When searching for a new recipe to use up the chickpeas I had on my shelf I came across this recipe for a chickpea tart. I sounded so weird that I had to try it. My first thought was that it would be like a big pie of hummus.
Basically the pie is a mixture of walnuts an chickpeas pureed with onions, celery and garlic. Then you fold in spinach, chopped parsley, thyme and dried cranberries. Next you place the mixture in a pie crust. I used a frozen whole wheat pie shell just because I had one in the freezer, but you could totally make your own. Finally, you bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. The critical step is to let the pie set up for about 10 minutes after you take it out of the oven.
Basically, its a take on quiche. And its really good. I served with a light salad, but carmelized pearl onions, roasted potatoes and cranberry sauce would also be awesome on colder nights when you want something heartier.
Considering I've never tried a non-vegan version, or any version, of a coconut tres leches cake I can only judge this cake on it own. And it was good. I'm not sure if I would call it my favorite dessert. But I did go back for seconds.
And what exactly is it you ask? Well, its a basic white cake that is then soaked in a sugar/coconut milk syrup and topped with a tofu, coconut cream topping. Its not really a frosting. And you top it with flaked coconut. The "tres leches" comes from the fact that there is coconut milk, soy milk and almond milk.
"The cake would be good on its own," said Megan. "I liked that it wasn't too sweet." The cake was VERY labor intensive. But overall, a good venture.
When you refrigerate a can of coconut milk (must be the full fat kind) it the rich fatty cream separates from the liquid. You can then open the can and scoop out the cream which tastes light and fluffy like whipped cream with a slight coconut flavor. I'm already dreaming up ways to use it. I'm thinking if you whip it up with sugar and some vanilla extract it can be used just like whipped cream on strawberries, ice cream, cake etc. I discovered this while making the coconut tres leche cake from Viva Vegan! More to come on that cake later. But for now, let me know if you've ever used coconut cream and how.
I am pretty loyal to the brownie recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking. However, the brownie's from that book, while very yummy, are a little too moist and fudgie because they are made with applesauce instead of oil. The best part about brownies, in my opinion, is the crunchy sandy exterior sandwiching a fudgie interior. Enter the recipe for Vegan Banana Chip brownies from VegNews magazine. I didn't have banana chips or pecans...or chocolate chips. But I did have everything else so I decided to go for it. And these brownies are much more my style (Sorry Colleen). Made with cocoa powder, they have a much more bittersweet chocolate flavor. AND they have that little crunch that puts brownies over the edge. My only complaint is that they were a little too thin. So next time I will double the recipe and include the banana chips and pecan. I'm sure they will be even better!
This week I also decided to be a cookie godmother and bring in peanut butter cookies for my co-workers. The polished off all 2-dozen of them, so I think it was a success! I used the peanut butter cookie recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking which never disappoints!
When it comes to cooking, sometimes a recipe is a jumping off point. Notice I said cooking and NOT baking. Baking, you'd better stick to that recipe like glue. But with cooking, I often use recipes as a general outline to organize my thoughts and my fridge and come up with something yummy. Such was the case with dinner tonight. What could be better than chili on a cold Superbowl night. I used this recipe from Vegetarian Times with a few changes. My recipe is as follows:
1/3 recipe of steamed red seitan (from Viva Vegan!), chopped,
1 1/2 c (about) cooked black eyed peas,
1/2 c cooked kidney beans,
1 onion chopped,
1/2 jalapeno diced,
2 carrots, chopped
3 tbsp tomato paste
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced
3-5 cloves of garlic, minced,
2 tsp paprika,
1 1/2 tsp chili powder,
2 tsp oregano,
3 cups, vegetable broth, 3 tbsp soy sauce,
1/2 lemon,
First saute the onion and jalapeno is about 2 tbsp canola oil until soft (about 7-10 minutes). Add chipotles, garlic, seitan, tomato paste and spices. Saute for about 3 minutes. Add carrots, beans and broth. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Let simmer for 1 hour. Right before serving finish with the juice of 1/2 lemon and perhaps a bit more salt. Serve with tortilla chips.
Why mess with perfection you ask? Well, I've read Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Diet and taken some of her advice to heart. I'm trying to kick my coffee habit and decrease my sugar consumption. The raw truffles are 1 cup of medjool dates, 2 cups of pecans soaked, 1/4 c peanut butter and 1 tsp cinnamon. That's it. You blend it all up in a food processor until it's a mushy clump and then form balls and roll them in coconut flakes. Let's just say they're not as sweet as Colleen's chocolate cream cheese truffles which involve blending powdered sugar, tofutti cream cheese and melted chocolate, chilling and rolling in cocoa powder.
Frankly, I think next time I will just eat the dates straight up rather than turning them into truffles. But for now, I have coffee withdrawals to tend to and truffles to eat!
There are some dishes that are not worth the effort. These dishes are few and far between. I am a firm believer in cooking from scratch and most of the time the effort is minimal compared to the pay off.
For instance...
Fresh pizza dough puts Boboli to shame. And if you use rapid rise yeast you'll have fresh pizza dough in 15 minutes.
Cake, cookies and pretty much any other baked goods can just as easily be made from scratch as they can from a boxed mix. If you have a well organized kitchen, well stocked with baking supplies, you can bake a cake quicker than opening a box of Betty Crocker.
However, Gyoza is best left to the freezer section of Trader Joe's. Gyoza are dumplings that are traditionally filled with pork, but can easily be vegenized by omitting the meat and filling with a mixture of cabbage, carrots and green onion. However, the labor intensive part is making the dough. You can buy frozen gyoza wrappers but most of them have eggs in them. Apparently, you can get vegan wrappers but I have yet to find them. So after finding a recipe for the wrappers online I figured I'd try to make them myself.
NEVER AGAIN!
The ingredients for the dough couldn't be simpler. 2 cups flour, 2/3 cup water. The problem is that amount makes 48 wrappers. After rolling out wrapper # 24, I gave up and tossed the rest of the dough. I was too tired. I fried up the gyoza and Robert gave them two thumbs up. But frankly, they didn't taste any better than Trader Joe's Thai Vegetable Gyoza, which are also vegan.
Peanuts and tomato are one of the best flavor combinations. I know, it sounds weird, but trust me. So when the weather report was predicting another snowmageddon (it actually wasn't that bad) I combed my cookbooks for a good stew recipe, and low and behold Viva Vegan had a recipe for creamy potato peanut stew or Guatita. I didn't stick to the recipe 100%. The recipe calls for TVP, soy curls or chickpeas and all I had was a can of black eyed peas. The stew came out good, but to make it great, next time I'm going to add more texture-- maybe some chopped seitan, celery, or pearl onions. Maybe some fresh tomatoes. After our tummies were warmed with stew we settled on the catch to watch "Winter's Bone." How appropriate!
For all of you who, like me, are devoted listeners to Martha Stewart Radio this blog post is my tribute to Sandy Gluck. Sandy has a feature every Wednesday called "Use it up," where callers call in with questions like "I have half a can of coconut milk in my fridge, how can..." use it up.
Well, I have fallen a bit off the cooking wagon these past few weeks. As many of you (all 5 of you) may have noticed, this blog has been on a hiatus. My life has been a little crazy and I lost my cooking mojo. As a result, my fridge runneth over with fruits and vegetables. However, none of them fit nicely into any specific recipe. So with the basic premise of making a dinnner using as many vegetables as possible, dinner began.
The result was stuffed peppers with yellow rice and roasted butternut squash - a healthy, low calorie, high fiber dinner that was bursting with color. Just the meal I needed in the drab of winter.
2 red bell peppers provided my starting point. The stuffing consisted of 1 cup cooked chickpeas, 4 portabello mushrooms, 1/2 yellow onion (chopped), 1/2 jalepeno (diced), 4 cherry tomatoes (because they were left over and I needed to use them), paprika, cumin, salt and pepper. I sweated the mushrooms and onions, added the jalepeno, chickpeas and tomatoes, season and simmered until the mushrooms and onions were cooked down. I then stuffed the mixture into the halved bell peppers and topped with Daiya cheese. I put a little broth in the bottom of the casserole dish, tented with foil and baked at 450 for about 20 minutes.
On the side was yellow rice from Viva Vegan, and then I roasted a butternut squash. Voila. All this can be yours for just 347 calories!
How do you give a basic tofu/broccoli stir fry a little pizazz? One word-- coconut milk. OK two words, but one ingredient regardless. Add a simple can of coconut milk to whit rice and it will rock your world.
Combine:
1 1/4c jasmine rice
1 can of coconut milk
1 cup of water
1/2 tsp salt
Bring to a boil and simmer for 25 minutes until rice is tender. This rice is almost like an instant rice pudding. Serve with any Asian inspired dish or drizzle with some maple syrup for a yummy alternative to oatmeal in the morning!
Just for the record the latin baked tofu in Viva Vegan! is totally awesome. First you bake the sliced tofu in a soy sauce/olive oil coated baking dish. After about 20 minutes you poor over a marinade of Corona, tomato paste, garlic, soy sauce and vinegar (however I swapped lemon juice for the vinegar and salt for the soy sauce). After 30 minutes of baking at about 450 degrees I opened the oven to see the sauce reduced and the tofu baked to perfection! I must admit, I had no idea what to expect when I put together that sauce. It was totally transformed after baking. I served it with yellow rice, also from Viva Vegan! Magic!
Hominy, hominy, hominy. Where have you been all my life? Tonight I tried out my bran new cookbook, Viva Vegan!, to great fanfare. Even though today was unseasonably warm, I still thought New Years a perfect occasion for a healthy, filling stew. Enter Terry Hope Romero's recipe for Quick Red Posole with Beans.
The ingredients are familiar to any Mexican food fan-- pinto beans, poblano, tomatoes, Corona (or in my case two Coronitas because it was on sale!), onion and hominy. What's hominy you say? Only my new favorite ingredient. And unlike many exotic vegan ingredients, hominy is easy to find and super cheap. A can on cooked hominy was about $.60. Hominy is dried maize kernels which have been treated with an alkali in a process called nixtamalization. It looks like fluffy white corn kernels, but tastes like corn tortillas. Or corn tortillas taste like hominy rather, since ground up hominy is made into masa harina which is then made into tortillas.
The posole rocked! My husband has asked that I quote him as saying "Its a good as anything I've had in any desert southwest joint." Robert and I like to think of ourselves as Mexican food connoisseurs, and believe me this posole is up there with the best of them. And its super healthy and low-cal to boot! The beer gave this stew an incredible depth of flavor, but you can also use vegetable stock. Seriously, everyone must go out and by Viva Vegan! NoW!
