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.
Tag: food
Fake Samosas
The March issue of Real Simple had a cool quickie recipe for samosas in it that involved using pre-made pie crust dough and convenience mashed potatoes you can buy in the refrigerator section. Side note: is it really that freakin’ hard to make mashed potatoes? I mean, come on, boil, mash, eat. Anyway, I thought I’d give that a try using sweet potatoes instead of white ones. Of course all the pre-made pie crust dough at the regular grocery store was all larded up. So I just used puff pastry. I knew the texture wouldn’t be the same or anything close to authentic, but what the hell, I also knew it would be good. When is puff pastry NOT good? Plus I had a jar of mango chutney sitting around that I picked up from Taj Mahal when I was there with Leigh.
Anyway, here’s the recipe with my changes.
Quickie Sweet Potato Samosas
* 1 tablespoon olive oil
* 1 med. onion, chopped
* ¾ teaspoon salt
* ½ teaspoon pepper
* ½ teaspoon ground red pepper
* 1 ½ teaspoons curry powder
* 2 cups mashed cooked sweet potatoes
* 10 ounces frozen peas, thawed
* 1 package puff pastry, thawed
* 1 jar mango chutney
Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden brown, about 8 minutes.
Add salt, pepper, ground red pepper and curry powder and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in the sweet potatoes and peas.
Unfold the puff pastry dough and cut each piece into 6 triangles. Place a heaping tablespoon of the potato mixture in the center of each piece. Gather the corners of the dough and pinch to form a point. Pinch the seams to seal. Transfer to a baking sheet.
Bake the samosas until golden, about 25 minutes. Serve with mango chutney. And now for the pics. The innards:
Ready to be baked:
All puffy and golden:
Tour of Buford Highway
Saturday I hit a couple of ethnic markets on Buford Highway in addition to my regular weekly visit to the DeKalb Farmers Market. A lot of this stuff you can get in the regular grocery store, but it’s much cheaper here. Plus there are random things that can be hard to find like a jar of mole with a screw top lid you can re-close. So here’s my haul from the Hispanic market: enchilada sauce, hominy, refried beans with chipotle, habeño sauce, ready to serve mole in a cool aseptic container, refried black beans, chipotle sauce, marinated cactus, mole with a screw top lid, a small jar of chipotle in adobo and a big stack of corn tortillas. Not pictured: butternut squash, shallots, onions, and a serrano. 
Next, Atlanta’s Farmers Market, which also has Hispanic goods, but I was headed there for the Asian stuff. Here I picked up a couple of different rice stick noodles and some bean threads, mock duck, coconut milk, rice seasoning, vegetarian steak, coconut cream, pepper corns (I’m pretty sure these are the things also known as Szechwan pepper corns) and fermented black beans. Not pictured: two different sizes/shapes of rice papers. 
Seems like I’m missing some items. I’m not gonna post the rest as it’s just normal rice milk, soy milk, apples, coffee, etc. I’m not sure why I bought all this stuff. I don’t have room for it. 🙂
Uh, what?
Uh, what?, originally uploaded by abracapocus.
Mexican Food at Across the Street
Doesn’t a Mexican restaurant with a number of choices for vegans sound great? Of course it does! A week or so ago Matt and I checked out Across the Street over on Highland by Cosmo’s.
Inside it’s cosy and vibrant. We were there pretty early, so I don’t know how loud it gets in there. It wasn’t an issue at all for us. Warm crispy chips & a nice red salsa arrived. We went ahead and got some guacamole as well. And margaritas. All of the above were excellent. Matt ordered carnitas (he’s not veg, der) and I got the tacos with one tvp and one tofu. He didn’t like his carnitas. Thought it was too tough and dry. My tacos were pretty good. The tvp was clearly made by a non-veg person. It tasted like they reconstituted the tvp in plain water then just kind of cooked it with some taco seasoning. So, they need to figure out that tvp needs to be soaked in something flavorful before cooking. The tofu was great though. If I remember right it had a light dusting of seasoned cornmeal and was fried. Pan-fried, I think. The rice seemed slightly mushy, but tasted good. The beans seemed slightly bland at first but I found that I appreciated them more as I ate them, so I think they were fine. There are more vegan options on the menu, so I’m all for going back and checking out something else.
