There are several ways to make biscuits. Here is one...
Another super simple way is the drop biscuits from, you guessed it, Joy of Vegan Baking. Seriously, there is no reason to buy the Pillsbury kind when these biscuits literally take 15 minutes from start to finish. Unlike the biscuits you have to roll out, this method is more like making cookies. The resulting biscuits are a little rustic looking (i.e. there not the pretty perfect circles) but just as flaky and buttery as anything that comes from a cardboard tube. I made these biscuits as a treat this morning as a last hurrah before the New Year healthy eating kick!
You may know Yuma AZ from the critically acclaimed western starring Russel Crowe. However, I know it as the site of the closest Barnes & Noble to El Centro. Now I have one more reason to love Yuma- River City Grill.
We started with an order or the Vietnamese Spring Rolls as an appetizer, followed by the Roasted Tomato and Bell Pepper Bisque, which is easily veganized by ordering it without the gorganzola crouton. Yum! It was really difficult choosing an entree but I settled on the Indian curry, which was excellent, however the blackened tofu was running a close second. Next time. The only thing River City Grill did not have was a vegan dessert. But I was so full, I probably wouldn't have eaten dessert even if there was one.
I've been on a little blogging hiatus due to holiday traveling, but I'm back and rearing to go! In fact, I managed to come upon some great restaurants during my travels.
My husband is from El Centro, a town east of San Diego, and we spend every Christmas with his family. Unfortunately, we never have enough time to spend quality time in San Diego and El Centro. There are so many great veggie restaurants in San Diego and simply just not enough time to eat at them all.
But-- I did manage to experience one great restaurant, and it is an experience! Jyoti-Bihanga is a Sri Chinmoy divine enterprise, however you can call it a restaurant for short. Located on Adams Avenue in the Normal Heights part of San Diego, this restaurant serves eclectic vegetarian and vegan fare. Who is Sri Chinmoy? I'm glad you asked. According to his website "Sri Chinmoy is a spiritual teacher who dedicated his life in the service of humanity. In his 43 years in the West, he endeavoured to inspire and serve mankind with his soulful offerings - his prayers and meditations, literary, musical and artistic works." However, some think he's a sketchy cult-leader. A new memoir from a former disciple makes one a little suspicious of the sari-donned wait staff who all seem to have a serene, quaalude influenced demeanor.
However, if you don't mind the Hare Krishna vibe and imposing photos of the Guru that adorn the walls, the food was really good. I had the BBQ Mock Duck sandwich, which despite not really resembling duck at all, was delicious. Served with mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, I was licking my fingers in satisfaction. Their menu is diverse including curries, "neatloaf," and nachos. Its not entirely vegan, but the menu has many vegan options. We topped off our dinner with a vegan chocolate mousse cake and left feeling very enlightened. I almost wanted to don a sari and become a Chinmoy follower. Almost!
I remember the first time I got a head of read cabbage in my vegetable box. Thinking, what the heck am I going to do with that, I starting googling and came across a great recipe for braised red cabbage that called for butter and brown sugar and vinegar. It was yummy, but the oil and brown sugar, defeated the purpose of having a vegetable in the first place.
So the next time I made braised cabbage, I just braised it with vinegar and it came out just as good. This is one of my favorite low-cal, high fiber dishes. But be ware: Cabbage has a high sulfur content, so like eggs cheese and beans, it can make you have gas that is particularly smelly. Sorry, there's really no delicate way to say that.
Step 1: Halve on head of cabbage and core. Then slice thinly.
Step 2: Place cabbage in large pot over medium heat, and add 1/4-1/2 cup vinegar. Start with a 1/4 cup and add more if it starts to dry out.
Step 3: Let cabbage braise until it reaches desire tenderness. About 30 minutes. Salt liberally.
This is the thing with holiday baking. Once you decide to give one person a package of homemade goodies, then all of the sudden your list balloons into a four foot long scroll starting with your best friends and ending with the cashier at Shoppers. My husband suggested that we give cookies to the maintenance crew of our apartment building. And they are very deserving. The have risked their lives many times by daring to confront my cat Kobe for the sake of unclogging a toilet or fixing a garbage disposal. As my friend Katie can attest, braving Kobe is no small feet. They also valiantly plowed our parking lot numerous times during last year's snowpocalypse. However, once we decided to give the maintenance crew holiday cookies, then it was "what about the concierge," "what about the dry cleaners," "what about my doctor." You see how this can get out of hand. However, holiday baking serves to remind you just how many people it takes to keep your life running smoothly. It truly takes a village to keep Rob Rob and I going. However, only the lucky few will be getting cookies this year. I'm really sorry cashier at Shoppers.
Building on yesterday's mint chocolate chip themes, I made mint chocolate chip cookies from, you guessed it, Joy of Vegan Baking. I also made chocolate mint oreo truffles. Heaven!
Naan is a traditional Indian flat bread. I love Indian food and I especially love the bread they bring you at Indian restaurants. But, truth be told, naan is just one of the many wonderful breads you get at Indian restaurants. On the pain in the ass scale, Naan ranks pretty high so I probably won't be making it all that often. But, hopefully this is the first of many Indian breads I'll make in the coming year.
Step one: Dough Make your dough following the recipe in Joy of Vegan Baking or any other vegan Naan recipe. It must rise for two hours, so plan ahead of time.
Step two: Roll out your dough After kneading your risen dough, divide into eight sections and roll into long ovals.
Step three: Bake your dough This is where the technique comes in. If you do not have a pizza stone or tandori oven like me, crank your oven up to 500 degrees and preheat you cookie sheet by leaving it in the oven. When you're ready to bake your naan, brush the bottom side of the naan with water. Then spray the cookie sheet with oil and place the naan on the hot cookie sheet. Its easier if you just open the oven, pull out the rack, and quickly throw the naan down on the baking sheet. Quickly brush the top of the dough with melted Earth Balance, sprinkle with salt and bake for about 5 minutes.
My ambivalence about cupcakes is no secret. On one hand, lets face it, they taste good. In fact, there are very few desserts I do not enjoy. I don't enjoy fruit compote, but I believe one can argue that fruit compote is not dessert at all. Its just mushy fruit. But I digress. Yes the cupcake is good. No one can argue that it is perfectly proportioned. And it is damn cute. But I find myself baffled everytime I drive through Georgetown and see a line down the block for Georgetown cupcakes. Or I walk by Crumbs and see and early morning sugar rush.
For years I have been advocating the ascent of the mighty whoopie pie, which was gaining some traction but seemed to have fizzled as of late. So why the musing on cupcakes you ask? Well my dear friend Megan was having a fundraiser for We Are Family, a great D.C.based food assistance organization, and the theme was cupcakes.
So despite my ambivalence towards this tired pastry, I made some damn good mint chocolate chip cupcakes which I must say, were very festive. The cake was your basic wacky cake recipe which uses vinegar and baking soda as a leavener. The frosting was the basic chocolate butter cream frosting from Joy of Vegan Baking, with peppermint extract, instead of vanilla. Plus I chopped up some vegan chocolate chips and folded them into the frosting, which I think gave it a great texture. Garnish with a candy cane. In the future I will be searching for a different cupcake recipe. The chocolate cake is tasty and moist, but it is very delicate and does not stand up well to the weight of the frosting. However, this go-around was a success, if I do say so myself.
This recipe must start with a disclaimer: my non vegan husband did not like this recipe. I can't fault him. Low-fat salad dressing never tastes as good as its full-fat counterpart. And my husband who is rail thin, need-not worry about his figure.
But this vegan does occasionally have to watch the calories. My favorite dressing is Annie's goddess dressing which is a tahini-based dressing.
Over at fatfreevegan.com this lighter version bulks up on silken tofu instead of tahini.
I have a book club. This book club has gone through several meeting formats. Initially we met at restaurants, which always felt rushed. Then we met for dinner at someone's house, which was great, but dinner is a lot of work. I think we've now settled on dessert at someone's apartment. So for this month's meeting I searched for a dessert that looked good but wasn't super fattening. I decided to veganize this Ellie Krieger recipe found here.
The best part is that per serving the cobbler is only 220 calories and has five grams of fiber. The recipe call for butter, which is easily swapped out with Earth Balance, and buttermilk. To make a vegan buttermilk all you need to do is mix your favorite non-dairy milk with vinegar (1 tbsp of vinegar to 1 cup of milk).
The recipe was a success. However, the real star of the evening was Erica's pumpkin cake -- her maiden voyage into vegan baking!
I went to Philadelphia over the weekend to visit my dear, and enthusiastically omnivorous, friend Emily (check out her blog) who will be moving back to California in two weeks. Despite my efforts to get her excited about discovering Philadelphia's vegan culinary hot spots, it was not meant to be. After making a very persuasive argument over facebook as to why we should try Horizon, we learned that they were booked. I wasn't successful in getting us to Govinda either. This just means that I will have to return to Philly at a later date to do some hard-core eating. The trip though did provide some food for blog in the form of a great Indian restaurant which will adapt many of their menu items to be made without ghee or dairy. Bindi says they serve modern Indian. Unfortunately, my pallet is not sophisticated enough to decipher old Indian from modern Indian. I do, however, know yummy Indian when I taste it and Bindi was just that. I had the vegetarian thali which included chana masala, spicy cauliflower, mango pickle, and they subbed these coconut lentils in for the saag paneer. It was awesome. If you are ever in Philadelphia and want some good Indian food, just go to Bindi and they will hook you up. But bring cash because they don't take credit cards.
Potatoes are taking over my fridge. It's not my fault. I subscribe to a weekly fruit and vegetable delivery service, and I normally check the website to make sure I don't get too much of one item. If I have a bunch of, lets say, potatoes from the week before that I didn't use I goon the website to make sure I don't get potatoes the next week.
Well I neglected to do that and somehow I've accumulated enough potatoes to feed Ireland. But when life gives you potatoes, and it's chanukah, make potato latkes. Right? Wrong!!!! I just couldn't get up the enthusiasm for another round of fried food. So I went with the next best thing...potato kugel.
I found this recipe online for potato carrot kugel. I'm always hesitant to use a random recipe online because, unlike cookbooks, where the recipes have been tested by the author and editors, you never know who has actually tried recipes from a website. However, I took a leap of faith and it came out pretty good. It was a chanukah miracle! Since it was thirty degrees outside I decided to make soup to go along with my kugel. I made a curried tomato and rice soup from Fatfree Vegan. It tasted great. The recipe did not call for blending the soup, but I had an idea that it might be better blended then chunky. NEVER AGAIN will I attempt to blend a soup without an immersion blender. After placing the hot soup in the blender and placing the lid on, the blender promptly exploded sending hot soup all over me and my kitchen. I now have a bra that will probably forever smell like curry tomato.
You live, you learn right. Well after I cleaned the tomatoes off of the ceiling of my kitchen my husband and I had the soup and kugel. It was a great dinner on a cold winter's night.
Vegnews must have been reading my blog because today's e-mail included the following recipe for vegan latkes. Enjoy these latkes by VN columnist Robin Robertson. Serves 6
What You Need:
1-1/2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and grated 1 small yellow onion, peeled and grated 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, minced 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper Canola oil, for frying
What You Do:
1. In a colander set over a large bowl, place potatoes. Using your hands, squeeze out the excess liquid from the potatoes. Pour off the liquid and place potatoes in the bowl. Add onion to potatoes along with parsley, flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper, and mix well.
2. Preheat oven to 275 degrees. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat a thin layer of oil. Take a heaping tablespoon of batter and flatten it before gently placing it in the hot oil. Make three or four more potato pancakes this way, and add to skillet without crowding pan. Fry until golden brown on both sides, turning once, about 8 minutes total.
3. Repeat with remaining potato mixture, adding more oil as necessary. Remove the cooked potato pancakes to paper towels to drain, then transfer to an ovenproof platter and keep warm in the oven until all pancakes are cooked.
I, unfortunately will not be doing a head to head taste test this year. After Thanksgiving and my family's early chanukah party, I'm feeling a little pudgy. So the focus of this blog will be some low-fat healthy recipes-- at least for a couple weeks. Sorry Robert.
Among other great recipes, vegnews has some recipes for Jewish favorites like kugel, knishes and challah. After the first of the year I will be trying out some egg-less challah recipes. Its my resolution.
