Back in November, I tried making the Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk #2 and while they tasted great, they didn’t rise properly. So I gave them another shot. And they came out perfectly. I was even 1/4 cup short of pumpkin, but just added a splash more of soy milk when the dough seemed too dry. I think last time I used a packet of yeast. This time I just used the bread machine yeast I keep in the fridge. Also, to make sure it indeed had a warm place to rise, I turned on the oven for a minute to 200 degrees F, then turned it back off and put the dough in there. I left the door open until it felt to be a good warm rather than hot temperature and left it in there to do it’s thing. So one of those things, or both, resulted in kick ass cinnamon rolls.
Category: photo
Enchilada Stack Mole
A couple of weeks ago I picked up this box of prepared mole sauce in addition to the regular paste that I buy. It was vegan and I thought it might be good for some future lazy food. Well, the future lazy food is now the past lazy food and finally I’m getting around to posting it. It’s rare that I actually make up a recipe. I usually let other people slave away at testing recipes to see what works. But with this, there’s really nothing to go wrong. It’d lend itself to all kinds of vegetables, for example right now I’m thinking some potatoes would be nice, of course beans could always be tossed in, whatever fake meat you have, or none at all. See what I’m saying? Anyway, here’s what I did this time. I’m sure that’ll change in the future…
Enchilada Stack Mole
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 med. onion, chopped
• 1 med. green bell pepper, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup chicken style seitan, chopped
• 1 med. yellow summer squash, chopped
• ½ cup frozen corn
• 1 box prepared mole sauce, pint size
• 8 corn tortillas
• ½-1 cup grated soy cheese
Spray a medium casserole pan with cooking spray. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Heat oil in a large sauté pan. Once warm, toss in the onion and bell pepper. Sauté until onion starts to soften, about 2-3 minutes. Add garlic and seitan. Sauté for another minute or two. Add squash and corn, sauté another few minutes until onion is translucent and squash is softened. Season with salt & pepper and remove from heat.
Spread a small amount of the prepared mole sauce on bottom of casserole. Lay down two corn tortillas. Spoon 1/3 of the vegetable mixture on top of the tortillas, spread a spoon or two of mole sauce on top of that. Now do the same with two more layers ending up with two tortillas on top. Pour remaining mole sauce all over the top completely coating the tortillas. Sprinkle top with cheese. Bake about 25-30 minutes or until cheese is melted. If necessary, broil for a minute or so to melt cheese.
“Butter” Tofu
Someone blogged a while back about the fact that you can pick up Butter Chicken seasoning and the spice packet itself is vegan. So last time I was at the Indian market I picked one up with the intention of trying out a “Butter” Tofu. I finally got around to that this week.
Here’s the mix I used, the tomatoes I added and the tofu. I’m not sure why the pappadums jumped in the picture…I loosely used the recipe on the back of the box. Here’s what I did: “Butter” TofuIngredients1 pound firm or extra firm tofu, drained and pressed2 tablespoons lemon juice1/2 packet Shan Butter Chicken Mix2 tablespoons oil 1 14oz. can whole cherry tomatoes or diced (smash them if you use whole ones)1/2 cup soy milk2 tablespoons Earth Balance Mix lemon juice, 1/4 cup of water and the 1/2 packet of seasoning mix. Pour over drained, pressed tofu and marinate 30 minutes. Heat oil in a non-stick frying pan. Add marinated tofu reserving the marinade. Fry up until browned. Add tomatoes, soy milk, and reserved marinade. Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook 15 minutes. Add Earth Balance, stir in until melted.Eat.
We ate it over basmati rice with Dino’s Collards. Nummy.
A tale of two muffins
What’s better than baking a batch of muffins? Baking two! For the first batch, I modified the Zucchini Muffin recipe from Yellow Rose Recipes to make it carrot and zucchini. Not much of a modification…just reduced the zucchini and added grated carrot. I also skipped the raisins and opted to toast the pecans in a pan before chopping and adding. We’ll call these the healthy muffins. They have a really small amount of oil and are light on the sugar but they’re still sweat enough and don’t at all taste like hippie food. Plus I got to break in the whole nutmeg I picked up at the Indian market. Wow, does that make a difference! I even cut back the amount a bit so it wouldn’t overpower.
And these Hearty Spiced Cocoa Muffins we’ll refer to as pure evil. This might be my first try at a recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking. The heavy reliance on Ener-G Egg Replacer in the book made me a bit nervous as I don’t like it in everything. In this case I had nothing to worry about. They came out perfect and kick much ass. The cinnamon, cloves and cayenne pepper go so well with the chocolate and the higher than usual amount of salt really makes the chocolate flavor pop. I just stuck with the chocolate chips and did not add any nuts.
I think it’s kind of funny that I chose to photograph the “evil” muffins against black and the “good” ones against white. Hmmm… Oh, and my helpful tip of the day, well, and probably of the year because I don’t really hand them out, now do I? How often does a muffin recipe make exactly 12 muffins? Not often, right? I have these little muffin cup sized ceramic ramekins that I use for mise en place, salsa, etc. They’re also perfect for overflow muffin batter. See above. No wasted batter!
Food on my desktop
There are a few photos cluttering my desktop that I keep meaning to post. I say cluttering, but it isn’t like I ever see my desktop. It’s all open apps and exposé around here.
This is Summer Spaghetti with Corn and Tomatoes from Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone by Deborah Madison. I’ve had this cookbook for over ten years but still find myself going back to it. Yeah, it’s not exactly summer around here but sometimes you need to step away from the roots and indulge a little. I considered using canned tomatoes but was able to find some nice grape tomatoes and they were lovely. It also gave me a chance to use the Sunergia Soy Feta I picked up at Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe. I never expect soy cheese to be spot on, but I found this to be a nice substitute. It doesn’t quite crumble like feta, but shredding works fine. And the smell seemed to have that requisite cheese stink. The little cardboard outer package for this has been sitting on my kitchen counter waiting for me to blog about this forever. I’m glad I can finally throw it in the recycling bin.
This is another one from Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone, Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Roasted Peanuts. To make it a main dish, I rehydrated some fake chicken pieces I picked up from the Asian market a while back. I can’t remember which variety of bok choy I ended up using. I tend to just choose whichever one looks good that day, or even a different sort of green. I think this might have been Shanghai bok choy though. This always comes out nice, but this time I actually used the called for peanut oil instead of just canola. It really does add flavor so I recommend doing that.
Oh, and another one from Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone. If I’d paid attention I could have said that once at the top, eh? This is the Posole with Red Chile Pods. We’re lucky enough to have a number of hispanic markets around here where you can find a bunch of different dried corn varieties. Here I used a red one. The base for this soup is very simple. It’s the condiments that really make it. Here I have cilantro, avocado, soy feta and a lime wedge piled on top. There are more suggestions in the recipe, but this combination suited me just fine.