Aquaphiliac

I am currently training to be a lifeguard. It was about time really. I was in swimming lessons or on a swim team almost every summer for the first 13 years of my life. I currently swim laps 3 times a week, sometimes as much as 2.5 miles a day. I love the water. Under it, through it, laying out next to it; I don't think I could be happy if I didn't live near some kind of large body of water.

So when I came home from my first lifeguarding class Saturday night, hungry and tired from a 12 hour day of first-aid/CPR training and rescuing passive victims from the bottom of the deep end, I appropriately chose a seafood-based dish to veganize.

The original dish was sauteed octopus served with fermented black bean sauce and miso vinaigrette. Even if I wasn't a vegan I don't think I'd keep octopus on hand, nor do I live near enough to the creepy Chinese groceries with the skinned rabbits in the windows to acquire fermented black bean paste on a whim. But the flavor combinations in this recipe were just too good not to experiment with. And so, despite the fact it was 10 o'clock at night and I was covered in chlorine and bruised from being backboarded, I fired up the burners and whipped up this delicious meal.

Mocktopus Wild Rice Salad with Black Bean Pear Sauce and Miso Vinaigrette

from Food&Wine, January 2010

for the rice (note: cook each type of rice separately)

1 cup wild rice, cooked according to package directions

1 cup jasmine rice, cooked according to package directions

for the Black Bean Pear Sauce

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

2 shallots, chopped fine

1 cup finely chopped red bell pepper

1/2 a jalapeno, seeded and minced

1 cup pears, peeled and chopped

the juice from 1 lemon

2 green onions, green parts only, minced

for the miso vinaigrette

1 tablespoon miso (I had mild red in the fridge; the original calls for white)

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons room temperature water

sea salt & fresh ground pepper (1/8 teaspoon-ish or to taste)

to prepare

In a medium sauce pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the beans and cook for about 3-4 minutes.

Add the garlic, ginger, and shallot and cook for another 5 minutes or until the shallots are soft and translucent. You may want to add a little water and/or oil here if the beans are starting to stick too much to the bottom of the pan.

Add the bell pepper and jalapeno and cook until just starting to soften.

Stir in the pear and give the whole thing a few really good, mashing stirs to break up the pears and the beans a bit. The sauce is going to be a bit pink-ish and about the consistency of guacamole.

Turn off the heat and squeeze in the lemon juice. Stir in the green onions and cover. Let sit while you make the vinaigrette.

to make the miso vinaigrette

In a small bowl combine all the ingredients except the salt and pepper and whisk with vigor. Taste and season appropriately. This could be made up to 3 days or so ahead of time; just be sure to bring it back to room temp before serving.

***

To serve this, I chopped fresh spinach into ribbons, mandolined a large carrot into discs, and striped them on a large dinner plate. Using an ice cream scoop, I placed the rice (two wild scoops, one jasmine) on the carrot stripe. I spooned the black bean sauce over the rice, then perpendicularly drizzled the miso over the spinach and rice.

The above recipe made about enough to plate like this 4 times (depending on the size of your scoop). Since I was only feeding myself (yes, I plate this extensively when I'm eating all alone in my apartment. It's better than 30 cats and stacks of newspapers), I had plenty of leftovers for the next week. Suggestion? Cut up a few plum tomatoes, mix with the cold, leftover bean sauce and serve with tortilla chips and a cold one.

The perfect short-cut dinner for that night when, even though Sex Week went so well and you were sure you'd turned a corner and connected with your students, even the usually-participatory students are sitting there with their arms crossed over their chests refusing to talk, and the others are practically glaring while theatrically checking the time on their ubiquitous cell phones.

Week 5 here I come.

Tempeh Fugit

Normally, I do not blog real-time. Or even close to real time. Since very few of you see me on a daily basis, it's not really lying if I write about how I baked this-or-that last night when it was really last week.

This blog-delay usually occurs because it takes time to think up the clever little stories and anecdotes in which I couch my recipes. I'm a natural liar and, despite my sometimes pathological shyness, a performer at heart. Just giving my loyal readers & detractors a straightforward recipe goes against everything I stand for, down to the very marrow of my vegan bones.

But sometimes, a recipe comes along that is SO FREAKIN' AMAZING, I must share it, right that night, that very moment; belly-laughs and entertaining stories be damned.

Here is one of those recipes.

Pomegranate-Marinated Tempeh with Armenian Pilaf
veganified from Food+Wine, December 2009

for the glaze
1/4 cup molasses
2 tablespoons PAMA pomegranate liquor
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 - 1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice

for the pilaf
1 1/2 sticks vegan margarine
3-4 ounces angel hair pasta, broken into 1-2 inch pieces (1 heaping cup)
1/2 cup pine nuts
4 cups long-grain white rice
8 cups vegetable stock
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/3 cup loosely packed mint leaves, thinly sliced

1 package of tempeh

(Note that this recipe requires a 4-hour-plus marinade so plan accordingly)

Bring a medium-sized pot of water to boil. Cut the tempeh into 1 - 1 1/2 inch strips. Place the tempeh into the boiling water and cook for 10 minutes. Scoop out the tempeh with a slotted spoon and place on a plate lined with paper towels. Pat dry.

While the tempeh is boiling, whisk together all the glaze/marinade ingredients in a medium bowl/glass measuring cup. Coat the bottom of an 8x8 glass Pyrex dish with a small amount of the glaze. Place the tempeh in the dish and pour the remaining glaze over the strips. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours (although overnight or for a couple days is ideal)

When you are ready to bake the tempeh, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare the pilaf.

Melt the butter in a large pot, over medium-high heat. Add the pine nuts and pasta. Cook, stirring often, until both are a deep, golden brown. Add the rice, stirring to coat with the oil-pasta mix. Add the stock, salt, and pepper. Bring to an almost boil, reduce the heat to low, and cover. Cook for 20-25 minute, stirring occasionally, until all the broth is absorbed. Remove from heat, uncover, fluff with a fork or wooden spoon, and cover again. Let sit for 20 minutes. Stir in the mint leaves right before serving.

While the pilaf is sitting, bake the tempeh. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Using tongs, place the marinated tempeh on the foil, bottom-side up. Spoon some of the remaining marinade over the strips and bake for 5 minutes. Turn the tempeh again, spoon the last of the marinade on top, and bake for another 5 minutes. Turn the oven off and crack the door to keep the tempeh hot while the pilaf finishes cooking.

Serve with green beans and a crisp white wine (New Zealand Sauv's would be especially good).


Seriously. Do not delay. Act now. Make this for dinner soon. Time and delicious dinners wait for no vegan.

Doldrums

Things the depress Megan:

1. The end of a holiday/party season
2. Being injured/unable to work out because of said injury
3. Not seeing Roomie on a daily basis
4. Monthly lady-bit issues


Any one of these things by itself makes for a pretty crappy week, (loyal readers/detractors following along at home might recognize the first three from previous depression-themed posts) but I'm usually able to maintain the facade of fully-functional adult. Depending on the combination, I can even semi-handle (read: bathe and not cry uncontrollably) two or three at a time. But this past week, the powers that be thought it might be fun to see what I'd do faced with all four. At the same time.

It was like a mental health Chernobyl; the fall-out of which included barely making it out of bed before noon, being unable to fall asleep even with the liberal application of alcohol or Rx drugs, not brushing my hair, having full-out panic attacks at the thought of having to leave the house etc. It also included making most of the people around me miserable by association, and engaging in some un-healthily obsessive behavior. "I say goddamned what a rush!"***

Though at the time it felt as though I would never be happy again, here I am on the other side of my doldrums, and back in the kitchen; attempting to make up for my less-than-pleasant behavior with baked goods. As everybody knows, nothing says, "sorry I can't afford anti-depressants," like baked goods.

The first is a big, crunchy, drop cookie, adapted from a recipe originally in my Christmas-present-to-myself cookbook,"Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar."

The SFSFYDS&GITK Ginger Macadamia Cookies
"Stop Feeling Sorry For Your Damn Self & Get In The Kitchen"

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2/3 cup canola oil
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar, light or dark
1/3 cup unsweetened soy milk (I like Pearl)
1 tablespoon flax seed meal
1 squirt of vanilla bean paste (2-ish teaspoons of the liquid kind, probably)
1 1/2 cups unsalted macadamia nuts (raw if you can get them), chopped coarse
heaping 1/2 cup finely chopped candied ginger

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a few cookie sheets with parchment paper. This recipe makes about 30 coffee-mug-sized cookies.
Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt and nutmeg in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Using a hand mixer (I didn't feel like whipping out the stand mixer. We're still not talking since the over-mixed bread fracas), beat together the oil, sugars, milk, flax, and vanilla. Slowly add the flour mixture and mix well. Fold in the nuts and ginger.
For each cookie, scoop a heaping tablespoon of dough onto the tray, leaving about an inch and a half between each glob. The cookies will spread out.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the tops and edges start to brown. Depending on your oven, you might want to bake for 15 minutes, rotate the trays and bake for another 3-5 minutes.
Let the cookies sit on the trays for about 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to fully cool.




The other cookie I made today is still in the beta-testing stage. Over the holidays, I was attempting to make raw macaroons without the aid of my dehydrator. The chocolate ones turned out ok, they just took 6 hours in the oven at 200. Not exactly time- or energy-efficient. They were also much denser than the traditionally dehydrated cookies. In my search for an airy coconut cookie, I decided to de-raw the almond version of the raw macaroon recipe and create a cookie I could actually bake. I love coconut and macaroons but since the main ingredient is egg whites, it's hard to find a good vegan version. In the end I sacrificed the poofiness of a traditional macaroon for the taste. The following recipe is still being tweaked, but it turns out a pretty delicious cookie. Even the kinda-burned ones are good.

Almond-Coconut Doilies

1 cup raw, unsweetend coconut flakes
1/2 cup sweetened coconut, flakes or shreds
3/4 cup almond meal/flour
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teasoon sea salt
1/2 cup maple syrup
3 scant tablespoons coconut oil
1 squirt vanilla paste (maybe a teaspoon and a half of the liquid)

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a few cookie sheets with parchment paper.
In a small bowl, sift together the flours, salt, and powder. Set aside.
With a hand mixer, beat together the coconut oil, vanilla, and maple syrup until very smooth.
Add the flour mix to the wet ingredients and mix well. Fold in all the coconut, using a fork to distribute evenly if the mix gets too thick for the mixer.
For each cookie, roll about half tablespoon of dough between your hands (This dough is really sticky/oily. I like getting messy in the kitchen, but you could probably flour your hands with a little almond meal if you want to keep your hands from getting too doughy). Place the balls on the parchment-lined trays, two rows of three or four balls, depending on the size of your trays. Using your fingers (or the back of a lightly almond-flour-dusted fork) smoosh the dough down into silver-dollar-ish-sized disks.
Bake for 12-15 minutes rotating trays front to back and top to bottom, halfway through. The cookies are done when the edges are deep, golden brown. It is ok if the very middle still looks a little shiny and uncooked. Leave the cookies on the trays for about 5-8 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely.
If the cookies seem too oily (a problem with early trial runs) place them on paper towels to absorb some of the oil or let them sit on wire racks in an oven set to 150 to dry them out even further.

-----

Now that I'm feeling better, I have all sorts of KitchenKapers (patent pending) planned. Raw chocolate-orange tarts, completely invented stuffing, fun with celery roots, the next installment of The Veganification!! and much, much more!! So stay tuned!

***(and speaking of The Veganification!!, identify the movie quote in today's post for bonus The Veganification! points, redeemable for merchandise, snacks, and my mostly-depression-free love.)

The Veganification! Begins

Hi and welcome, friends and enemies, to the first of an every-now-and-then sub-series, new to my blog in 2010: The Veganification!


That's right, I said The Veganification!


What is The Veganification! you might be wondering? And why should you care? All good questions. Here are the answers.


Because I had very little "serious" reading to do over Winter Break, and because I am easily distracted by shiny things, I bought and read a good number of glossy-covered, mainstream cooking magazines this winter. Gourmet, Imbibe, Bon Apetit, Martha Stewart's Living, Food+Wine (the latter two my mom gets in the mail) etc. It was so refreshing to read magazines that are written and published by people really truly exited by food and eating, and not trying to push some sort of socio-political agenda. No space wasted talking about which company is poking rabbits and pigs in inappropriate ways, or snarky op-ed pieces about feeling smug at the family Christmas dinner table. Just entertaining articles about trends in food, cooking, spirits, and mixology that focus on taste and presentation rather than morals. I'm far more interested in the bottle vs. can debate in the world of beer than I am in tofu vs. tempeh arguments.

As such, I'm letting my VegNews subscription expire and getting Bon Apetit and Gourmet instead. And (one of) my New Year's Resolutions is to veganify at least one recipe from all of these non-veg magazines a month. And I don't mean just swapping out real dairy for the soy-based stuff. I'm talking about not being daunted by a recipe with great flavor potential just because the main ingredient is meat. Or a good dessert that relies on heavy cream and egg whites. Moroccan Beef Tagine? Poblano Albondingos? Sour-Orange Yucatan Chickens? Shitake-and-Scallion Shrimp Lo-Mein? Apricot & Basil Shortbread? Coconut Cake with Chocolate Chunks? Chocolate-Nut Tart with Dried Fruit & Clotted Cream?



Bring it on.



So, here is the first veganified meal of 2010. I decided to try this sauce first, as my mother was making veal meatballs (I don't care how vegan I get, I will always love the smell of cooking veal) and this dish originally called for veal shoulders. It's a "notable dark and glossy ragout, the constituents of which**" are as follows:




Not-Veal Pasta Sauce
from Food+Wine, October 2009


1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4-5 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoons ground fennel (I ground whole seeds)
1 1/2 cups dry red wine (I used Terra d'Oro 2005 Amador Zinfandel)
Two 28-ounce cans Italian whole tomatoes, drained and chopped (see note)
4 cups vegetable puree/stock (see note)
1 1/2 tablespoons minced rosemary


Note: Even if you can't find the whole Italian-style tomatoes (I found mine in the specialty-foods section of Kroger), make the effort to drain and chop whole regular tomatoes. There's too much liquid in the pre-chopped ones and this is a thick sauce. For the vegetable stock, I used my mom's new immersion blender to blend leftover vegetable soup. This resulted in a creamy vegetable puree rather than a traditional stock. Since there isn't any meat in this recipe to absorb extra liquid, I think this helped thicken the sauce. If you use broth, you may want to boil the sauce a little longer to reduce it. Maybe disolve some cornstarch in the broth before adding it to the mix. Or just make some soup and puree it.


In a large soup pot or casserole dish, heat the oil over medium heat.
Add the onions, garlic, fennel, coriander, and cook over medium-low heat for 5 minutes or until the onions are translucent.
Add the wine and bring the mixture to a boil. Continue to boil until reduced to 1/3 cup. This should take 5-8 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and cook for another 5 minutes over medium high heat.
Add the veggie puree and rosemary. Return to a boil. Let boil for about ten minutes or until the sauce reduces a little more.
Reduce heat to low, partially cover the pot and simmer for about 20 minutes.


Serve the sauce over a hearty pasta (rigatoni, fettucini, pappardelle) with a big room temp glass of Remirez de Ganuza 2001 Rioja, one of the best reds I've had in a long time and totally worth the price. It's strong enough to hold up against the spice of the sauce, but not in an over-powering way.


And since the non-veggies in the house all went back for seconds, I consider The Veganification! a resounding success.


**Bonus The Veganification! points if you can place the quote. Trade them in for cool The Veganification!! merchandise, homemade veganified snacks and my continued admiration!!**