Clear Noodle Soup w. Mock Duck - Vegan Mofo 2013

Can you make me some soup? Mr. Coconut asks.

Sure.

"Soup" means one of three varieties of instant ramen or rice noodle soups in the pantry. Flip through the food we have in my head. I mentally mix and match flavors, textures, colors.

ginger garlic onion greens - will arugula work? - rice noodles peppers - jalapeno or Thai? - tofu mock duck what vegetables do we have soy sauce coconut oil hot sauce


Got it.

One can of mock duck - drain, rinse, tear into smaller pieces. Coconut oil to saute in a pan while water boils for the broth and noodles of this soup:




Spicy Thai chili peppers get tossed in with the mock duck, along with a good pour of soy sauce. Seasoning powder into the boiling water, along with the rice noodles. In the mock duck pot - a handful of kale and turn off the heat for both pots.

I ladle broth and noodles into the bowl, then place the greens and mock duck on top of the soup. Garnish with limes and cilantro.

CSA Stir-Fried Snap Peas [Vegan Mofo]

Day 12 of Vegan MoFo!

Green theme continues this week. Today, a pic of some snap peas stir-fried with soy sauce, hoisin, and toasted sesame oil. Simple and delicious! I went through a lot of green beans, snap peas and other beans/peas this summer from the CSA. I generally made them like these peas - sometimes with hot peppers and garlic added to the dish.

Mock Duck in Yellow Coconut Curry

Yum yum yum.  Just another easy-peasy curry.  One 15 oz can of coconut milk.  Some curry powder, veg broth = sauce done.

Mock duck fried up in a pan with soy sauce, garlic, hoisin, ginger, onion.  Broccoli and pineapple added, served over brown rice.

It only seems complicated because there are a few different parts to it, but really it's one of those simple "cook while watching TV" type of dishes that just satisfies and can leave leftovers for lunch tomorrow!  (Or breakfast.)

Curried Seitan Strips [Vegan Mofo]

Vegan Month of Food continues, and I need to pick up the pace!

This was from last week, another experiment with vital wheat gluten to see if I could make edible treats easily. Most recipes for seitan take an hour or more, but I like these quick and easy ways of frying them or baking them. I used the same techniques as my last seitan experiment 2 posts ago, but changed up the ingredients. I made a miso-soy sauce to add into the vital wheat gluten, a bunch of curry powder, some hoisin sauce, some soy sauce. Next time I think I will go for more miso because I couldn't really taste it, but these were still delicious.

I wound up baking these off as larger strips, like chicken fingers almost, and then cooling them and slicing into strips. I put them into a dish that I served with bean thread noodles, okra, & broccoli with a sauce of hoisin, soy, miso. It was really good. These reminded me of the steak/chik'n strips I buy once in a while, but WAY cheaper and kind of fun to make.

Here's a shot of the strips before going into the larger noodle dish:

Broccoli Fried Rice [Vegan Mofo]

Vegan Month of Food continues...

This is what I made on Sunday. I used up the rest of the brown rice we had, and sauteed it with onion, garlic, and mixed veggies. I also added broccoli to give it something more. It was tasty. I mixed in hoisin sauce, soy sauce, and sriracha.

Chik'n Style Seitan with Pasta

I thought about the seitan strips from yesterday all day and how I could improve or experiment with the flavors and seasonings. So I did.

Recipe:

dry ingredients
1c vital wheat gluten
3T nutritional yeast flakes
about .5-1t Old Bay Seasoning
a dash of Montreal steak seasoning

wet ingredients
.13c soy sauce/shoyu
.5c veg stock
.25c water
1T olive oil

Again, heat up oven to 375 degrees F. Mix dry ingredients and wet separately, then combine. Mix well until ball forms, then knead. I rolled into a cylindrical log, and sliced up as thin as I could. Lay onto lightly oiled cookie sheet and bake for 5-8 mins on one side, flip and then other side. I was getting impatient, so I wound up pan frying after baking to crisp up some of the pieces.

I served on penne pasta with organic strained tomatoes as my sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper.

Seitan Strips with 3 Sauces

I really wanted to make some sort of seitan since I had most of the ingredients. I was out of chickpeas, so no chickpea cutlets and in fact did not have any premade beans and didn't feel like making a batch of dry beans. I also did not want to wait over an hour for a giant seitan loaf/log.

What to do?

VegWeb to the rescue! I found THIS Recipe after a quick search for "easy seitan".

I modified it ever so slightly by grating in some garlic and adding a teaspoon of lemon juice. I sliced the glutenous log into strips and baked as directed, but a tad longer to get more crispy. Served with 3 sauces: "zesty" steak sauce (aka generic Heinz 57); generic A1; Ken Davis BBQ Sauce; and a soy sauce I made with grated garlic and some hot sauce stirred together.

Verdict: WOW. Easy, chewy, and pretty healthy. I've often fried up and eaten plain chik'n or steak-style strips. This is a fantastic alternative and I know what all the ingredients are. The add-ins could be endless for experimentation: add some tofu? some hot sauces, ginger, lime juice? Savory Italian style? BBQ for the grill?

Plus, given that I completely botched some brownies earlier today, this experiment turned out fantastic. I also made focaccia bread sometime between yesterday and today which turned out great, a little too dense, but still delicious. Just in case anyone thought I had given up on baking.

Homemade Bacon Bits

For the potato skins I made, I figured that they needed bacon bits. I've heard that Bac-Os(TM) are vegan (obviously check the ingredients as they can change and vary region to region), however I didn't really want to buy some. Instead, I decided to try my hand at making my own.

I bought some TVP, which I've used before in many dishes. I purchased it recently so I can give Taco Night another go.

I've made homemade tofu bacon before, so I just used those ingredients and applied them here.

I rehydrated 1/4c of TVP granules in about 1/4c of boiling water. Then I heated a pan up and poured about 1tsp of vegetable oil in it. I let the pan get very hot, then added the hydrated TVP.

Separately, I mixed together about 1/8c of soy sauce (use Kikkoman or better, no La Choy please!) with 1tsp of liquid smoke and a couple drops of Bragg's Liquid Aminos.

As the TVP fried up, I added the sauce mixture and continued to fry it until it crisped up a bit. Presto! Now you have some "bacon" bits to add to baked potatoes, salads, or any other dish you can come up with.

Baked Tofu with Spicy Green Beans, Broccoli, and Rice Noodles

This was an experimental tofu marinade made of rice vinegar, soy sauce, veggie stock, ginger, garlic, agave nectar, chili sauce, sesame oil and peanut oil (only a TINY bit because those are REALLY strong flavored oils).

I marinated the tofu in pieces for about an hour, then baked for quite some time (45 minutes?). I made the mistake of first baking in a glass dish, which does not get that nice texture that a sheet pan or metal pan gives. So I transferred to foil and a metal sheet pan until I was too impatient to wait longer.

While the tofu was baking, I made one of my favorite snacks ever: spicy green beans. Just sauté garlic and ginger with fresh haricot verts (the long skinny green beans). Make sure you take the tops off. It's easiest to take big bunches and just chop off both ends. I also split many of them in half for easier eating. Anyway, as you have the garlic and the ginger and beans going (in just the smallest amount of oil or just cooking spray) pour in chili sauce (like what I call "Chunky Sriracha") and soy sauce. Coat the beans with this mixture, and you're done! I like to keep the beans really crispy and just slightly cooked. Place in a bowl and eat with hands or chopsticks (or forks). Great appetizer, really healthy.

As a complete side note, I am quite picky about soy sauce. You should NEVER be using stuff like La Choy. Kikkoman is decent, but I highly recommend you get into shoyus. I've been in love with Organic Shoyu from San-J for years.

Also in this dish: rice noodles and steamed broccoli.

Vegetable Stir Fry: Mock Duck and Bean Thread Noodles with Broccoli

Another fairly simple stir fry. I love bean thread noodles as an alternative to rice noodles. They have a much more chewy texture, at least to me or the way I make them. The best part is that just like rice noodles, they are about a dollar for a pretty big bag.

I drained two cans of Mock Duck and pan-fried them with a lot of garlic, ginger paste, garlic chili sauce, and soy sauce. I also cooked up some frozen stir fry veggies: broccoli, snap peas, carrots, mushrooms, onions. Mixed together and promptly enjoyed.

Chin Chin Café - NYNY Casino in Las Vegas, NV

The Chin Chin Café is located inside the NYNY Casino and offers a very thorough menu which describes how any of the dishes can have soft or fried tofu in place of meat. They have a special vegetarian brown sauce and everything is made to order. Our waitress was excellent at investigating ingredients for certain sauces to make sure everything we ordered was fish and oyster sauce free.

Pictured above: fried veggie potstickers served with garlic soy sauce and chili sauce rather. We requested a special sauce since the usual sauce had fish or oyster sauce in it. Whew. Sorry to overuse the word "sauce."

First up, Peanut Noodles with fried tofu. The waitress told us all of the ingredients of the peanut sauce and it was very basic: peanut butter, soy sauce, chili sauce, oil, and one or two other things I can't remember but were definitely vegan.



A close up showing some of the tofu under the noodles:



Next, the Kung Pao dish with fried tofu. They altered the sauce a bit as the original has chicken broth or something in it. This dish features a TON of red bell peppers, peanuts and water chestnuts. Awesome.



Another photo, on my plate:



Chin Chin's is probably my favorite restaurant to eat at inside the casinos on the strip. Very accommodating and very tasty.

Homemade Tofu Bacon

This was an experiment. I enjoy the Fakin' Bacon from Lightlife, but those are about $4-5 for 5 long tempeh strips. Made at home with tofu, it came out to $3-4 for about one full pound of fakin' bacon.

I actually liked this stuff more than I thought I would. I just ate it all plain, but I could tell it would be great in a tomato and guacamole/avocado sandwich.

RECIPE
1 16 ounce package extra firm or firm tofu, water packed
2T Soy sauce (shoyu preferred, but regular soy sauce is ok.)
1t Liquid Smoke
2T Nutritional Yeast (optional)
1-3T oil, vegetable or another neutral oil (NOT sesame or peanut or olive)

1. Drain and press tofu.

2. Slice tofu into thin strips, similar to thick cut bacon.

3. Mix soy sauce and liquid smoke.

4. In a pan, heat vegetable oil and fry the tofu strips until crispy.

5. Remove from heat, then pour in the soy sauce/liquid smoke mixture.

--> okay, I need a larger pan, but I wound up making this mixture twice for my whole package of tofu. It was still good, but I love salt, so maybe this would end up being too salty for some people. In that case, mix a little water in the liquid smoke and soy sauce mix, and then pour half into the pan if you have a small pan like me and can only fit half the tofu in it.

6. Flip the tofu several times, making sure that both sides soak in the sauce. As the liquid disappears, you can add the nutritional yeast, again making sure both sides are coated. You could even mix the nutritional yeast in with the liquid before hand. The Nutritional yeast is not 100% necessary, but works out great.

7. Let tofu bacon rest on rack to drain and cool a little bit, eat and enjoy. Like I said, I only had it plain, but this would be great with breakfast or in a sandwich.

Illinois/Chicago Area: Stir Crazy in OakbrookTerrace

Stir Crazy is a restaurant I went to while in the suburbs of Chicago. It serves various Asian dishes as well as featuring a make your own stir fry.

I've been to a few of this style of restaurants, but I like this one the best so far for a few reasons. First, it's nice that they add your tofu (or other protein of your choosing) when they cook the ood so you don't have to take up space in your bowl that can be used for broccoli or other veggies. Second, they have brown rice as an option. Third, they were nice enough to offer up their complete list of sauce ingredients so we could figure out which ones were vegan or not.

First, the coconut curry vegetables served with tofu and udon noodles:



This was really tasty. The sauce was awesome and the tofu was really great.

Next, a make your own stirfry with lots of veggies, tofu, and brown rice:



Overall, I had a great experience there and was impressed by both the service and the food.