Gyoza and spring rolls. WAY TOO MUCH WORK

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.

peanut tomato stew

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!

Stuffed peppers, stuffed me....

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!

Coconut rice. A revelation!

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!

Viva Tofu! The most awesome tofu ever

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!

2011 is the year of hominy

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!