Step-By-Step Seitan

I've been wanting to make homemade seitan for a while, ever since I took Psalm Lewis' wonderful cooking class. At that workshop, we made vegan pot pie with seitan made from scratch--it's not difficult, and with all the ingredients on hand you can have a nice and reliable protein source for cheap. This morning I bought some vital wheat gluten and other essentials and followed Psalm's recipe:

Ingredients

Step 1:
1 cup vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
 2 tsp baharat (I did that in lieu of poultry seasoning, but I imagine anything meatlike would do)
1 tsp mashed garlic (the original recipe calls for garlic powder)
1 tsp paprika
3/4 cup cooked and mashed beans (I used black-eyed peas, which is what I had around the house)
1 tbsp Bragg's liquid aminos

Step 2:
broth or bouillion or dried vegetables

I measured and mixed the dry ingredients, then added the wet ingredients, and kneaded them into a ball--actually, more of a loaf shape--which I then left to rest for 15 minutes.

I then made some broth, placed the loaf in it wrapped in cheesecloth, and let that simmer for 30 minutes.

Then, I let the content of the pot cool somewhat before taking the seitan out of it.

I let the seitan cool completely before slicing it into 1/4-inch cubes, some of which I froze and some placed in the fridge for immediate use. Yum!

Update: Here are some of the seitan chunks in a nice tomato-based ragu. It came out absolutely delicious.

Collard Pesto and Caprese

To your left is a nice, summery Italian meal: pasta with a Pesto of Hidden Value and magical caprese. All of this is vegan, with a helpful hand from Miyoko's Kitchen!

First, the clandestine pesto. I added an entire giant bunch of raw collard greens to the classic recipe, to which it adds some intense green color and a bit of flavor. It's the newest addition to my old bag of tricks--I try to add leafy greens to everything I make, partly because of their fabulous calcium content--and pesto is the ideal delivery vehicle for it.

To make this marvel, you'll need:

1 bunch collard greens
4 large garlic cloves
3 tbsp pine nuts
1 cup basil leaves
olive oil (in a bottle that allows drizzling)
salt
a dollop of Miyoko's Kitchen Double Cream Chive

Cut collard greens into ribbons and place in food processor. Process until very thinly chopped. Add garlic, pine nuts, and basil, and continue processing; slowly drizzle olive oil from the top as you're processing everything else until it reaches a consistency you like. Add a few small chunks of Miyoko's Kitchen cheese, if you like, and continue processing until more or less homogenous. Mix with pasta and serve.

Second, the caprese: this salad was one of the grand loves of my pre-vegan life, and today a marvelous thing happened: I received my shipment of Miyoko's buffalo-style vegan mozarella. We had a giant heirloom tomato lying about, so I sliced it, placed a piece of mozarella on each slice, and decorated each with a basil leaf.

Now that I've eaten this salad I can happily say that veganism does not entail even a shred of sacrifice, and all my culinary pleasures are well satisfied without cruelty. Thank you, Miyoko!

Summer Hosting: Stuffed Mushrooms and Eggless Salad

Sunday Streets, a city-organized block party occurring in a different neighborhood every month, was in the Excelsior today. Salsa and rock bands, booths, food trucks, and lots and lots of happy people on bicycles.

On a whim, we sent out an email inviting friends over for an open house today, so I made some cool snacks: it's always good to serve some cherry tomatoes, carrot sticks, and blanched green beans, and I had a winter truffle cheese from Miyoko's Kitchen. I also roasted an eggplant and served two fun inventions:

Eggless Salad

1 block extra-firm tofu
1.5 tbsp Just Mayo or Vegenaise
2 tbsp good quality brown mustard
about an inch off a leek, just the white part
1 large dill pickle
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp chana masala/garam masala powder
salt and pepper to taste

Mix mayo and vegenaise in a mixing bowl. Slice leeks very finely, then cut through to obtain thin strips. Cut pickle into small cubes.

Crumble entire block of tofu into bowl. Add leeks and pickle and mix well. Season to taste and keep refrigerated.

Stuffed Mushrooms

20 white or brown champignon mushrooms
1-2 tbsp Bragg's Liquid Aminos
2 tbsp parsley
3 onion cloves
2 tbsp strained tomatoes
1 vegan sausage (I like using Field Roast)

Carefully remove stems from all mushrooms. Place stemmed mushrooms on a tray and sprinkle Bragg's Liquid Aminos on top. Slice sausage into twenty discs and place one in the hollow of each mushroom. Finely chop the stems, parsley, and garlic, and mix with strained tomatoes. Spoon a bit of the mix on top of the sausage in each mushroom and bake for about 30-45 mins or as long as you like until the tops are browned.

Fantasy Vegan Cookbooks: Perfect Photos, Perfect People, Perfect Food

Right after polishing off a plate of veg, bean, and potato salad, I realized something interesting: I was inspired to make these very simple dishes after spending last night gushing over Rich Roll and Julie Piatt's The Plantpower Way. Is it just me, or have vegan cookbooks massively improved in production, photography, and design recently?

Fancy cookbooks are all over the place; our local cookbook store, Omnivore Books,  has tons of gorgeous exemplars. But I think that in vegan cuisine this trend is a conscious effort to counter an opinion that may still prevail among some meat eaters--namely, that veganism is ascetic, joyless and prohibitive, and that we don't enjoy our food. Which is why I'm noticing beautifully-photographed and conceptualized books devoted to the pleasures of veganism.

The Plantpower Way is a classic example. It's essentially a coffee-table cookbook full of pictures of Rich Roll, the lawyer-turned-ultra-athlete, and his very good looking family (gorgeous yogini wife and four exceedingly handsome teenagers.) The book is so saturated with images of these folks' beautiful house, great clothes, and fantastic food, that it gave me the uncomfortable feeling that these folks' happy family life is a sex scandal waiting to happen. :) If you have a cynical bone in your body, you have to ask yourself whether these folks are always as happy and brimming with vitality as they are in the photos (and whether collaborating with their teenagers on such a nutritious diet is always successful). But if you are willing to suspend your disbelief a bit and engage in the fantasy lifestyle of the Rich and Famous, these folks are the poster children for happy, healthy vegans. The recipes are also pretty great, and despite the elaborate photographic appeal not all that cumbersome, if you have a good blender and food processor. The text is all about optimizing nutrition, throwing greens in whenever possible, and other principles--occasionally it veers into not-uncommon hooey about "food vibrations"--but the recipes themselves seem very tasty. Even though the book admonishes us to make our blends (smoothies) more about vegetables than fruit, and to eschew the nut milks, the recipes themselves don't feel masochistically healthy, have a healthy share of fruit and other yummy ingredients, and there's a whole chapter on latte coffees and teas that features abundant nut milks. I should mention that these folks have a mysterious aversion to onions and garlic, presumably to make their meals more palatable to kids, but I grew up eating tons of onions and garlic in the Middle East as a kid and am surrounded by children who love both. But what do I know? Your pleasure in this book depends on how fantasy-prone you are, or on how much you're willing to "live with your imperfections" (as these perfect folks instruct us) and enjoy the recipes without turning green with envy at the time and resources that make this diet possible.

The Plantpower Way is not the first exemplar of this trend, of course. One of the first cookbooks I bought last year was Pure Vegan, which does not feature fancy characters but does have luxurious, hedonistic recipes. The sweets and desserts section is particularly marvelous, and I've made the olive oil and pistachio cake from this book with great success (even neater if you bake it in a bundt pan!). On the health-hedonism spectrum, I'd say this book falls toward the latter end. Some of the recipes are elaborate and involved, but some only seem so because of the gorgeous photography. There's not a ton of information here, but it is certainly an inspiringly beautiful book that I like to leaf through when I plan a party or something of that ilk.

Then, of course, there's The Oh She Glows Cookbook, which evolved from the famously beloved blog of the same name. As with the Plantpower Way, the book features beautiful people living in a beautiful home, exquisitely photographed cooking and enjoying beautiful food (according to the blog, there's now a baby in the mix, also!). This one also promises to be fairly hedonistic, and there's a good mix between elaborate and simple recipes. There are also some practical make-ahead solutions, which are far less fancy-schmancy in terms of preparation than the excellent photography would suggest. And again, the sweets and desserts section is interesting and useful, at least to those of us that still indulge in added sugars once in a while.

Finally, no round-up of fantasy vegan publications is complete without Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet and her lifestyle blog, The Kind Life. This book is an intro to veganism, full of thoughts from Silverstone, who talks about being a celebrity invested in a cause that is near and dear to her heart. There are some photos (beautiful people, beautiful home, beautiful food...) but the recipes are not a big part of it. It's more of an introductory text for folks for whom Silverstone might open the door to compassionate eating and living. The website is full of sweets, baked goods, and hedonistic recreations of non-vegan foods--made with healthy ingredients and sometimes credited to other vegan cooks. A nice transition, perhaps, for new vegans.

I enjoy these books mostly as visual inspiration, but I find the humorous and down-to-earth work of Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and the practicality and pioneering inventiveness of Miyoko Schinner, more useful on an everyday basis. And, of course, my beloved classic by Phyllis Glazer is at this point the foundation of my cooking style. I'm probably going to continue inventing my own recipes, but looking at the pretty photos for inspiration and presentation.

Three Simple Salads

I woke up in the mood for something simple and nostalgic for lunch and dinner. My grandma and I talk on the phone every day, and her stories about her family reminded me of the salads she used to make for us when I was little. They are a mix of Russian and Egyptian cuisine, simple and flavorful.

The bottom 50% of the plate is filled with a simple vegetable salad with romaine, raw zucchini matchsticks, cherry tomatoes, red onions, parsley, and a very simple dressing: 1tsp mustard and 1tsp apple juice (I made an enormous bowl and ate it all up; this is just the remainder).

In the top right corner is a bean salad, made from the leftover Christmas lima beans:

1/2 onion, thinly sliced
3 cups cooked beans
olive oil
salt and pepper

Caramelize the onion in a bit of olive oil. Meanwhile, place the three-or-so cups of leftover cooked beans, with a tablespoon of olive oil, into the food processor. Add salt and pepper. After processing it for a few moments, add half of the caramelized onions and process again to the desired consistency (I like it a bit chunky), and finally mix it with the remaining onions and placed in the fridge.

And in the top left corner is a quick potato salad. I'm not as pro-potato as I was when my metabolism was faster, but I still like it a lot, so this is a special treat.

4 medium-sized potatoes
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
big handful parsley
big handful other herbs (chives, green onion, oregano, thyme)
3 dill pickles
1 tbsp Just Mayo or Vegenaise
salt and pepper to taste

Microwave, bake, steam, or boil the potatoes until soft, then dice them up (my grandma always peeled them, but I never do). Place in a mixing bowl and add a very thinly sliced 1/2 onion, and the thinly sliced parsley and other herbs. Add the pickles, thinly diced, and mix with vegenaise, salt and pepper.

Orzo with Vegetables

When I was a kid, one of my favorite comfort foods was "ptitim", otherwise known as orzo or by the misleading name "Israeli couscous". This short and springy wheat pasta is unrelated to the original semolina couscous, and actually has an interesting recession-era history. In the 1950s, during the age of austerity in Israel, Prime Minister David Ben Guryon ordered the Osem factory to come up with a cheap alternative to rice. Ptitim came to be known as "Ben Guryon rice." They are now manufactured in various shapes.

Here, sometimes people cook them like pasta--boiling in a lot of water, then draining--but that's not the best method, I think. This basic recipe is pretty easy, but today I dressed it up with lots of wonderful vegetables straight out of our CSA box. Here's what I made:

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
3 carrots (I used one purple, one orange, and one pale yellow)
1 summer squash
5 mushrooms
1 cup whole grain orzo
1 cup boiling water
1 tbsp blackened rub
1 handful fresh parsley

Heat olive oil in a small pot (and keep the lid nearby). Thinly chop carrots, onion, squash, and slice mushrooms. Saute onions until translucent, then add other vegetables and orzo. Cook in olive oil for about 2-3 minutes, or until the orzo begins to be a bit golden. Then, add the water and the blackened rub, lower the heat and cover the pot. Cook for about 10-15 minutes or until all water is absorbed; if water is absorbed and orzo is still a bit too al-dente-ish for you, add more water and cook a few more minutes. When all water is absorbed, fluff up with a fork, then put the lid back on for a couple of minutes. Serve with fresh parsley sprinkled on top.

Christmas Lima Beans

This evening we ate Christmas Lima Beans, toasted with lemon juice and massaged kale (with olive oil) and lightly seasoned with a teaspoon of Pike Market dipping herbs. We also had a large platter of crudités with tahini and sliced, roasted potatoes.

The reason I mention this very simple but delicious meal is that I keep encountering vegan cookbooks that call for super complicated dishes that try to recreate, in a healthy/compassionate form, convenience food with animal ingredients. It's nice to eat that way once in a while--I made the mac-and-cheese pretty recently and it was yummy--but the bottom line is that, regardless of your eating regime, eating more simply and relying mostly on vegetables and fruit is a good idea.

I also mention this because there are many, many kinds of interesting and delicious beans in the world, and they are so flavorful that they don't require much fuss to make a good meal.

Terrific Vegetable Soup

I just made a big pot of wonderful vegetable soup. For some reason, the combination of vegetables yielded a gentle, fragrant soup, perfect for a cold day.

2 leeks
4 Celery Stalks
2 large zucchini
8 mushrooms (I used brown cap mushrooms)
2 medium-sized potatoes
2 tbsp hawayej mix
2 tbsp dried, ground vegetables

Slice everything thinly, cover with water, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 45 mins or longer.

Stunningly Wonderful Carrot Soup

I've just made a simple and marvelous carrot soup! I'm not usually fond of pureed soups, but I had fresh organic carrots and coconut milk and this turned out to be a rousing success. Here goes:

5-6 carrots
1/2 onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp baharat
1 tsp cumin
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup water or broth

Heat olive oil in smallish pot and add onion, garlic, ginger, baharat, and cumin. Sautee for a few minutes until fragrant. Add carrots, water, and coconut milk. Cook for 10 mins, or until carrots are soft. Puree the entire thing in the blender and eat. Enough for two big bowls or four little ones.

Just for a few days! Casa Corazones blog

Just for the next three days, I'll be blogging about the comings and goings of robins and other small birds on the electrical cables around my backyard. Enjoy!

Middle Eastern Summer Dinner

Our friend Daniel is staying with us for a couple of days, and we were very happy to host him and his son for dinner. It was a nice summery affair--corn on the cob, roasted eggplant with tahini, salad, green beans in tomato sauce, whole wheat pita and hummus--and it was quickly gobbled up before I had a chance to take a photo.

A few fun tips:

• After lightly cooking fresh corn on the cob, it's nice to give it a rub with a bit of vegan butter (thank you, Miyoko Schinner!) and Dipping Herbs. 
• Take a big eggplant. Use a knife to make about ten slits in it, and stick half a garlic clove (sliced lengthwise) in each slit. Wrap in foil and bake for 45 mins. The garlic melts inside the eggplant and lends it an amazing flavor. Slice lengthwise and serve whole with tahini on top or on the side. The guests scrape out the eggplant goodness.
• The wonderful spicy tomato sauce used in khreimeh (a Libyan fish dish) can be used to sautee green beans. Lots of taste, none of the suffering.

Vegan Mac-n-Cheese

I was craving something creamy and delicious this evening and settled on a vegan version of mac-n-cheese. This is not my recipe; I made it using Isa Chandra Moskowitz's classic recipe.

A couple of small substitutions: the pasta is Tolerant lentil pasta (boosting the protein component of the meal) and the seasoning, rather than standard pizza seasoning, is Pike Place dipping herbs. I didn't sautee the onion and garlic in oil before adding to the blender (I'm sure it would have improved the sauce, though not by much, as it was damn tasty as it was). Other than that, the recipe's there and I can attest that the results are, indeed, comforting, creamy, and fantastic.

Squash-Kasha Patties

Still living off the soaked kasha from two days ago! Today, I mixed about a cup of it with a cup of pureed butternut squash, added some herbs and flavorings and grilled patties made of the mixture. It was very tasty, especially served atop mixed sautéed leafy greens, but didn't have as  much of a cohesive structure as I'd hoped. I'll had to add some chia in water next time I make patties.

What with this, the flax crackers, and the lovely vegetable broth slowly brewing in the slow-cooker (from all the stems and ends of the vegetables I used today), I think I'm good, foodwise, for a few days.

Flax Crackers

To the left: an image of the very first batch of (oddly shaped) flax crackers, made in my new Excalibur dehydrator.

I used to eat these quite a bit after falling in love with them at Cafe Gratitude; they made theirs with grated carrots and whole flax seeds. Then, I bought ready-made varieties, but their prohibitive price made them something to be enjoyed on an infrequent basis. But, as it turns out, I have a huge bag of ground flax in the freezer, and the equipment necessary to make it into a tasty batch, so I set out to make some.

There's really nothing to it: you mix the flax with water until you get something that has the consistency of yogurt. You let it sit for a few moments, during which the mixture thickens a bit, add seasonings (I threw in a generous handful of blackened cajun seasoning) and, using a rubber spatula, smooth it over a dehydrator tray (or three) until it's a fairly thin layer (I'd say, about the thickness of two flax seeds.) I left mine working overnight, and was pleased to have a ready-made batch in the morning; just ate two of them and they are delicious.

I bet the following varieties would also be fabulous, but haven't tried yet:

• grated carrots (Cafe Gratitude style), possibly with curry or masala seasoning
• with a hefty spoonful of tomato puree, a bit of thinly chopped garlic, and some dried basil or oregano
• with thinly chopped onions, parsley, and sumac

For lunch, I plan to have squash-kasha patties served atop sauteed collard greens. Good times!

Adventures in Fruit Rolls

The curious object in my hand is a fruit roll piece made of strawberries, mango, and melons, with a generous addition of ground flax seeds. I used to love eating fruit rolls, or as we called them, "fruit leather", as a kid, and started incorporating them into my feedings as I started swimming long distances in open water: they were flat and easy to pack, and delivered a satisfying sweet jolt. I typically bought the ones with no sugar added, but they came in a fairly limited assortment of flavors; imagine my joy when I figured out I could make some of my own using my new Excalibur dehydrator (buy directly from the factory: they have some great deals.)

This is my second attempt so far, and it has been a partial success. I put ripe strawberries, mango, and melon pieces in the blender with some lemon juice, because I remembered that pectin was an important ingredient in many commercial leathers. I added flax seeds and pureed the mixture. Then, I spilled it over my silicone mats and shook them a bit to guarantee an even spread, and started the dehydrator at 135 Fahrenheit. After about six hours I got what you see here. I suspect that a thicker layer would be more flexible and less brittle, but would take longer to dry; I'll try that next time. But I should point out that even the mistakes are tasty, and I plan to continue experimenting.

The thing also makes fabulous banana and strawberry chips, and I plan to use it to make seed crackers soon.

Kasha with Greens, Squash, and Mushrooms

I just found out something amazing! You can soak kasha (buckwheat) in water, and the result is just as tasty as cooked kasha.

It was the result of a happy accident; I intended to soak it for just a couple of hours, but forgot it in the soaking pot for a day and a half. Ah, well, I thought - I'll just cook it up. But then I tasted a couple of kernels and realized it didn't really need any cooking - just a quick turn in the pan that already had a stir-fry from yesterday in it.

Chad had made himself a dinner of greens, squash, and mushrooms, and ate it (probably) over pasta. I got about 8 leaves of young chard, and a handful of spinach, from our garden, threw it in there with the stir fry, and added a few handfuls of kasha. The result was extremely tasty, and improved with a generous sprinkling of nutritional yeast while cooking, as well as a tiny bit of truffle salt.

Chard from the Garden!

These are two or three chard plants from our garden, fresh and ready to eat!

I stir-fried them with tofu, garlic, ginger, coconut aminos, and sriracha, and served the whole thing over rice noodles. There's nothing like eating vegetables straight from the garden.

We have great plans: tomatoes of four kinds, cucumbers, okra, and herbs. So far, the tomato plants seem to be doing fine. I hope there's lots and lots of fruit, because I just got an Excalibur Dehydrator and I plan to dry lots for the winter season.

Mini Pita Sliders

We had lovely guests over the weekend, and yesterday I made a Mexican brunch for them that included short-grain brown rice and Rancho Gordo pinto beans. This morning, as an airport sendoff, I used some of the leftover grains and beans to make them travel sandwiches, and there was enough to make a tasty breakfast for us, too. 

Serves four:

1 cup brown rice, cooked
1 cup pinto beans, cooked
1/2 white onion
1 tsp olive oil
4-5 drops liquid smoke
1 tsp coconut aminos
1 tsp nutritional yeast
2 whole-wheat pitas
2 tbsp tahini or vegenaise
vegetables and herbs according to taste (I used some of yesterday's pico de gallo and cilantro)

Chop onion finely and brown in olive oil. As the onion is browning, in a mixing bowl, mash together brown rice and beans. Add onions to rice and bean mixture. Add liquid smoke, aminos, and nutritional yeast.

Make eight small balls out of the mixture and place in hot pan. Flatten the balls with wooden spoon. Brown 5 minutes, then flip and brown other side for 5 minutes.

Cut each pita into quarters. Coat insides with tahini. Place a burger in each quarter, then garnish with vegetables and herbs.

Bon Appetit!

Spring Stir-Fry

This simple and delicate dish combines many spring flavors and uses vegetables from our CSA and rosemary from our garden.

6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 tbsp safflower oil
3 green onion stalks, thinly sliced
1 pound green beans, with the ends trimmed
3 summer squashes, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 cups chickpeas, cooked
3 twigs rosemary
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp lemony pepper
2/3 cup white wine

Heat up safflower oil in a wok. Add garlic, ginger, and green onions, and simmer a bit. Then, add green beans, squashes, and chick peas, and stir fry for a few minutes. add herbs and wine, cover wok, and cook for 10-15 mins, or until wine is absorbed and beans are cooked but perky.

Leek Fritters

It's Passover Eve! Hurrah! And we are invited to celebrate this holiday of spring, freedom, and questionable historical existence, with our good friends of 15 years from the East Bay!

Our friends are having the entire meal catered, and we were told not to worry about food. But I assume most of the invitees are not vegan. On one hand, I don't like disrupting other people's plans for the meal; on the other, I don't want to just bring clandestine tofu blocks for the two of us and ignore everyone else around the table. Also, in the off-chance that anyone around the table eats kosher under the Ashkenazi rules, I don't want to flood the table with soy or other beans. I've come up with two solutions and I plan to do both!

Solution 1: bringing a "cheese plate" of Miyoko's Cheeses. YEAH!

Solution 2: making amazing leak fritters!

Ori Shavit's wonderful blog is full of terrific vegan recipes, with an entire section devoted to Passover that I'm sure I'll be using for years to come. I used her leek latkes recipe with a few minor substitutions. For non-Hebrew readers, it's as follows:

5 leeks, white and light green parts
4 tbsp matzo flour
1 large onion
4 garlic cloves
1 large fistful parsley
1 large fistful cilantro (I substituted oregano and sage)
celery leaves from 5 stalks
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp Hawaiiej  (I have the real deal, but you can substitute with cumin and cardamom)
safflower oil and potato flour for frying

Cut each leek into three pieces. Place in a pot, cover with water, boil and simmer for 10 mins. Drain.
Then, place cooked leeks and all other ingredients into food processor and process until smooth.
Heat safflower oil in a large pan.
Place spoonfuls of the mix into the pan (you can dip them in potato flour to assist the frying) and fry a few minutes on each side, until firm and golden.