Home Is Where the Beetroot Is

There are a lot of "growing pains" that come with living in a new city. Basically, quadruple that when it's in a new country. All these different stores and brands to get used to. Having limited internet access hasn't helped matters. Even food differences are a little overwhelming.

I've yet to find kale in any of the markets here. This is a major dietary staple of mine, so if you have insight, please let me know. The closest I've found is chard, which they call "silverbeet" here. Here are some other crazy names Aussies use for foods:

peppers = capsicum (I think this goes for red and green bell peppers.)

zucchini/eggplant = courgette/aubergine (this seems to vary, but I believe this is the UK version sometimes seen here)

cookies = biscuits (which leads me to wonder what they call biscuits... dear god, they do have biscuits here, right??)

arugula = rocket (very common in salads and sandwiches here)

bacon strips = rashers (obvs I'm eating the soy kind)

beets = beetroot

Beetroot is also extremely common here on sandwiches. I've only ever cooked with it once, myself and that was in a chocolate cake of all places. It turned my whole kitchen pink, so I decided when working with it yesterday I'd used the canned variety.

I tried to make a hummus out of it, but without a food processor, it came out extra chunky style. So here's my non-recipe: One can beetroot, one can chickpeas, both rinsed and drained. Mash them up with a fork in a bowl with lemon juice (I used about 1/3 of a lemon), garlic, just a teaspoon or so of olive oil, salt, and lots of black pepper.

I served it with some baked wholemeal pita chips alongside some lemon-grilled asparagus and broccolini. There was a lot left over today so I took a pita, covered half of it with my beetroot spread, the other half with this yummy carrot dip I bought, and spread a bunch of cucumber slices on top, folded and i half, and boom: lunch.

Amazing how a simple home-cooked meal can make you feel less like you're house-sitting a stranger's apartment, and more like you're actually, well, home.

Ultimate Vegan Alfredo Recipe

On our last trip to Napa, Tim and I picked up a bottle of wine from Mendocino that I've been saving for a special occasion. My last home-cooked meal in our current apartment seemed ideal. It's a smokey roset that I remember thinking would go well with cheese, if only I ate it. So instead I attempted a vegan fettucine alfredo.

I've made my share of vegan cream sauces before, usually cashew-based, but they usually taste... well, cashew-based. And nothing like the creamy Italian sauce I grew up with. But with the advent of the miracle food that is Daiya (seriously, who do I need to bribe to get this stuff into Australia?) I thought I might be able to make a better go of it.

And how right I was! I might make some tweaks if I were to attempt this recipe again, but this worked pretty darn well for me tonight:

Vegan Alfredo Sauce Recipe:

1/2 Cup Earth Balance

1 Cup Soy Creamer (I used Wildwood)

1/2 Cup cashew cream

2 Cloves garlic minced as finely as possible

1 tsp nutritional yeast

Cracked pepper to taste, a pinch of mutmeg

1 Cup Daiya Italian vegan cheese

Basil for garnish

1 lb. Fettucine

It's pretty simple. Start off by boiling your water for the pasta. Mix together all the ingredients but the Daiya in a pan over medium heat until it reaches a low boil. Reduce heat and simmer. Once you put the pasta in to boil, you can add the Daiya to your sauce mixture. Stir continuously until you get a creamy sauce. If it's too thick, add more creamer or soy milk to thin it out.

Drain the pasta and ladle on the sauce generously. Top with a basil chiffonade if you're feeling fancy. It's good with some sort of green veggie side like steamed broccoli with lemon juice.

It may not be the healthiest meal ever... in fact, for the sake of my new year's resolution, we'll pretend it never happened. But it's the closest I've come to replicating an authentic alfredo sauce and still probably way less heart attack-inducing. I sort of have this idea in my head that because everyone in Australia is so fit that as soon as I arrive there, I'll just start shedding pounds by proxy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Delicious Daiya - Recipe and Photos

When I first decided I was going to try out being vegan in 2005 I made an ill-fated trip to my natural food store to pick up some shiny new products including a block of soy cheese that was hard, gray, and smelled like sweat socks. "I've been tricked," I thought. The pizza cravings set in pretty quickly. There was a place near Tim's apartment that advertised vegan pizza that was pretty decent but we eventually learned they were using casein-based cheese. Bastards!

Eventually I learned of Follow Your Heart brand soy cheese which made a reasonable substitute in small quantities and I started making pizza at home. Sometime in 2008 I believe, Chicago Soy Dairy came out with Teese. It was basically love at first taste. It melted so much better and the taste was a little uncanny. (Tim actually didn't care for the nacho Teese because he thought it tasted too much like the real thing.)

And then along came Daiya. For months I've heard it being hailed as the holy grail of vegan cheese, so when Rainbow Grocery finally started carrying it, I stocked up. It is very good. Perhaps I've gotten spoiled, but it didn't blow me away like I thought it would. But it has a lot of advantages going for it: it melts much faster than other vegan cheeses, it lasts a long time in the fridge, it comes pre-shredded, and it is soy-free, made rather from casava root.

I bought kind of a ridiculous amount of it though and I'm still looking for dishes to use it up. Here's a little collage of meals I've made with it so far:
Starting at the top we've got a veggie pizza and a basic spaghetti marinara (made with Mariquita Farms tomatoes). The middle two are from a lasagne which was awesome. By far the best vegan lasagne I've ever had. Bottom right we've got tempeh marinara with breadsticks and salad. The salad had Daiya in it too because I find that it works really well as a Parmesan substitute as well as a mozzarella. That's what inspired the last dish.

When I was just vegetarian I used to make this all the time using Parm, and it was probably really bad for me. I modified the recipe to make it a bit healthier and will share it for you here:

Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Broccoli, Chard, and Daiya

While your pasta water is boiling, chop up one stalk of broccoli into small pieces. Steam it in a covered pan for just 2 minutes or so so it's still somewhat firm. Add a tablespoon or olive oil, one chopped clove of garlic, a pinch of thyme, and a cup of chopped chard. (Spinach would work as well.) Add some vegetable broth keep it cooking and liberally add salt and black pepper. Once your pasta has nearly finished cooking add 1/4 cup of Daiya Italian cheese to the broccoli mix and keep stirring. Drain your pasta and toss it right into your pan to mix it all up.

Plate it and top it with some more Daiya and extra black pepper (you really can't use too much). It makes either one really large serving or two small ones.

If you've got any great recipes using Daiya let me know. Or if you can think of any meals you used to enjoy with mozzarella or parmesan and would like to see veganized, I'm always willing to give that a shot!

Soupy Tuesday 2: Sweet Basil, Cauliflower, and Toasted Corn Chowder

Well, I've certainly made a dent in the current corn surplus in my apartment:

Not gonna lie, this was one of the best soups I've ever made, and I make a lot of soups. It's a great late summer evening soup for when you're still feeling bright and sunny but the weather is starting to cool down.

I'm not going to post the full recipe because frankly it was too experimental. I was just adding dashes of things I had around without really measuring. But I will give you what was basically the key to making this delicious: toasting the corn.

While my base was simmering I cut the corn straight from the cob (4 ears) and sauteed it in Earth Balance, black pepper, and the leftover basil sea salt. When it started getting all toasty I glazed the pan with a little white wine. This could make a great side dish on its own, and I'm pretty sure that whatever soup base I put it into, it would have made it heavenly.

Mid-Week Fancy-ish Dinner: Papardelle Primavera

One of my favorite things about eating out is the inspiration it lends to my own cooking. When I try a dish I love I'll do my best to try to figure out what's in it, and how I can re-create it. If I were a Top Chef contestant I think I'd do well at those challenges where they test your palate to see how many ingredients you can name in a dish.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post, I fell in love with San Diego restaurant Spread -- most notably their papardelle dish. Papardelle is my favorite pasta and it can be difficult to find a vegan version of it because it usually contains egg, which helps hold together the wide noodle. But I lucked out and found some fresh vegan papardelle in Whole Foods this week and knew I'd have to attempt to re-create the Spread meal.

This isn't an exact replica. It's more of a cross between theirs and a pasta primavera. But I was still pretty pleased with the results and it was pretty simple. Here's my recipe:

Ingredients Used:
1/2 Large Carrot, chopped
3/4 Can crushed tomatoes (I used Muir Glen fire roasted.)
1/4 Cup olive oil
1/4 Cup vegetable broth
1/2 Zucchini, chopped
1/2 Cup peas
1 Tbsp chopped red onion or shallots
1 Tsp lemon olive oil (use 1 tsp oil plus 1 tsp lemon juice if you don't have an infused oil)
1 Tbsp white wine or sherry
Assortment of fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme and sage) chopped. About 1 tsp all together.
Salt, black pepper, dry sage to taste
12 Oz. pasta (this would be good with penne too)

Directions:

In a small pot, heat the veggie broth and olive oil. Chop the carrot finely and add to pot along with salt and some dry sage. Simmer over low heat, covered for 15-20 minutes. Now's a good time to start the water boiling for the pasta.

In a separate small frying pan bring the peas, onion, zucchini, lemon oil, and wine to a low simmer. After 5 minutes or so, add half of your chopped herbs, along with some salt.

After your carrots have simmered, they should be able to easily be crushed using a fork or potato masher. Add the crushed tomatoes and some more salt, mash and continue to simmer, covered, over very low heat.

Keep stirring the peas and zucchini. You may want to add a bit more wine if they're looking dry. Once your water is boiling and the pasta. If it's fresh pasta it will only take about 5 minutes, and you'll want to continually stir it to avoid sticking. (Mine actually stuck together really bad which may have been the draw back to using it fresh. Tongs can be useful in helping separate while you stir.)

Once it's ready drain and dish out onto two plates. Cover with several spoonfuls of tomato sauce, topped with the zuccini and peas. Sprinkle the remaining fresh herbs and a little cracked black pepper.

Voila! Serve it with a nice white wine and a simple side salad - mixed greens and what not. This meal will probably get you laid.

Soupy Tuesday

Recently I was trying to decide what my "signature dish" should be. Very important work, I know. Though I've become somewhat known for my baking, I actually don't love doing it. It's too much of an exact science, having to measure out ingredients exactly. I tend to prefer just throwing things into a pot and seeing what comes out.

So I suppose it's fitting that I decided my signature dish is soup. I love it in all forms - creamy, tomatoey, full of veggies and beans. At a previous job I used to cook up big pots of soup on Sunday nights and bring them in for lunch for my co-workers on Mondays.  And it's perfect for using up leftovers, which is why yesterday I found myself cooking up a big pot of what I'll call "Mixed Greens and Noodle Soup."

It was so good so I figured I'd post what I did. Sort of a recipe... more like suggestions. 

I started with 3 Yukon Gold potatoes which I partially skinned, chopped up and boiled until they were soft.

While they boiled I heated 2 tbps of olive oil in my pot and added two cloves of chopped garlic, salt, pepper, thyme, tarragon, and onion powder. When it got hot, I added some sherry to deglaze the pot. Then I lowered the heat and added a quart (32 oz.) of vegetable broth and 1/3 cup of white miso and stirred.

Next I chopped up about half a bunch of kale, maybe two or 3 cups of spinach, one stalk of broccoli, and one carrot and added those to the mix. I added two cups of water.

When the potatoes are cooked, pull them off the stove and pour out most of the water. I left a bit of water in the pot, added to it one cup of non-dairy milk, mashed it all together until it was nice and creamy, and then added it to my soup. 

I stirred everything well and let it simmer, covered for about 15 minutes. Then I added a handful of soba noodles and let cook for another 10. Voila!

Super easy and you could probably added any greens, cauliflower, celery, onion. Good stuff.

Killer Kale Recipes

Every now and then I have to take a break from promotion Veg Table to actually eat... I'm trying to eat healthier and lose a bit of weight because summer, bathing suits, weddings, blah blah blah. I don't really need an excuse to add healthier meals to my diet. So because I'm trying to eat lighter, smaller portions, I'm trying to work in foods that are dense in nutrients. Like kale! It's a superfood!

I know that eating raw kale makes me sound like one of those vegans who wastes away, subsiding on nothing but berries and twigs. Don't worry, I've consumed enough fried pickles and beer over the last year to more than warrant a bit of a cleanse. And while kale can be great sauteed in garlic and olive oil, you're just losing nutrients and adding fat. So here are a few ways I sneak it into my dishes.

Kale and Soba Noodle Salad

I eat a lot of edamame because it's high in protein and yummy. I buy it frozen and shelled so you can't beat that convenience. I throw about a cup of it in a bowl (don't bother to thaw it) with maybe three large leaves of kale, stalk removed and chopped up. After the soba noodles have cooked, drain and toss them right in. (The frozen edamame will cool down the noodles and vice versa.) Then I toss with a combo of rice vinegar, ginger, black pepper, soy sauce and garlic salt. If you're not too concerned about the calories you can add sesame or chili oil. You can also throw in some pine nuts or almonds. Doesn't get much easier than that. 

Here's another variation...

Kale Sushi Rolls

Take one cup uncooked sushi rice and cook as directed. I used this Jade Pearl Rice which is infused with bamboo for a little extra iron and a nutty flavor, which took about 20 minutes. Move it to a bowl, add a healthy amount of rice vinegar, fluff it up, and refrigerate. While it cools chop up three large kale leaves. (You want to chop it pretty finely.) I added edamame because I almost always have it on hand, but I bet this would work really well using chopped up avocado instead. If you want to avoid the fat, try diced cucumber or daikon. 

Mix into the rice some similar flavors as used for the kale salad. You can't go wrong with soy, ginger, garlic salt, and black pepper. I added a touch of hoisin too for added sweetness. Toss some sesame seeds in there too and then add the kale and whatever other veggies you've decided on and mix well. It helps if you have bamboo sushi rolling mat, but you can make do without. Lay a sheet of nori out and place a few spoonfuls of your rice mixture onto one half. Spread it out so it covers a little over 1/2 of the nori like so and then roll it up into a nice tight roll. This makes about 6-8 rolls. Cut them in half and then serve with your choice of dipping sauce.

Do you have a favorite recipe using kale? Let me know!