My name is Kim and I am addicted to biscotti. The Veganomicon recipe is so easy and simple. I made a small switcheroo in the almond anise recipe and it is impossible to stop eating them. Sealed up tight, packaged with some organic fair trade coffee, they should make a great gift this year.
MMM!
I add ‘with fresh strawberries’ because Veganomicon’s Lost Coconut Custard Pie is not a dessert to be served to the faint of heart without plenty of good fresh unsweetened fruit on top. It is incredibly sweet. My son said something I imagine I will never hear from his mouth again– ’I think it is too sweet for me.’
The tartness of the berries made it perfect, absolutely delicious… use organic strawberries because the pesticide commonly used on strawberries especially in California is frightening indeed!
Without the berries the sweetness overwhelmed. It isn’t just the amount of sugar, which is considerable– it is the naturally sweet flavor of coconut milk and unsweetened coconut.
I am not your coconut person. I wanted to make it specifically because my husband loves strawberries. And he liked it. He doesn’t have the sweet tooth that plagues me and the kids– so a dessert he enjoys is something indeed.
I used a ready made shortbread crust (gasp! sacrilege!). Isa has plenty of crust recipes in Veganomicon but I am just too intimidated by crust. I just wanted to try the pie. And it was good. Really good. I know I can make a vegan shortbread crust myself… maybe some day when I have a real kitchen again.
It was easy. Only two ingredients were a little hard to get. I had to mail order agar flakes, a kind of gelatin made from seaweed instead of from animal bones, supposed to add some kind of nutritional value but I do not know what– ten dollars just to make a pie! But I can use it again. I used unsweetened coconut flaked very small, not like the huge flakes of Baker’s you find at the grocery store. I found it at Henry’s. The smaller coconut flakes are more appetizing to me. I am just not a coconut person.
And because we are moving out of our teeny weeny apartment in LA tomorrow and checking into another teeny weeny apartment in San Diego Monday… well, we had to use it or throw it away and it wasn’t going to eat itself. Thank goodness for those strawberries!
The Veganomicon cook book is such a score. Thank you Mom and Dad! It was my Christmas gift year before last and we have eaten so many good meals from it.
I made the soy yogurt pound cake last night, the lemon variation… the recipe is a little temperamental but it turned out YUM, YUM. I am heartbroken that in this land of Good Karma Rice Ice Cream and Mushrooms that Actually Taste Good, I cannot find agar flakes… I am dying, DYING to make up the coconut pie and put strawberries on it. I just know my husband will LOVE IT. Phoo. But I digress.
Supper tonight was Chick Pea Cutlets with Mustard Sauce, and Vidya’s South Indian sauteed Cabbage.
I will sing Vidya’s praises in another post. I want her to write a cook book. Problem is, she does not measure! She just knows. I will follow her around the kitchen one visit, and write it all down. Her cooking is fresh, flavorful, bright veggie heaven, often wrapped in beautiful light rice crepe thingies. But that is another post for another time.
The cabbage and cutlets weren’t particularly suited to each other but I wanted to use up the cabbage before it went bad. I HATE to see produce goes bad, and it happens far too much at my house. And I digressed again! But I hate to give you an incomplete picture of the vegan doins at our house.
Anyhoo… Chick peas Romesco is a brilliant, sassy, tangy little dinner, chick peas simmered in a slightly hot (as in spicy) sauce of tomatoes and roasted red peppers. Deee Lish, especially served with the Veganomicon Saffron Garlic Rice. Son ate two bowls, husband gave it a thumbs up and ate thirds, little girl ate the chick peas but not the rice or the sauce. She will get there. At least she got some protein.
I LOVED the Chick Pea Cutlets. In my opinion it was fine dining good but chicken fried steak satisfying. You could really get your teeth into them, you know? And so flavorful with the Mustard Sauce– dijon mustard, cooking sherry, garlic, thyme, veggie broth, capers, soy sauce MMM!– also from Veganomicon. It was a real delight. And the little ‘un just slopped ketchup on ‘em and ate ‘em up.
This is another recipe that needs doubled if you are cooking for more than a couple of hungry people. I recommend that you fry, not bake. I baked and it made them dry and crunchy. A good soaking with plenty of olive oil before baking might have helped… also my delightful husband helped me make them and did not realize there was vital wheat gluten in them and so helpfully kneaded them even more than I already had… next time I think I will also cheat and food process the chick peas before I start. Forget mashing, too difficult. So don’t handle these too much.
I wish you food even close to as good as what I have enjoyed cooking and consuming these these past couple of days. I just bought a sewing machine… it is about to be my husband’s turn as I shift domestic gears. Glad he is a good cook.
Veganomicon’s cauliflower pot pie– heavenly! My meat eater husband said this is lovely. It tastes like meat! My son ate seconds. The only one not pleased was my six year old but she is crazy cause it was gooo ood.
Cremini mushrooms are a whole different experience from their pale, tasteless, icky counterpart the usual supermarket mushroom. But the white supermarket mushroom was all I could get in Alabama. I have never even laid eyes on a Cremini before.
I hate cauliflower AND mushrooms, but this was soooo good. The herbed white sauce is the best I have ever tasted and the biscuit topping is lovely too. Just don’t handle the dough much, makes it tough.
Isa says to cut the biscuit topping into diamonds. Nothin’ doin’. In an expression of my feelings for the family I cook to feed each day and my sublime joy when I cook– hearts, duh!
If you make this for a family of more than two or three hungry people… I suggest you double it.
My Dad and Dr. Mercola are on a tear about how dangerous it is to eat large amounts of unfermented soy products such as tofu. I agree and tend to cook from whole food and use rice milks and ice creams instead of soy, but sometimes tofu or other soy products are just such a fantastic shortcut you just can’t do without it.
This week, per my meat-eater husband’s request, I made homemade tomato pasta sauce with fresh herbs and poured it over shells filled with Vegan with a Vengeance Tofu-Basil Ricotta. Even my picky kids had seconds. Delish.
The good thing about Tofu-Basil Ricotta (besides being soooo tasty smothered in homemade tomato sauce) is the nutritional yeast. Let’s be honest– the vegan diet can be dangerously short on B12. Long term effects of B12 deficiency can be very scary. Nutritional yeast helps right that imbalance. And it is tasty, tasty, tasty, too.
To go with, I served a salad based on a Nicola Graimes recipe– slivered blanched almonds, golden raisins, oranges. I added a few perfect mint leaves, citrus champagne vinegar, a little sugar, a pinch of sea salt. I sneaked in a huge nutrition punch with Udo’s 3-6-9 Flax, Sesame and Sunflower oil. You couldn’t even taste it, or its odd flavor simply complimented the mixture, one or the other. I served it on spinach leaves– c in the oranges makes the iron in the spinach available to your body– and it was so delicious, like a dessert. The kids even ate it, always the hallmark of vegan food success.
Finally… my stepson loves Pie. Any Pie. He is too big for me to pick up and throw on the bed or throw myself on him and tickle him like I could do when he was small, so I do a lot of communicating through food.
He requested sweet potato pie. I once claimed to make the best sweet potato pie in Alabama and perhaps throughout the southland. It involved eggs, butter, sweetened condensed milk, and resembled butterscotch pie rather than sweet potato. So good! What to do now that I am vegan? I hadn’t as yet found a good enough substitude.
But Albertson’s had organic yams, and I resolved to be brave and try.
I was dismayed to find that any recipe called for egg replacer or tofu. How could I thicken without those? Egg replacer often has a ‘taste’ and I honestly am trying to get away from the tofu.
So I decided to experiment. I mashed together 1 stick Earth Balance nonhydrogenated vegan margarine, 1 HUGE sweet potato baked in the microwave, a cup of organic sugar more or less, a half teaspoon of allspice, a half teaspoon of salt (go easy on the salt, it is WAY too easy to oversalt!) and a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice. I heated this to melt the margarine, and then mixed 1/2 cup of flour with water to make 1 cup to thicken, and continued adding rice milk (1/2 cup or a bit more, maybe?) and cooking til it was pudding consistency.
You have to cook flour puddings to a boil, stirring constantly to avoid scorching, to get rid of the floury taste. Once it boiled and cooled a bit I added a full big dessert spoon of bourbon vanilla from Trader Joe’s and poured it into a storebought shortbread crust and chilled. Nutrition + pie – tofu or egg replacer = …
My son had two slices for breakfast. Ahh… he knows the way to my heart.
My friend Kim gave me Nicola Graimes’ Vegan Recipes and I carried it with me across the country along with my beloved Vegan with a Vengeance and Veganomicon. I tried several recipes, and they were quite good.
Once upon a time Bryan and I made stuffed tomatoes with onions fried and tons of fresh spinach wilted in bacon grease (!), sour cream, onion, bacon, and salt and pepper. The resulting delicacy was so good as to send you into a swoon. I am thankful I no longer have a taste for that stuff… but if you can get bacon from ethically raised pigs… I would recommend it.
What am I saying???
We no longer do that. But if you still do that… anyway.
Back to vegan.
Since we don’t do that any more I was itching to try this recipe. It was something different but so very good, and low carb, only the rice was ‘bad’ and there was very little of it.
This would be a wonderful use for fresh, local, in-season or homegrown tomatoes especially. The filling is a tiny bit of cooked brown rice, almonds, herbs, onions, pulp and seeds from the hollowed out tomatoes… fresh and light but also full of protein and flavor. So satisfying!
The weakness of the cookbook– which others might see as a strength– is that instead of prescribing how much salt and pepper to use, she says ’season well with salt and pepper.’ What does well mean? Without a baseline amount I risk oversalting and ruining the food. I have friends who don’t salt much. How they manage I don’t know… but this would be great for them. Mmm, mmm!
I’ve been travelling. Today is the first day I have cooked breakfast for my family in a long, long time.
I had not tried Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ Fronch Toast from my beloved, beat up, stained copy of Vegan with a Vengeance. My kids and husband pronounced it a success. Well, my six year old just ate it, after swearing she did not want it. That is a success, right?
You can use baguette as called for but I just used some stale bread. I don’t think the bread was vegan but waste not, want not, right? My husband bought it before I got here (details on here in another post, gotta run to the pirate festival in Ojai). I love using up things instead of throwing them away. I put it in a 300 degree oven while I was putting together the other ingredients to make it nice and dry. I doubled her recipe.
Weird ingredients needed are soy creamer and chick pea flour. Silk makes soy creamer but my dad says to boycott them because they are a subsidiary of a dairy company with cruel confinement practices. I bought it anyway, til I find a better resource. Trader Joe’s makes it too. I found chick pea flour at Henry’s farm market, but it is available lots of places. So is maple syrup but I got it cheap at Trader Joe’s.
Yummy yum!
Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero’s Veganomicon is so full of amazing recipes. I tried out the simple, delicious chick pea noodle soup last night.
It helped me use up produce– a yellow onion, what was left of a bag of carrots, and a couple handfuls of whole mushrooms– that would have gone bad otherwise.
It was fast and easy and my baby tore it up, and liked it enough to take a thermos of it to school for lunch today.
Nobody in my town has ever heard of Soba noodles, so I just used a combo of spinach linguine and mini farfalle– added some visual interest.
I had soy miso, not brown rice– still delicious, though I did start out with 1/4 cup and taste as I added, as advised, to keep the soup from being too salty.
I use vegan veggie boullion cubes– cheap and tasty. I have no idea what the hell mirin is, so I used cheap pinot grigio (in an environmentally friendly cardboard bottle, natch) to deglaze the pan.
I hate mushrooms, and nobody in my town has heard of cremini mushrooms, so I just used up some I had in the house from a marinara I made. My baby loves them, I gave her all of mine, everyone’s happy.
And between the wrong deglazer, the wrong mushrooms and the wrong miso the flavor of this soup is as rich as any made with meat stock.
You gotta try it! And doesn’t every kid like noodle anything?
My parents got me Veganomicon for Christmas. My husband made one recipe from it, which was different and just delicious, and then it disappeared. How you lose a fat white heavy cookbook I dunno. But I cleaned my upstairs office/craft room when my mom came to stay this summer and it reappeared.
For a debate party a couple of weeks ago I made the beanball subs, except I put the beanballs, marinara and pine nut cream on slices of french bread brushed with olive oil and garlic like bruschetta. Oh, my gosh. I was craving that again so bad almost the minute I stopped eating it, but I ran out of french bread and without that it wasn’t the same. (CM, if you go to Costco tomorrow will you bring me some? Don’t make an extra trip though, it’s almost as good on the bread I already have here.)
So I made those again this weekend and we had them for supper last night. DAMN. I’m tempted to go make a couple up for a before bed snack. I know I’d be sorry though. Maybe for breakfast.
Saturday night my poor husband was getting ready to fly out for a work trip at six thirty Sunday morning. He had just gotten home Friday night. Poor guy! He loves artichoke hearts, and we have basil growing in our garden, so I made spinach linguine with basil cilantro pesto and artichoke hearts.
HOLY. COW.
This was an incredible thing.
She says right at the start of the recipe that you’ll be craving it all the time.
It’s a very original, unexpected taste, to say the least. And it is SO. GOOD. So rich and flavorful. The faint nutty sweetness of the almonds, the just right al dente noodles coated in just a little olive oil and sauteed in the basil cilantro pesto with thin slices of red onion… I’ll just be honest. it was better than dammit.
I hate artichoke hearts, so those were all his, but I don’t think it would be as good without at least the whisper of their flavor, even if I did push them all to the side and refuse to even taste one.
I think it’s safe to say that Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ trademark is the unexpected, flavorful, textureful delicious. If there were more like her in the world we’d all be vegan, for no reason other than that it just tastes so damn good!
I worship her, her partners, the lady who does fatfreevegan.com and the lady who does shmooed food and … lots of nameless folks whose recipes are so good and available to me on the internet. Because without them, the food ethics that are so important to me would be nearly impossible for me to put into practice.
Okay, okay, it’s nearly impossible now, but that’s my fault for succumbing to the occasional dairy pizza or Costco cake– but there are so many delicious vegan recipes out there and I am just so thankful because it does mean so much to me. And so does cooking, cooking cooking delicious, wonderful, interesting food! And I have a compulsion, no matter how exhausted I am, to share that food with people. So you want to be my friend. You really do. You do, that is, if you don’t mind things that are, well, different. Let me win you over with the insanely delicious desserts and baked goods. That’s what hooked me in. We’ll go from there.
Then today I spent a good part of the day cooking lentil tacos and the awesome veggie burgers from Vegan with a Vengeance. I was out of dijon mustard though (my husband, in a stunning display of helpfulness, completely cleaned our fridge long enough, and it was out of date so out it went), so couldn’t finish them. Tomorrow maybe.
To top it all off, I made two double layer pumpkin cheesecakes from fatfreevegan.com. That’s why I’m still up, waiting for the last one to finish baking. Who’m I kidding? I’m still up because I am getting old. But Mm. Mm. They will be so good tomorrow. I kick it up a notch though, in my own special way. I’ll let you guess what the secret flavor is. Heh.
For craft night I hope to make at least a half recipe of sweet basil tapenade from Veganomicon, and cannellini bruschetta. I looooove having that basil and rosemary growing fresh in my yard!
Now if I could just figure out how to make a vegan version of the maple-adobo pork chops or barbecued chicken and the rosemary-cheesy-red oniony corn bread that were once one of my signature meals…
I got my Dirty South vegan cookbook and my Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World in the mail the other day. I’m afraid to crack them because I know I’ll have to cook from them right away. This, to me, is porn. Or a World of Warcraft quest. It will suck me in. Now I just need Skinny Bitch in the Kitch and the cookbooks I ordered by Elena Zelayeta– I’m thinking I can use her Mexican fried chicken recipe for tofu, mmm, mmm! and I’ll be in business for true.
Yes, my kitchen was a mess. And yes, it is almost completely clean now. Read ‘em and weep.
Read and weep also at what time it is. I’m going to have to force myself to go to bed, because I have to get up early, dammit. That is, I want to get up early so I can have a little me time before I get the baby up and take us off to school and work. The grind begins anew. At least I have yummy food to come home to.
