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.

Sweet Potato Oatmeal Casserole: From "Oh She Glows"

This is a sweet potato oatmeal casserole from the vegan blog, "Oh She Glows". The recipe can be found HERE.

Basically, it's oatmeal with a cooked sweet potato and banana mashed in, then covered with a crunchy pecan topping and baked.

The only changes I made were: I used 1 cup coconut milk beverage from So Delicious and 1 cup soymilk. I didn't have chia seeds, so I used a little more oats.

Delicious breakfast for several days! I really like the blog "Oh She Glows" and found it in a round about way. Hopefully I will do more recipes from there in the future.

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 Shells

The best part about making Stuffed Manicotti is that we usually make a lot of it, so we have lots of leftovers. We had some jumbo pasta shells, so for the past couple days we have been making dishes of 2-3 shells filled with tofu pesto ricotta and covered with sauce.

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 Cinnamon Rolls!

Wow. I spent all day today making cinnamon rolls. I used a recipe from Vegan Yum Yum. Wow, it was a LOT of butter, almost too much, but that was the point. After studying a lot of different recipes on the internet, I decided that this one was a good place to start. It seemed the most like a butter-egg-dairy style recipe you might find from a bakery.

I learned a lot of lessons from this experiment that will help me with future baking, in particular with cinnamon or other rolls. I am excited to try to make a healthier version of these while still having similar taste.

In short, these were AMAZINGLY delicious. They are also AMAZINGLY high in calories, just like the ones made with animal products. They clock in at around 650 calories without any icing/frosting. Very indulgent.

Snobby Joes with Coleslaw

I've made vegan Sloppy Joes plenty of times, with "beef" crumbles, tvp, or lentils. However, I've never made it from scratch, I've always just used a can of Manwich. I finally decided it was time to just suck it up and make it from scratch. Well, that and I had a TON of lentils that I just barely burned a few of while trying to make the lentil meatballs yesterday.

I used an oldie but goodie from The Post Punk Kitchen, Snobby Joes.[link to recipe] Pretty straightforward. I didn't really modify anything other than using red and yellow small sweet peppers because I had a ton of those and no green bell pepper.

I served the mixture on Arnold's Multi-Grain Sandwich Thins along with spinach and a small bowl of coleslaw

The coleslaw was just a boring bag of shredded coleslaw, BUT with the awesomeness that is Organicville's Non-Dairy Coleslaw Dressing. I like it quite a bit as it hit the spot for my strange coleslaw craving of the past few weeks.

Here are more photos!

A closeup

Spaghetti-Nos with Mini Lentil Meatballs (From The PPK)

I have been dreaming about this recipe for the past month, ever since I saw it over on The Post Punk Kitchen. Finally, I could wait no longer and I gathered the last ingredients necessary to round out this recipe.

The idea of this is to veganize a classic from many people's childhood: Spaghetti-O's and meatballs. I served mine with strawberry Kool-Aid, as pictured above, to really bring home the kid meal feel.

I'm not going to re-post the recipe here, but you can see it over on The Post Punk Kitchen. The only big modifications I made was to substitute the oregano with thyme and mini wagon wheels as my pasta rather than the "traditional" Anellini style.

Short review, delicious! I would probably make the mini lentilballs even smaller next time, and I would really like to try the Anellini style pasta to see the difference. The mini wagon wheels were great, but they are also a little thick for these purposes.

But don't worry! I have plenty of pictures.

Here are two of my prep counter, complete with laptop on the site with the recipe. (The container that says couscous is actually holding the vital wheat gluten.)






And a couple pics of the mini lentilballs before cooking:




And one last closeup of the finished product:

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.

Roasted Asparagus with Whole Roasted Garlic Cloves

Simple recipe for spring to utilize the short window of asparagus season.

Pre-heat the oven to about 400 degrees while you prep the asparagus and garlic.

I like to cut just the ends off of asparagus and leave most of it in tact. Then I washed the spears, placing in a single layer on a baking sheet. I peeled one head of garlic and scattered the cloves throughout the asparagus. Drizzled olive oil and sea salt, mixing with my hands so everything was evenly coated. Pop in oven, 15-25 minutes until desired tenderness is reached.

Med. Breakfast: Hummus, Tabouli, Pita Chips

An unusual breakfast, sure. It is still delicious, any time of day. Pita Chips served with hummus and tabouli for dipping. Hummus is Sabra Brand with Pine Nuts. I like Sabra in any place I cannot find Holy Land.

I ate my breakfast with a mini-V8 (low sodium) and water.

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.

What's in the Pantry: Saturday Night Edition

There's nothing to eat! I hear and think that a lot. In truth, I have a lot of staples in my pantry and fridge/freezer and when pasta just won't cut it, the tried and true become the stars.

This Saturday's dish? I am calling it "Broc-Caul-Lentil Curry" - pretty much what it sounds like. I started with about half an onion diced (small-medium dice), 4 cloves fresh garlic minced, 4-5 cloves roasted garlic minced, 1/2 cup (dry) brown lentils cooked separately until tender, 1 (10oz?) bag of frozen broccoli and cauliflower, 10-12 pieces frozen pineapple, 1 can coconut milk, 1/2 can red curry paste, and some fresh ginger as well as some ground ginger.

Served over brown rice and wild rice. (I cooked wild rice while making this dish and already had brown rice ready to eat.)

So as stated above, I cooked some lentils separately with a veggie bouillon cube for flavor.

I diced and minced the onion and garlic, respectively. In a large saute pan, saute onion until tender, add a sprinkle of curry powder and some salt along with the roasted and fresh garlic. At this point I also shredded up some ginger and added that as well as some ground ginger. Stir lentils, perhaps add some more liquid to the lentils.

Next, I added to the large saute pan the bag of frozen broccoli and cauliflower. I added a little veggie broth that I had in the fridge to help steam the veggies. I added some frozen pineapple after a few minutes. I then added the can of coconut milk. The red curry paste I buy comes in cans the size of tuna fish cans, and it is REALLY spicy, so I added about 1/3-1/2 of the can of curry paste.

I dumped in the lentils, and stirred everything. Let cook until the pineapple and frozen veggies are heated through. Serve over rice of some kind. Orzo or cous cous would work too, or on it's own.

On's Thai Kitchen: Tofu Pad Thai and Mock Duck with Green Beans

On's is a new-ish Thai restaurant here in Saint Paul. It is a delicious addition to the Midway. The photos are blurry (sorry) because I took them quickly with my phone. Perhaps next time I will take more time and get a decent photo. Above is a dish that originally was supposed to be with pea pods, but they were out and subbed green beans instead. I had it with mock duck, and it was delicious.

Below, a blurry Tofu Pad Thai. Very delicious. We also had a fried tofu appetizer which was pretty good, the sauce is amazing. Mr. Coconut spoke with the owner, On, and she verified that everything is made from scratch so a large variety of the dishes are vegan-friendly by request. I am excited to continue going here and enjoying more delicious Thai meals.

Smoky Beans and Rice with Tortilla Chips

This has been a recent favorite of mine. Again, follows the theme of cheap, easy, and fairly simple.

Again, no real "recipe" here with accurate measurements. Once I make this a few more times, I'll get a solid measured recipe with it. I still have not worked out the spice to lime juice to smoky flavor ratio.

I used black beans in the above photo, but I've also used a mixture of black and pinto beans and mixed light and dark kidney beans. I always use brown rice, though surely white rice would work, just not as nutritious.

I use about half a large onion, diced; several cloves of garlic (3-4), minced; 2 cans of beans (the 15 oz style, or one of the larger cans or a bunch of cooked beans that I make from dry beans). Usually I like a fairly even ratio of beans to rice, about 2-3 cups of each, though I prefer a little more beans than rice.

I start by sauteing the onion in a little oil and adding the garlic. I shake on some cumin and salt, mixing well. Then I add the cooked beans, stirring well. I pour in some veggie broth and then shake a little of liquid smoke into the pot. Seriously, a little goes a LONG way.

I add a generous amount of rice, 2-3 cups, stir. I add more veggie broth, and simmer until the broth really gets absorbed into the beans and rice. (This will happen even more after it cools down, so it's okay if it seems like there is too much liquid when you turn off the heat.)

At this point, I have added lime juice, cilantro, hot sauce, or nothing. I have not perfected this yet, but I've gotten some tasty combination and ratios of all three add-ins. I've also added frozen corn. This goes great with salsa and chips, or just as a hearty lunch.

Penne Pasta with Kicked Up 'Meat' Sauce

I've been eating a lot of pasta lately: it's cheap and filling and easy to make. However, I can easily get in a rut with pasta. I love Newman's Own pasta sauce, but just red sauce and pasta can get old.

I thought for a bit how to kick up the red sauce I had in the house. After a moment or two, I came up with a plan and began. (No real measurements, but the next time I do this I'll get more specific.)

Ingredients:
1 jar Newman's Own Cabernet Marinara (or any red sauce you like)
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 med-large onion, small dice
.75c TVP (crumbles, dry)
1 can vegetable broth
fennel seeds (1T I think?)
salt
1/2 package fresh spinach


I started by sauteeing the onion and then the garlic. I added fennel seeds to the mix, to saute and toast them a little. I added some salt, then poured a little of the veggie broth in and let everything simmer for a minute or so. I added the jar of sauce, stirring everything together. I kept adding veggie broth to thin out the sauce and prevent the pre-seasoned red sauce from super-concentrating in flavor.

I added TVP, stirring and allowing it to hydrate in the sauce to soak up the flavors. I then added the spinach and turned off the heat, stirring until the spinach had adequately cooked in the sauce.

Pour over pasta of choice and enjoy!

Broccoli & Cauliflower with Baked Tofu in Curry Sauce

This was dinner earlier tonight.

Ingredients (roughly):
119g onion, small-fine dice
156g tofu (this was one 12oz package, weighed after baking)
1.5T curry powder
.75c frozen peas
1 package (16oz) of frozen broccoli and cauliflower
(comes to about 225g of broccoli, 225g cauliflower)
.13c ginger, minced
14g garlic, sliced thinly
1can (14oz) coconut milk
1/4can veggie broth
1T olive oil

Serve with:
Brown Rice or plain or noodles

1. I started this whole endeavor by cubing the tofu and setting onto a foiled and oiled pan. I used my toaster oven. Set at 350 degrees F, bake for 20 mins. Flip, then bake another 20 mins. I flipped one last time and baked another 20 mins, and it came to the perfect consistency (in my opinion)

2. Near the end of the second 20 minute baking of the tofu, I started dicing my onion and slicing my garlic. [This is where the ginger should be minced, but I forgot all about it until much later on.] I heated up a pan on the stove and poured about one tablespoon of olive oil. Check the tofu and flip and bake again as needed.

3. Put the onion in the pan, saute for a bit until onion is soft. Add garlic. [again, this is ideally where the ginger would be added, but I added it later because I forgot about it for a while.]

4. Add baked tofu cubes, saute in pan. Add curry powder, mix everything together well, then add some veggie broth to help the curry really get into the ingredients.

5. Add broccoli and cauliflower, adding veggie broth as needed to help cook the frozen vegetables.

6. Add coconut milk, stirring everything together. Add frozen peas.

7. Simmer until everything is cooked to your liking. Serve over brown rice.

Birthday 2010: Recap

My birthday was months ago, but here is a short recap on some of my fooding adventures on my holiday. First up, as pictured above, a piece of Chocolate Cake from My Local Co-Op, Mississippi Market. I really like picking up a couple pieces of this cake, that they always have available. It's delicious and simple and awesome with a glass of soymilk or almond milk.

Next up, Punch Pizza. It's my new favorite local pizza joint. Cheap, delicious food that is easily vegan and brings quality ingredients to the forefront. Plus, AMAZING freebies throughout the year via social networks. One of the smartest restaurants I've ever seen utilize Facebook, Twitter and a blog. First, the Punch Salad:


Mixed greens, pine nuts, balsamic vinegar. I believe the actual Punch Salad comes with prosciutto and cheese but vegan without those two. Focaccia comes with the salad and is also vegan.

Next, one of the "basic" pizzas, a margherita (crust, sauce, basil) with the dipping sauces of olive oil and balsamic vinegar for the crusts:



Truly awesome pizza with a truly smart company. These folks should be the business model for all restaurants.

Twenty Eleven: The Year of Baking

As the delicious looking (and tasting) Garlic Pull-Apart Roll can show, I finally crossed into baking. Awesomeness. I really started at the end of 2010, but it helped to kick start 2011 into a baking frenzy.

I started with white bread:



(I used THIS RECIPE to start off everything.)

I moved into the rolls, and eventually to a focaccia-white bread mix and finally into wheat bread. Super easy, super delicious.

My goal, hopefully by the end of February is to make cinnamon rolls.

Oh, and? I started making the infamous chickpea cutlets at least once a week since the end of December 2010. Delicious lunches -- I've enjoyed them the most served cold with an A-1 sauce or yellow/Dijon mustard.

Obviously this is the first post in several months. Part of my New Year's Resolution is to post more often. I have been cooking a lot more and hope to showcase more of my risks in cooking as well as a lot of my "typical" meals.