Pesto Fettucine & Bruschetta

Fettucine with homemade pesto and bruschetta made with some of that leftover yummy no knead bread.

Pesto is pretty simple that you don't need a recipe. Just lots of fresh basil, salt (preferably coarse sea salt), fresh garlic, pine nuts (not even necessary, you could use walnuts or no nuts at all) and olive oil. Just process the basil, salt, garlic and pine nuts until chopped well. Taste a little and add more salt if you'd like. While the processor is running, drizzle in as much olive oil as you want to make a paste. To serve with pasta, dollop a few spoonfuls on hot pasta along with a little of the pasta water. Taste, add more pesto or salt or pasta water if it needs it, and you're done. Also add some black pepper if you want.

The bruschetta was just chopped tomatoes and fresh basil with garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. Just mix it up in a bowl and spoon over crusty bread that has been toasted in the oven.

Chili & No Knead Bread

Chili with TVP and beans, topped with corn, shredded lettuce, green onions and slivers of Sheese (smoked "cheddar" flavour). I started off with Bryanna's chili recipe but adjusted the seasonings while cooking. I also started it on a large pot, sauteeing the onions and tvp, adding in the rest of the ingredients and then throwing it in my slow cooker on high for about 3-4 hours.

On the side there's some more No Knead bread. This is my favourite bread recipe at this time. It takes a little planning but it is so easy to put together and has an incredible crust and taste. This is my third loaf and the best one yet. I don't follow the instructions exactly as I mentioned before and I use a non-stick loaf pan and foil instead of a heavy oven pot. I'm sure it's not as good or full of holes if I did it exactly as listed and used the right equipment but I don't care. I still like it a lot the way I make it.

Next time I make it, I'll take photos of each step. If you do have a heavy oven pot with lid and want to follow the instructions exactly, here's a video.

Pad Thai with Tofu

Started with the Brooklyn Pad Thai (VwaV) recipe but made some modifications along the way (note the lack of bean sprouts). It was yummy! I'll have to jot down my modified version one of these days soon.

The key to stirfried rice noodles is NEVER to boil the noodles, just soak in hot water for about 25-30 minutes, drain and then stirfry. The noodles will seem like they are too hard after soaking, but believe me, they will soften up when you stirfry them. The first time I ever made rice noodles for a stirfry I boiled them and they of course turned to mush when I fried them. This was many years ago when I was a horrible HORRIBLE cook!

Anyway, I never cook thai food, but good vegan thai food here is hard to find. Maybe next week I'll tackle something from the book Buddha's Table. I have a ton of cookbooks that I never use. I'm going to try a new recipe from one of them each week.

Lasagna, Bread & Salad

The bread is the famous No-Knead Bread recipe that keeps making the rounds on blogs. This is the second time I've made it and it was much better than the first time. There weren't as many "holes" in the bread but I think it's because I added too much flour before the 2nd rise. Also I don't have the equipment called for (heavy oven pot) so I improvised with a loaf pan and foil which might account for the weird looking top crust. Regardless, the crust was awesome and the taste was incredible. I'm going to make this again until I perfect it!

Salad was washed and prepared by the boy. Who doesn't like fresh salad?

Lasagna is a regular request around here and if I do say so myself, I make a damn good vegan lasagna. I would share the recipe (made it up myself just by throwing in what I thought would be good and to taste -- it's perfected now) but then I'd have to kill you. The photo doesn't show all the layers that well. I was hungry and didn't want to take another one.

Pizza

Homemade non-yeasted crust with Follow Your Heart "cheese" and sliced "Seitan O' Greatness" that Deb brought me a little while ago. The tomato sauce was tomato paste slightly watered down with herbs and spices. Much better than using sauce.

Best fucking pizza I have had in years!

Sheese Please!

Sheese (medium cheddar flavour) with apple slices and crackers. Holy hell it tastes like cheddar! It was delicious... mmm.... sheese.

You can buy it from Pangea. It's not cheap, but worth it for a nice treat. I have 2 other flavours in the fridge (smoked cheddar and cheshire) just waiting to be eaten.

Gnocchi

Gnocchi with lots of garlic, asparagus and mushrooms tossed in olive oil and hot chili flakes.

BBQ Seitan "Ribz"

Finally tried the barbecued seitan "ribz" posted here. I decided not to improvise and do it as instructed and they turned out great! Had it with a side of corn and roasted potatoes. The BBQ sauce I used was Annie's brand. I used original flavour on half and smokey maple on the other half.

Next time I make it I'll improvise a little on the seasonings. Also I think I will first bake it covered in foil and a heavy glass dish on top so it has a more firm texture.

Cornmeal Encrusted Tofu

I finally tried Bryanna's "Breast of Tofu" recipe after eyeing it for the past few years in her various cookbooks.

After marinating the tofu for about an hour, I dipped it in seasoned cornmeal (cornmeal, salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika) and then fried it. I heated up the marinade and thickened with cornstarch for gravy.

We are low on groceries but I found some frozen corn in the freezer and I had 4 leftover biscuits from 2 dinners.

It was a delicious dinner and the cornmeal added a nice texture. If you haven't tried Bryanna's tofu marinade recipe, try it! It's very tasty and makes a good gravy.

Basic Biscuits

Here's the biscuit recipe for Deb. It's from the book Damn Tasty Vegan (go buy it and support indy publications) but I've added in my modifications.

Basic Biscuits

Dry:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (I just used regular whole wheat flour)
1 tsp salt (I used 3/4 tsp)
1 tbsp baking powder

Wet:

3/4 cup "milk" (I used unsweetened soy milk)
1/4 cup oil (I used canola)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1. Preheat oven to 425 F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, sift together all the dry ingredients (I didn't sift, just mixed it all in). In a medium bowl, mix the "milk" and vinegar and let sit for 2 minutes. Add oil to the wet mix and whisk quickly.

3. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until just combined. Drop into 6 large scoops on baking sheet at least 3 inches apart. (I mixed with my hands, then split the dough into 6ths, made a ball out of each 6th and flattened to about 3/4")

4. Bake for about 10 minutes until browned. (You can test the doneness by sticking a toothpick or sharp knife in the centre of one of them.)

And that's it! Slice in half and slather with earth balance. You could even throw some herbs and spices into the dough as well.

Vegetable Stew & Biscuits

Vegetable stew with TVP and homemade biscuits on the side.

I know it's hot here, but I wanted stew and biscuits so I made some!

Seitan & Gravy

Seitan & gravy with a side of broccoli and rice pilaf and peas.

The gluten flour was seasoned with vegetable stock, thyme, sage, garlic powder and onion powder. I also added some soy flour and soy milk into the mix and cooked it using the "seitan o' greatness" method of wrapping in foil and baking.

After it was done, I sliced into thick slices, pan fried in canola oil and then drenched it in gravy.

Spaghetti with Peas

We don't have a ton of food in the house right now (grocery shopping tomorrow) but I made too much spaghetti last night so for lunch I whipped this up.

It's spaghetti and peas tossed with earth balance, a little sour surpreme, garlic powder, black pepper, hot chili flakes and spike seasoning.

It was soooo yummy! I think I'll make this again for dinner.

TVP Fajitas

Fajitas with seasoned TVP strips, lettuce, salsa and sour supreme with yesterday's rice on the side.

I couldn't find any TVP strips or chunks around here so I had to mail order the TVP strips from The Mail Order Catalogue. Shipping was fairly cheap and pretty fast for regular ground USPS mail. Took about a week to get my order.

The tortillas are flour tortillas and they were HOME MADE... Yes, that's right. The only dough that I don't fuck up is dough for flour tortillas, or scallion pancakes... which pretty much is the same dough. It's really easy to work with.

2 cups flour with a bit of salt with 3/4 cups of boiling water. Mix and then knead, cover with plastic wrap, let sit for 30 minutes. Divide into 6 portions and roll out as thin as you can, dusting with flour as needed. Then cook on an UNoiled pan on medium high, about 1 minute on each side. That's it!

You can use this dough for a lot of things including pot sticker or wonton wrappers or even wheat noodles. Just roll out, cut out rounds or slice into noodles. It is seriously an easy dough to work with. I think it has a lot to do with the boiled water and the resting period so that the flour is completely hydrated before you start working with it.

Anyway, there are 2 leftover tortillas and a bunch of TVP so I think I'll have that for lunch tomorrow. Maybe instead of a fajita I'll have it "wrap" style with lettuce and vegenaise...

ETA: If you're making tortillas, keep the cooked tortillas on a plate covered with saran wrap or a damp cloth while you're cooking the other ones. It's so they don't dry out and get hard since you can pretty much only cook one at a time.

Tonight's Dinner

Clockwise from left: Smokey Corn with Dates, Rice with Beans, Corn & Tomatoes, Refried Beans and (messed up) Pupusas with sour supreme and salsa.

The corn thing was supposed to be the filling for empanditas (it's delicious by the way) but I fucked up the pastry so I just had it on the side. I also accidentally put in curry powder, but it still tasted good!

The pupusas didn't quite turn out like pupusas... I couldn't handle the dough well and ended up making them crescent shaped.

I should face the fact that I am no good (and lack the patience) with pastries or doughs!

It was a yummy dinner though.

Homemade Pizza

Whole wheat crust, tomato basil sauce, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, caramelised red onion, garlic, sun dried tomatoes and potato slices. The right one has Follow Your Heart "mozzarella" on it.

The one with the "cheese" looks a little gross. I also burned the bottom of the crust but it wasn't bad because I went into the livingroom for awhile and got distracted.

The boy enjoyed it (he said he did) but for some reason I'm always disappointed in my homemade pizzas.

Birthday Cake fit for a King...

Finally had time to try the King Cake recipe that I have been eyeing for some time. It was time-consuming but I think it turned out okay. Kind of tastes like a danish. The boy said it tasted just like how he remembered it when he lived in Louisiana.

We couldn't find gold or purple sprinkles so had to settle with red and green. One has a grape jelly filling and the other a cinnamon filling (above pic). I did end up putting too much filling though so it oozed out and made the inside of the cake kind of gooey.

It was fun to put together but I'm not sure I'd make it again.

Nasi Goreng

My sister and I were talking recently about an Indonesian restaurant in Toronto that closed down many years ago. I mentioned that I wanted to make Nasi Goreng one of these days so she sent me a link to this recipe. I ended up making it today for lunch since I had a few cups of leftover white rice in the fridge.

I didn't have tamarind so I subbed with a little orange juice, lemon juice and extra sugar. I threw in some chopped up leftover seitan from earlier in the week along with some peas and corn and cooked the tomato in it instead of using it as a garnish. And obviously I didn't use egg!

It was pretty good! I did add in extra soy sauce and some salt too. Next time though I'll only use half the curry called for and try and get tamarind paste.

Birthday Dinner

It's my boy's birthday today so I made him lasagna and a loaf of french bread for dinner. Tomorrow I will attempt to make him a birthday cake... I hope it turns out!

Happy birthday sweetie! *mwah* <3