Archive for December, 2007
Seitan and grilled veggie dinner
About a year ago we went to a vegan cooking seminar here in Richmond and the chef taught us how to make homemade seitan. Anyone who has done this before knows although it’s worth it, it takes a lot of time to make it. But once again Isa Chandra Moskowitz found a better and faster way of making seitan using vital wheat gluten. There’s a great recipe in Veganomicon so we decided to try that out tonight…and wow. This was the first time in my entire life that I’ve had to use a knife to eat my dinner. A KNIFE. Who would have thought? Josh was really excited about making the seitan.. He got a flavor injector thing at Target because he said he wanted to inject it with margarine and some herbs to make it really moist.. and it did! Here’s a picture of the moistness:
So the recipe for making seitan in Veganomicon gets 4 stars. Hands down. The texture was ridiculous..it really looked like meat. And it tasted soo yummy.. Josh ground up some dried cremini mushrooms (in our new coffee grinder I might add) and then dipped the seitan cutlets in the mushroom powder before searing them (in his new stainless steel pan) in margarine. Josh just leaned over while I’m writing this and said in a weird creepy voice, “That’s what made them so goooood…”
Josh also got me a grill pan for Christmas so we made grilled asparagus and red potatoes. We marinated the asparagus in olive oil, lemon juice, thyme, and sliced garlic. The potatoes were parboiled and then sliced before being marinated in olive oil, rosemary, red pepper flakes, garlic, and fresh basil. Then we grilled them on the pan until they were nice and brown and had those beautiful grill marks. This was also my first time eating asparagus..yum.
4 comments December 30, 2007
Holiday reflections
We hope everyone had a great holiday! We had a great holiday with an abundance of vegan food. For Christmas Eve-Eve, as we like to say in my family, my mom made her famous top-secret family treasured recipe, Arroz con Nada (originally Arroz con Pollo, or rice with chicken, it is now rice with “nothing”). This recipe has been passed down through the generations in my family. My mom is now famous for making it, possibly because my mom doesn’t cook and this is the only meal she does/can cook!
For Christmas Eve my dad made Penne Vodka from Veganomicon and it turned out SOOOO great. In fact, we have a batch of the sauce simmering on our stove as we speak. For Christmas breakfast, I made our Eggnog Spiced Pancakes along with Gimme Lean Sausage patties on our new electric griddle!
For Christmas dinner, my grandma made Veggie Florentine and a new casserole that was kind of a Chicken Ala King type recipe (so was said around the dinner table, I have no idea what that is though!). I made the Eggnogerdoodles to snack on during the day festivities and Josh and I made our Lime Vanilla Cheesecake with a Cherry Topping for dessert. It was a total hit!
Here are some pictures from our family’s holiday gathering.
Josh and I on Christmas morning with my parent’s dog Suzie.
My parents bought all the puppies presents too!
Add comment December 29, 2007
Winter Vegetable Soup
We made this Winter Vegetable Soup for our family when we had our Trim-A-Tree Party. We found a recipe similar to this online but we added a few things to make it more wintery. It has acorn squash, red potatoes, parsnips, kale, tomatoes…lots of yummy stuff. A touch of cinnamon makes everything meld together and it also makes you feel all warm inside when you eat it.
We let this simmer on the stove top for about 2 hours, which was great because it let us spend time with our guests instead of slaving in the kitchen all night like we’ve done with other parties. Of course if you were making this for a weeknight meal, it would only take about 30-40 minutes to cook and it would still come out great. We served it with a big chunk of Panera’s french baguette and dipped it in the soup…mmmm…I think I’m gonna go have some leftovers…
Add comment December 29, 2007
Thai Green Curry
I found a recipe for Thai Green Curry with chicken in some gourmet cooking magazine, and I thought how yummy would it be with some Thai marinated tofu? Answer? Extremely yummy.
We bought two cans of coconut milk probably close to a year ago, and I can’t even remember why we bought it..but anyway, this was our first time cooking with it and I can’t believe how creamy and delicious it is. We also bought some Thai green curry paste for this recipe, and I love it because it’s hot but its not “Omg my mouth is on fire” hot. It has so much flavor and it just gives the dish some wonderful heat.
I know I wanted to use tofu for this recipe but I didn’t just want to throw some big old cubes into it without having first marinating it. So I woke up yesterday morning and was on a mission to create a Thai marinade. I ended up using lime juice, brown sugar, vegetable oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, ginger, basil, and coriander. We’ve had these coriander seeds sitting in our spice rack and I’ve never known what to do with them. To be honest I didn’t even know what it would taste like. So I crushed one of the seeds with my fingers yesterday to see what it would smell like and it smelled lemony and delicious. I thought it would go really well in the marinade since I wanted to use lemongrass but I didn’t want to drive all the way up to our Asian food superstore. So I crushed some of those up into the marinade and it was pretty amazing. Then Josh had requested that we cut the tofu into triangles instead of the usual cubes, and I think I like it better that way now too. It’s just a way to mix it up a bit with some tofu.
We have this great natural food store called Ellwood Thompson right down the street from us that has the best tofu, and luckily for my sister Allyson and her boyfriend William it’s sold in bulk so they can stock up on pounds and pounds of tofu everytime they come to visit. But what’s so great about the tofu is first of all it’s made locally, and it’s the best extra firm tofu we’ve ever had. It really is extra firm. It’s perfect for making tofu cutlets or tofu triangles like we used in this recipe. So if you live in the Richmond, Virginia area go to Ellwood Thompson to get your tofu.
So back to the curry. I marinated the tofu in the thai marinade for probably 4 hours. We ended up serving the curry over udon noodles because those are my favorite kind of noodles and I don’t particularly like rice with things like curry. Moral of the story? Thai food is amazing and it’s opened up a whole big flavorful door for cooking in our little kitchen. The end.
PS: Our cat Sara posed for yet another ridiculously cute picture (We swear we didn’t put her in the pot!)
2 comments December 20, 2007
Earliest (and best) breakfast ever
So we were sitting here at like 11pm and we both realized we were hungry again (big surprise there). We then went on to make bagels that we’ve been wanting to make since forever. We found a few recipes online, adjusted them a bit, and at 1:15am we stood in our kitchen eating fresh hot bagels right out of our very own oven.
We decided to boil them first (since Josh watched an episode of “How It’s Made” and they showed bagels being boiled before baking) and then baked them for about 15-20 minutes. For some reason boiling them first just seemed to make sense…almost like we were bagel bakers in a past life or something… Anyway, just look at the picture! They were perfectly toasty on the outside and soft on the inside.
I grew up eating buttered bagels for breakfast. My dad still cannot start a morning without a toasted bagel with soy butter or vegan cream cheese and jelly. My Aunt Toni lives on Long Island and it’s pretty much an unspoken rule that every time she comes here to Virginia to visit she must bring along at least a dozen New York bagels…because if you’ve been to New York and eaten a bagel, you know that there’s no bagel as good as a New York bagel. We’ve pretty much stopped buying bagels because I just can’t seem to eat one of those Lender’s bagels that come pre-cut and all that..they’re just not good. Not when you’re used to eating NY bagels. But these bagels…yeah..they’re no NY bagel but damn they’re good.
Stay tuned for variations…we’ve got tons of ideas to jazz these puppies up.
4 comments December 14, 2007
Eggnogerdoodles!
Ok, so I know I’ve probably said this before, but these are the best cookies I’ve ever had in my life. Since we love the taste of soy eggnog, we used it again here to make these oh so delicious holiday cookies. One of our favorite kinds of cookies are Snickerdoodles, and since these wonderful little cookies are rolled in sugar and nutmeg right before baking (much like Snickerdoodles except using nutmeg instead of cinnamon), we called them Eggnogerdoodles.
These cookies have all the great flavors of traditional eggnog: nutmeg, cinnamon, rum, and of course our current best friend, soy eggnog. They’re the perfect cookie texture, a little crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. Rolling the cookie dough balls in sugar and nutmeg before baking them makes them even better; the sugar caramelizes on the bottoms of the cookies making it even more delicious.
We’re having a Trim-A-Tree party this weekend and you can bet we’re making a double batch of these bad boys….or maybe a triple batch… either way, definetly make these for the holidays! They’re great for gifts, cookie exchange parties, or for having a fancy plate of yummy cookies out for a holiday party.
2 comments December 11, 2007
Perfect Gingerbread
It’s time to post the recipe for our incredible Gingerbread with a Lemon Vanilla Glaze. This was our first shot at making a gingerbread and it came out perfectly. Flavored with molasses, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon, this bread is moist but not too moist, a little sweet and a little spice..and topped with a perfectly lemony vanilla glaze. We bought mini loaf pans and this recipe makes 4 mini loafs, and it will make 1 regular loaf if you don’t have mini loaf pans. We thought that the mini loafs would be great for holiday gifts, or perfect sized breakfast and dessert treats for the two of us 
4 comments December 5, 2007
Eggnog Spiced Pancakes
We’ve been making these Eggnog Spiced Pancakes a lot lately now that the stores have been stocking soy eggnog for the holidays. When I was little my family used to get eggnog around this time of year for family gatherings, and I can remember having some in a small glass with a sprinkle of nutmeg. I could only drink a few sips because it was so filling, and now that I look back on that it kind of makes me sick to think about what real eggnog really is. But, thanks to some great brands like Silk, we now have soy eggnog, which has all the great flavors minus the eggs.
We used cinnamon, nutmeg, and a touch of rum to reinforce the eggnog flavor, and it brings back all those great memories of the holidays. These pancakes are soooo good. Really, they are.
1 comment December 1, 2007
