DDOW Raw Zucchini Noodles w. Tomato Sauce - Vegan Mofo 2013

Another week, another Delivered Dish!


You can check out other DDOW posts by clicking the tag below or here.


For today's dish, I am going to highlight the raw zucchini noodle dish. From the website:

Zucchini Linguine with Raw Tomato Sauce (V, Paleo, GF, soy-free, no added sugar) Carb-free pasta! Fresh sage and oregano flavor the simple sauce. Super low-cal.

I must say, other than this time last summer, I don't know if I ever really had zucchini noodles before. And that last time didn't count too much as I had the noodles with spaghetti. This dish was light, refreshing, and flavorful. Even though the yellos is what you can really see, which I assume is yellow squash, the green zucchini is definitely in the dish throughout. It came packaged with plum tomatoes throughout, as well as some basil and other herbs. This may inspire me to make zucchini noodles on my own!

Farmers Market Quinoa Salad - Vegan MoFo 2013

This was a dish made of a lot of fresh herbs and veggies from the farmers market, along with some quinoa. The veggies included: cucumbers, kale, peas, as well as mint and basil. The quinoa also had some olive oil in it. I added sliced almonds and some nooch at the end.

Great stuff!

Coconut Curry #321 - Vegan MoFo 2013

I know what you may be thinking, "really?! *another* coconut curry dish?"  It is true, this is one of my favorite go-to dishes.  I decided to lay off on posting this sort of dish unless I had something new to share.  Well, I do have some new things to share about the coconut curry dish I made a couple weeks ago.  

Most of the dish is fairly typical: mock duck, rice noodles, some green beans and Thai peppers.  The sauce even seems typical - coconut milk with yellow curry powder.  However, I really wanted to punch up the sauce so I took some time with it.  I crumbled in a veggie bouillon cube and at least .13-.25 cup  of fresh sliced jalapeños into it and let it simmer for a while to really get that flavor from the peppers.  I also added a bit more coriander powder and some lime juice.  Simple steps to vastly improve one of my favorite simple dishes of all time.  Of course, I don't always have all of those ingredients, but when I do, I will certainly be adding them again.  

CSA Pesto - Pasta and Vegetables [Vegan Mofo]

Day 9 of Vegan Month of Food and I am still going strong!

I look forward to this week - I have a slew of green-themed photos for the next several days. First up: pesto. This summer I have been swimming in pesto thanks to the CSA. I even tried making cilantro pesto (fantastic).

I am not sure if this a basil or cilantro-based pesto in the photo. I usually make my pesto with whatever greens (basil, cilantro, parsley - or a combo of all three), lots of garlic, walnuts and olive oil. I also use a little lemon juice and salt to finish it off. I made most of my pesto this summer in the Magic Bullet, a device I use several times a week and sometimes several times per day. I served this pesto with penne pasta mixed with zucchini and broccoli.

The broccoli, cilantro or basil, and zucchini were all from the CSA.

Caprese Salad with Daiya [Vegan Mofo - Bonus!]

That's right, a bonus second post for Vegan Month of Food Day One!
A beautiful caprese salad, made with slices ofjalapeno garlic havarti Daiya wedge.
Yeah, Daiya made a "hard" cheese. The wedges come in cheddar, jack, and the above-mentioned jalapeno garlic havarti flavors. The havarti tastes what I remember pepper jack cow cheese tasting like -- and that was one of my faves to eat on crackers or plain. So it was delightful to make the caprese salad with Daiya.

The tomatoes and basil are from the aforementioned CSA. I also drizzled a tiny bit of olive oil over the salad as well as fresh sea salt and fresh ground black pepper. I loved it, Mr. Coconut did not care for it. ("Too cheesy" was the complaint. Pfft.)

What is a CSA? Well, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it involves getting a weekly supply of produce from a local farm. I did a lot of research and chose a farm that had a drop-off site near me. It's been fantastic getting fresh, organic produce every week since June 8th. (The season of my farm goes through most of, maybe all of, October.) I'll be talking more about CSAs and specific details of my experience with it. (Spoiler alert: I'd like to do it again next year.)

One more photo:

Open-Face Sandwich: Cashew Cheese, Tomatoes, and Basil

I've been experimenting with nut cheese lately. I wasn't able to get raw cashews, which I know may affect the taste and texture. I've been experimenting with roasted unsalted cashews, soaked and blended. The first time around, I added sundried tomatoes, salt, lemon juice, water and garlic. My errors? Too much garlic, a little too much salt, kind of bleh. This time? 1 clove of garlic, a touch of sea salt, a little water, some nutritional yeast, and a touch of liquid smoke. Not bad. I am not in love with the texture - it's like hummus but weird, but not bad. Hard to explain.

Mr. Coconut has not tasted any of it yet, it's far too much into it's infancy to be worth giving to others yet. I like it, it's not bad. But I've had amazing raw nut cheese before, and this is not it yet.

With all that negativity, I liked this sandwich. It was delicious. I also tried the "cheese" with some pasta. Again, I need to get the texture to a better consistency. Maybe in the Magic Bullet as opposed to my tiny food processor would get it there.

Pesto Chicken Sandwich: Leftovers Day 3

What else can be done with leftover ingredients from Stuffed Manicotti?

Sandwiches! The sandwich above consists of 1 Morningstar Chik'n Griller, a schmear of pesto tofu ricotta, and some tomato bruschetta mix. The bread is Arnold's brand. I've been a fan of their sandwich thins, and now they have flat/skinny hot dog "buns" called fill 'ems. They aren't on their website yet, but Wegman's has it up on their site, here.

Stuffed Manicotti Dinner

Mr. Coconut and I cooked a tasty Italian-style dinner for Mr. Coconut's Grandparents. We decided to make one of our favorite meals, Stuffed Manicotti, which I've blogged about before.

I made some focaccia-style bread and some bruschetta mix to go with it. We made some sauce from a combination of some canned whole peeled tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil, oregano, tomato paste, and basil. The star of the show, though, is the pesto tofu ricotta. A blend of basil, garlic, olive oil and walnuts for pesto; mixed with extra firm tofu. We stuffed that into cooked manicotti and then spooned sauce over the top and baked it to heat through everything.

We served the meal with a salad of greens, onions, snap peas, and pepitas (pumpkin seeds toasted and salted).

A Close-up of the meal:

Vegan Pho With Tofu and Garnishes

Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup consisting of a very flavorful broth usually made from beef. Thanks to a generous co-worker who provided me with a recipe and some ingredients, I made a vegan version.

A quick note: I didn't have a lot of whole spices, so I subbed ground. I would not necessarily recommend this but it still worked out great.

Recipe: Reposted from Food.com, with some changes in directions by me as well as substitutes in bold and italics
BROTH
1 small unpeeled onion, quartered -- I used an onion that was about 91g
2 unpeeled shallots, halved
8 garlic cloves, halved -- I peeled these even though the recipe didn't specify
Ginger, coarsely sliced -- I wound up using about 1/8 of ground ginger because I did not have fresh ginger. I would recommend 1 inch of fresh ginger.
2 [3 inch] cinnamon sticks -- Again, I only had ground, so I used 1t ground cinnamon
2 star anise pods -- I subbed 1t ground star anise
4 cloves -- I subbed 1t ground cloves
8c clear veg stock
3T Soy Sauce
salt, to taste

SOUP:
1lb Rice Noodles
8oz fried tofu or cooked seitan
6 scallions, thinly sliced
1.5c bean sprouts
1 lime, sliced into wedges
basil or mint or cilantro (or all of them); a big handful left whole
hoisin sauce, to taste
sriracha chili sauce, to taste

1. In a large pot, heat to medium-high heat and dry roast onion, shallots, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, star anise, and cloves. Stir occasionally until vegetables begin to char. I would recommend leaving the spices out until the vegetables start to char and then adding the spices in. I burned a few spices before the vegetables could char, but the broth still tasted great in the end. Prep the other vegetables/garnishes during this time as well.

2. Add the veg stock and soy sauce, bring to boil. Then lower heat to simmer, cover for 20-25 minutes. Start another pot boiling to cook the rice noodles.

3. Strain broth into a clean pot and discard the solids. Taste and add salt if necessary, set aside. Check noodles and drain them, rinsing thoroughly. Make a plate for the garnishes. I set mine up into little bowls for some items and larger items just on a plate, like bean noodles and chopped bok choy.

4. Put noodles into bowls; ladle the broth over the noodles. Garnish as you see fit. Enjoy.

The broth is the key along with a bunch of garnishes to really punch up the flavors. Fresh herbs and bean sprouts along with lime juice and soy sauce makes for a fantastic meal. I also added some fried tofu, but mock duck or other faux meats would work great as well.

Above is a photo of my garnish plate: bean sprouts, sliced jalapenos, cilantro, scallions, basil, and chopped bok choy are the ones I had around.

Below is my soup bowl, fixed up with everything. Rice noodles [I used larger flat rice noodles rather than the vermicelli style I usually get] with the broth ladled over it and then I topped mine with sautéed mushrooms, fried tofu, and all of the fixin's from the garnish plate along with some lime juice and shoyu.

Breakfast: Pizza Lucé Brunch

WOW! This is from Pizza Lucé's Brunch: Portabello Florentine, basically Vegan "eggs" benedict. English Muffins, spread with olive tapenade, stacked with sautéed spinach, mushrooms, and finally topped with vegan hollandaise sauce!!! Hashbrowns are underneath all of this, and everything is garnished with sundried tomatoes and basil.

So tasty! I'm very addicted to the hollandaise sauce.

We also got a medium pizza with mock duck and "rinotta," which is basically soaked cashews blended with garlic and other spices made into a "cheese." Also very tasty.