glazed "pork" balls that were delicious. Another place was a hot pot restaurant, where basically you get a pot of broth (we had water) on a mini individual boiler, and you go around buffet style and pick what you want to put in it. It was delicious. One thing that I wouldn't reccommend is the red bean paste baotzu, but thats because you get something sweet when you're expecting something salty. I didn't like it very much.
We went to a tea shop too, and I found some really delicious "flower fruit tea" which is tea mixed with dried fruit and is really delicious. It almost tastes like juice.
All and all, we had a surprisingly easy (and delicious) time being vegetarian. It probably would have been a lot harder without Jess, and we got laughed at by several shop keepers, but we had a great time. Michael really wants to find out how we can make some of those dishes ourselves!
This was lunch for today, after Priya came up and we decided to cook (also Michael had a craving for it last week). It's fairly easy, although you need a food processor or some kind of blender. You have three steps of preparation-the pasta, the pesto, and the sauteed veggies to mix in.
Pasta:
Make pasta (any sort will work. We used linguini, although I've also used shells successfully).
We made a whole box of linguini, which was about 16 oz.
Pesto:
3 cups fresh basil leaves (we were successful with 2 1/2 cups, even though its short)
6 TBSP pine nuts
3 cloves garlic (use 4 if you absolutely love garlic. We did and it had a strong, but delicious garlic flavor)
1 tsp salt
Dash of pepper
6 tbsp of your favorite italian style salad dressing. We used Newman's Own olive oil and vineager. This is a more delicious way of modifying the standard pesto recipe, where you simply use olive oil. That's why you have to replace it with an olive oil based dressing.
Mix all of these ingredients together in the food processor and blend until its finely chopped. It looked a little creamy.
Sauteed veggies:
In a frying pan, mix about 1 Tbsp olive oil, 2 cloves pressed or minced garlic, and veggies to saute.
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1/4 cup onions, chopped
Saute these for about 3-4 minutes, until they've softened a little. Right before you're ready to take them off, add a chopped tomato and saute for another minute (basically until it's heated).
Really, you could experiment with any vegetables, depending on your tastes, such as:
1/2 cup pitted and halved olives
1/2 cup spinach
2 peeled, sliced carrots.
After all these things are prepared, mix them together in a large bowl and serve.
I love French bread, but even in a cosmopolitan city like Chicago, that crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside delicious version is hard to find. So I've been making different versions to try to get an approximation of what you find in the boulangeries of Versaille (where I could walk a block and find amazing French bread). This isn't it, but it is a really good, tasty version of wheat baguettes. Crusty home made bread should be eaten in the first day or two after it is made, or it grows too stale.
Yield: 2 loaves
2 Cups warm water 1 tablespoon yeast 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 1 tablespoon sugar 2 teaspoons salt 5-5 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (not all purpose flour)
Preheat the oven to 375
Put the 2 cups of warm water (it should be around 110 degrees so as not to kill the yeast) in a big bowl. Add the yeast and sugar and stir to help it dissolve. Let it sit so that the yeast can proof (this will take about 10 minutes), which basically means it foams up in the water.
Add salt, oil, and 3 cups of the flour, stir for a bout 2 minutes
Add the remaining flour (start with 2 cups and add the 1/2 cup if it seems to need it) and stir. The dough will be thick, so I usually coat my hands with flour and mix by hand after a while.
Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, until smooth.
Oil a bowl with some canola or vegetable oil and put dough inside. Spin the dough around to coat all sides with the oil. Cover with a cloth and let it rise until its size doubles (I left it like an hour)
Punch it down and then divide it in half.
Shape the dough into two long slender loaves (i.e. shape it to look like French bread). It kind of reminds me of making snakes from play dough in grade school.
Take a large cookie sheet, grease it and sprinkle it with corn meal. This makes the bottom of the bread delicious.
Place loaves on the pan and cut diagonal slits across the top, about 4 or 5. This allows gas exchange in the bread.
Cover and let rise until doubled (I left out this step, and my bread turned out fine, so I guess its optional)
Wet your hands and run them over the bread to get the top of the bread wet. You can also mist them with a spray bottle. This is what makes the crust cruncy, which in my opinion is essential!
