Birthday Explosion, Part 2 of 2: Food Trucks [Vegan MoFo]

[Give Beets a Chance: veggie dog from Magic Bus Cafe @ Food Truck Food Court.]

It's Vegan Mofo! AKA the Vegan Month of Food, an annual event of vegan food bloggers. I really wanted to sign up but failed to do so by the deadline. I am going to be participating anyway and hope to blog a lot this month. You can head on over to VeganMofo.com to find out more.

Today's post is the second part of my birthday explosion. I wanted more than anything to go to the various food trucks that have popped up all over Minneapolis/Saint Paul these past few years. On Wednesdays, there is a Food Truck Food Court in Saint Paul and I went there to check it all out.

We went first to the Magic Bus Cafe, a cool purple bus serving up veggie (and meat) dogs with various relishes and toppings. The one pictured at the top of this post is a dog with a beet and sauerkraut relish, the one below is a spicy dog with jalapeno relish. Sorry for the blurriness in these photos, it is incredibly difficult to take decent photos outside with my camera.



After chowing down on dogs, we hit up Gastrotruck and had two delicious black bean burger sliders.



Finally, we had to have dessert: cupcakes! These beauties were from Cupcake On The Go, the truck version of Cupcake. These were amazing and super-rich. Yummy! Fantastic birthday lunch.

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.

Baja Sol Express - Veggie Burrito Sol Bowl

I love Baja Sol because it has actual vegetables for veggie burritos and the hot salsa is fresh and HOT. They also have actual diced jalapenos rather than just pickled ones. While the burrito bowl is not the most photo-friendly food, it is quite tasty. This bowl features rice, black beans, vegetables (zucchini, red bell pepper, onion, yellow squash), lettuce, pico de gallo, guacamole, HOT salsa, fresh jalapenos and hot sauce. I also usually take a few lime wedges to add some zing.

Pizza Luce Brunch - Breakfast Burrito, Hashbrowns, "Cheese" Toast

Pizza Luce brunch, once again!



I finally had the breakfast burrito, which is the last vegan item on the brunch menu that I had not tried. It was very tasty! It's scrambled tofu with peppers, onions, black beans, veggie sausage and soy cheese wrapped in a tortilla and smothered in quinto sauce (tasted like enchilade sauce sort of) and pico de gallo and more soy cheese. It's served on top of jalapeño hashbrowns and a side of salsa. I also had a side of their awesome vegan hollandaise sauce because it's great with everything.

Axel ordered their vegan cheese toast with soy cheese (they use Follow Your Heart mozzarella) as well as jalapeño hashbrowns with a side of the vegan hollandaise.

Black Bean Burger Experiment Number One

This is my first time maing a veggie burger from scratch. It was tasty, but didn't hold together very well.

My recipe, made up:

386g black beans, drained and rinsed (I used one 25oz can, drained and rinsed)
83g onion, small dice
1 clove (7g) garlic, minced
2 jalapenos
1/2c hydrated TVP
1/4c salsa
1/2c frozen corn
3/4c cooked quinoa

spices:
taco seasoning, cumin, salt, pepper


1. hydrate the TVP in veggie broth or other flavorful broth.
2. Mash the can of drained beans in a bowl with a masher or fork or hands.
3. sautee onion, add cumin (1/2t?)
4. once onions start to brown, add garlic and salsa and frozen corn
5. after a minute or so, add TVP, mix thoroughly, add some taco seasoning and a little liquid. I only added a tiny bit of taco seasoning, and this recipe probably doesn't need any at all.
6. once mixture is thoroughly seasoned, turn off heat and add to bowl of beans.
7. mash/mix everything together.
8. add 3/4c quinoa, mix until it seems like a lot of the liquid is absorbed.
9. with a 1/3c as a scoop, make patties. Using the 1/3 measurement cup, you should get about 8 patties.
10. Fry up the patties, freeze the leftovers. Serve either on a bun or with chips and salsa, garnished with cilantro.

So....yeah, we'll see how they turn out after they have been frozen for a while. Maybe then they will stay together better. Or, I can just go back to the drawing board on this one.

Still tasty....here's one without chips:

Tofu Spinach Salad with Jalapenos, Cucucmbers, and Green Peppers

Here is a picture from sometime last week, a salad I made to take to work. It's made of a couple cups of baby spinach, sliced cucumbers, green peppers, jalapenos, and cubed tofu.

For the tofu, I used up more of the frozen then thawed tofu from the other day. I was keeping it in the cold water container, so I squeezed out the excess and cubed the tofu, 100g total, to put into a marinade. A note for the future: this tofu is extremely chewy, and I say the smaller the cubes the better. My cubes were a little too large.

Marinade
1T Olive Oil
2T Balsamic
splash of lemon juice
Splash of Bragg's
cracked black pepper
shake of red pepper flakes

Stir up the marinade, then add cubed tofu. It's crazy! The tofu is a sponge and all of the marinade should be able to soak into the tofu. I must say that there was something missing from the marinade. Maybe too much Bragg's and lemon? I'm not sure. It was tasty in the end, just a little tangy.

Once tofu has soaked up the marinade, sautée for ten or more minutes. It takes a while, and you may essentially burn some parts of the tofu. My aim was to get some crispiness, but it didn't really work.

Once tofu is done, cool down, then place in a container (I used a zip-top bag) in the fridge for the salad tomorrow. Note: This tofu would be fine warm, too, I just liked it cold on my salad. It's easier to keep things cold than warm.)

The salad amounts are as follows:

100g tofu, cubed and cooked after marinating
90g Green Pepper
100g cucumbers
10g jalapeno

I often don't like dressing, and for this salad I used only salt and pepper. It would probably benefit from a creamy dressing like Ranch. I lost my powdered vegan ranch which was the most amazing dressing and dip. However, they make quite a few creamy vegan dressings.

Also, this salad would be nice with some tomatoes or something to balance the other ingredients.