Vegan Italian Sausage and Tempeh Bacon!

As a vegetarian convert, I can confess that I used to love bacon and sausage. I am happy to have given them up and don't miss them, but am always on the lookout for new delicious things to incorporate into my veggie lexicon. In a desire to work more with a new food and in an effort to re-create my delicious BLT from last week, I've been trying to approximate tempeh bacon. Zips recently gave me Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan Brunch, and there are so many yummy things to try, including Tempeh Bacon! Unfortunately, though, after two approaches (one involved steaming the tempeh strips, then marinating, then frying; the other just marinate, then fry) I've decided to press on with my quest for a satisfactory recipe. There's nothing wrong with the flavor here, it's just that the texture wasn't crispy, just a little dry and crumbly.

But as I said, the flavor was just fine, very near to what D'Lish served. If you wanna give it a whack, I only modified Vegan Brunch's in a couple ways:

Marinade:

3 Tb soy sauce
2 Tb maple syrup (VB calls for 1)
1 Tb liquid smoke
1 Tb apple cider vinegar
1 Tb olive oil
1 Tb tomato paste (I didn't have any, so used *gasp* ketchup. I think it worked totally fine, though. Really.)
Whisk them all together (I omitted VB's 3/4 c. vegetable broth and 2 garlic cloves)

I used an 8 oz. package of tempeh, cut into about 16 thin slices. I laid them in a baking dish and marinated for about two hours. Then fried in a small amount of veg. oil.

I liked it, but didn't love it. The search continues. I hear light life has a nice "smoky tempeh strips" product, but can't find it 'round here. I'll have to use the rest of my tempeh for some other test kitchen adventure.

The BIG TRIUMPH of the day, though, was a happy coincidence of a recipe for Italian Sausages directly across the page from the bacon recipe. It looked weird (navy beans?!), but turned out amazingly! I can't wait to eat them the next time we make spaghetti!

Here's her recipe:

Before mixing everything up, get a steamer basket going over a pot of boiling water. I used a metal colander and lid over a kettle.

Also, get out four pieces of foil. These will be for shaping and cooking the sausage.

1/2 c. cooked navy beans, rinsed and drained (I used a can of Bush's)
1 c. vegetable broth
1 Tb. olive oil
2 Tb. soy sauce
1 garlic clove (or 2 if you like garlic) finely minced with a microplane grater
1 1/4 c. vital wheat gluten
1/4 c. nutritional yeast (I utterly forgot this, and will have to include it next time!)
2 tsp. fennel seeds, crushed (I couldn't find mine, but would have included it!)
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 tsp. sweet paprika
1 tsp. dried oregano
Several dashes fresh black pepper

Mash the beans in a large mixing bowl until every bean is completely obliterated. Add the broth, oil, soy sauce, garlic, and all the spices. (Here's where I depart from VB. She has you add the ingredients in the order listed, but once I added the vital wheat gluten, it was difficult to incorporate the spices into the dense dough that had formed.)

Pull dough into four equal portions, put them on the foil, and roll into 5" logs. Wrap in the foil (I used it to shape the dough more evenly) and twist the ends shut. Don't worry about how it looks, as she says, it will snap into shape while it steams, thanks to the magical vital wheat gluten. Place wrapped sausages into your steamer and steam for 40 minutes. You can use them immediately or saute in olive oil.

I was thriled with the results-- the texture, the spices, everything. I may even use the remaining 3/4 of the can of beans to make more on backup!

VB also has a recipe for chorizo, so maybe I'll try that too (once I have some pinto beans and some proper tomato paste!)

Quinoa Black Bean Salad

So here's an easy new salad I cooked up today. I've been wanting to find a good recipe with quinoa for a little while now, a challenge since Zips is entirely ambivalent to the wonder grain. We were planning on having a taco night tonight, so I modified this black bean ensemble (originally called "Bean-Wah Salad" like Quinoa: "Keen-Wah." Get it?) The original recipe called for a lemon instead of a lime, and only 1/4 c. of quinoa, which I doubled, then quadrupled since it didn't seem very quinoa-y, and was also too mushy with dressing. So here's my adapted version:

1 c. quinoa
2 c. vegetable broth
Simmer the quinoa in the broth until tender, and most of the broth has been absorbed. I had to add a little water at the end.

While that's simmerin', combine:
1 c. corn
1 can black beans
1 diced tomato
2 green onions, chopped
2 Tb. cilantro, chopped

In a separate bowl, combine:
juice of 1 lime
2 Tb. extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. chili powder
pinch of salt

Once the quinoa cools off a bit, throw them all together and mix well. Despite her ambivalence toward the mother of all grains, since Zips' favorite spices are cumin and chili powder, she proclaimed this "freakin' delicious." I am well pleased.

We had it as a side to the tacos. In the future, we decided it could totally stand alone in a soft corn tortilla with a little lettuce (top photo). And since quinoa and the black beans are both good protein sources, it'd make a great lunch option. MMmmmmm.

Great Vegan Eats in Sedona

So we're back from a short vacation in beautiful Sedona, AZ, where Zips happily discovered a lovely vegan restaurant, D'Lish Very Vegetarian. Since Sedona seems such a hippie, yuppie, tourist-y little town, we weren't surprised to find there were several places to choose from (including a raw cuisine joint called Bliss Cafe that we'll have to find next time), but loved D'Lish so much the evening we arrived, we ate there again the next day!

The first time, I ordered and greatly enjoyed a Retro sandwich (avocado, sprouts, lettuce, tomato, etc) until I tasted Zips' choice, the BLT. Their tempeh bacon was INCREDIBLE, and made me rethink my entire relationship with tempeh. I mean I've tried making breakfast sausage patties with it, found a great recipe for tempeh bourguignon, but rarely fix it-- especially now that we live in a hot climate. Now I can't wait to purchase some again. I can't wait to test a couple of tempeh "bacon" recipes myself. So the next night I got the BLT with an avocado added (best of both sandwiches, too much of a good thing is even better!). Everything seems to come with blue corn chips and a little house salad whose dressing is also DELISH!

And for dessert, we shared a "young Thai coconut"-- which a guy simply whacked at with a large knife to open the top, and offered us straws. The fresh coconut water was excellent, and when we had emptied it, we fought over scraping out and eating the insides. Zips said it is among the most decadent thing we've ever done.

More Crazy Signs

So we just got back from our great Grand Canyon adventure, and I have more less-sane signage from the road. The above is from a rest stop somewhere along I-40 in the eastern part of AZ. I saw a great deal of lizards. I hope they weren't poisonous.

The buffalo stands in front of a gas station in either Valle or Tusayan, AZ, not far from the Grand Canyon.

And this seemed a hilariously explicit warning posted both at the Grand Canyon, and at a scenic point along 89A between Sedona and Flagstaff.

Craft News, Finally

Oh yeah! As a promise to myself and to my blog, I finally have some crafting/sewing news to post. I've finally cranked out a couple of cat toys and created myself an ETSY store! All I have right now is my own modified catnip-filled "kitten nunchuck" to sell, but I'm working our a couple of project in my test (craft) kitchen. Here's the first snazzy pair of nunchucks (wind up two cats at once!)

I've got another one listed, but plan to make more catnip-stuffed doodads soon! I'm a little intimidated, though. There are catnip tacos! Catnip fortune cookies! Catnip cupcakes! Catnip pizza! Where can I fit in?

The other project I completed is a new pillowcase for our body pillow. Not that I have anything against it... It just looks like it belongs in a dorm room (picture: red, white, blue, and black graphics with the Union Jack and handwritten font words like Girl! Love! Friends! Rock! Angel! with hearts instead of o's. Zips insists it's a riot grrrl pillow. I think it's more like a No Doubt knock off-- ANYWAY, I have a collection of flannel remnants that have a similar color scheme, and although it's summer and flannel seems too hot, they were really light, not to mention soft, so I quilted together a new pillowcase. Now we have dreamy clouds and pj pinstripes and a little dinosaur block here and there.

It was a much bigger job than anticipated! That pillow is 42" long! I ended up quilting blocks 8"in width (random lengths), into a 44"long strip, then stitching 5 of these strips together. This is only half of it-- hung over a clothesline.
Zips' favorite parts are the dinosaurs.

Gyoza From Scratch!

So file this under "Really? that's all I do?" I made some wonton soup last night, but could only salvage half a package of wonton wrappers. So today I had to do something with all the leftover filling I made (tofu, cabbage, carrot, ginger, cilantro, green onion). I found a recipe for gyoza/wonton wrappers that is *literally* 1 c. all purpose flour mixed with 1/2 c. boiling water. Mix into a dough and knead for 5 minutes. That's it. I rolled mine out into a long rope and cut into 1/2 inch pieces, then rolled those out to a 3" or 4" round.

When I had a pile of these, I filled them with my mix and tried both lightly pan-frying, and also steaming them. They were awesome! Probably tasted better than the dried out, freezer burned Nasoya wraps I used last night!

Here they are in their first incarnation as gyoza-- with a little dipping sauce:

And here they are steamed in a broth. I should probably make them a bit smaller for a soup, but they ended up being an entire meal!

Great Summertime Eats

One of my favorite foods that's a mix of flavors (mint, basil, ginger, soy) and textures (crispy lettuce, noodles, tofu) and only requires minimal cooking is Vietnamese goi cuon chay (or fresh spring rolls... some call them summer rolls or garden rolls). Ordinarily they would include pork or shrimp, but we sub slices of tofu, in addition to rice vermicelli noodles, green leaf lettuce, chopped cilantro, thai basil, and mint, and usually a little bit of onion sauteed with ginger in some soy sauce. Then wrap them all up in some rice paper and try not to overindulge. Just try!
Traditionally eaten with a hoisin peanut sauce, Zips prefers a peanut ginger dipping sauce:

2 Tb. fresh grated ginger
1/2 c. peanut butter (we use creamy, but I don't think chunky would be a problem)
2 Tb. white miso
2 Tb. soy sauce (we use low sodium)
4 Tb. rice vinegar
1/4 c. hot water

Whisk them all together (I like to add a swirl of sriracha) and dip away!

Why Haven't I Ever Tried This Before?

Classes have been out for a month to the day today, and I think we are finally starting to really unwind. We sleep in. We watch bad reality tv. We play video games. We cook dinner and eat outside at least once or twice a week. Last night, instead of doing our usual veggie hot dog and corn on the cob, I decided to try grilling slabs of tofu. I've read about it, and even eaten it, but hadn't ever tried putting tofu directly on the grill. It was AWESOME!
So I just took a block of tofu and pressed it between two plates for about 20 minutes, with paper towels to catch the water and cans of kidney beans to weigh them down. Then I cut the block into 6 equal slices (maybe 3/4 - 1 inches each) and laid them out on dry paper towels to get out more of the moisture. Then I made a teriyaki marinade, whisking together all of this:

1/4 c. soy sauce
1/4 c. mirin
2 Tb. olive oil
1 Tb. sesame oil
2 Tb. rice vineger
1/4 c. brown sugar
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Tb. ginger, minced

I put the drained tofu slices into a ziploc bag with half of the marinade for about half an hour in the fridge. Then I threw them on the grill with some thickly sliced zucchini, green bell peppers, onion, and carrot slices. Every now and then I would brush everything with the marinade. The tofu cooked for maybe 3 minutes on each side.
It's the first time I brought a bowl of jasmine rice out with the cookout, and it was so successful that Zips wanted it again the next day!

BEST. vegan ICE CREAM RECIPE. EVER

So after making that last batch of Coffee Ice Cream, the motor on our Rival Ice Cream maker died (just died!), and with all these recipes to try out we had to replace it. In honor of our new model (the wooden bucket kind with the hand crank as a backup!), we've just been cranking out (tee hee) ice cream left and right.

Aside from the Vegan Ice Cream blog we discovered, Zips also found an ice cream cookbook I can't wait to get my paws on, Lick It! The base for these ice creams is coconut milk, rather than tofu or soymilk with arrowroot. The recipe for Vanilla was great, and I decided it would be even better if we tricked out with some cookie dough pieces, so I found a nice egg-less ice cream-ready recipe specifically for ice cream that makes the perfect amount and threw them in.

A sidenote: I love cookie dough as much as the next person (maybe more). But wouldn't necessarily say it's my favorite flavor of ice cream. And I'm also not a compulsive ice cream eater. HOWEVER, I've wolfed down a significant share of two batches of this recipe in the past four days. It's really that delicious! I made a batch of mango coconut ice cream at the same time, and do you see me ranting about that?

So:

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream
Prepare the cookie dough first

2 1/2 Tb. brown sugar
3 Tb. white sugar
2 Tb. margarine (Earth Balance works extremely well, since it has a hard consistency when chilled, a lot like butter)
1/8 tsp. vanilla extract
2 Tb. water
1/2 c. flour

Blend all ingredients into a dough (I just used a fork) and add about 1/4 c. chopped semi-sweet chocolate chips or mini chocolate chips. We formed the dough into a log wrapped in wax paper and froze it for about 2 hours.

1 can (14 oz.) coconut milk (full fat, not light)
1 1/4c. soy milk
1/2 c. sugar
1 Tb. vanilla

Blend together all ingredients and throw it into your ice cream maker. Add chunks of the frozen cookie dough in the last 5 minutes of your freezing.

Seriously, I don't even know if I'll ever look up another ice cream recipe. Ever. I'll just keep making this one. (okay, probably not, I'll just make this as a backup in case I don't like whatever else I make) (ps. the mango coconut was fine).

Holy Crap! I just made homemade veggie "meat"!!

So perusing Sarah Kramer's Vegan A Go-Go that Zips gave me for Christmas, I came across her recipe for homemade gluten. I've always wanted to try it out (in addition to her recipe for homemade tofu-jerky) In my summertime test kitchen, I decided to try it out, and ALTHOUGH
a) I started at around 11pm, b) didn't have whole wheat flour, so I substitued whole wheat pastry flour, c) didn't knead the dough nearly enough, and d) tried to shortcut the hour of simmering the gluten in spices and broth since it was after 1am, I was delighted at the result:

That's right! This ain't beef! Can you believe it?! When I make it again, the correct way with the correct ingredients, I'll post all the steps and ingredients.