Pressed Eggplant and Olive sandwich

I made this recipe again this week.



Changes I made:
- My greens had gone slimy, so I didn't have any spinach to put on the sandwich.
- I added some smoked tofu to help even out the deep flavours of the olives and eggplant.
- I put vegan cream cheese on both sides of the bread.
- I picked up the olives already chopped from the olive bar at the grocery store, and they also had artichokes and roasted garlic so those got added into the sandwich.



I pressed it for about 24 hours in the fridge and the olive oil had seeped into most of the bread. So so great.

Notes
I liked the tofu on the sandwich, it did bring a more neutral flavour to the heaviness of the olives and eggplant. I did NOT like the cream cheese. I'm not sure if it was the brand I used (Daiya, it was soo sweet) or if having it sit for 24 hours allowed it to react with the rest of the ingredients in some weird way? It nearly ruined the sandwich for me. Next time, no cream cheese. The rest of the sandwich was good, but the first time I made the sandwich was much better.

Olive Lentil Burger

My friend, Beard Matt, gave me a ride home the other day, and in order to pay him back, I asked if he wanted to come and partake of our dinner. We wanted to put these on the grill, but they are waaaayyy too soft for that. After baking or cooking in the cast iron skillet, we put them on the grill for a few minutes.



I followed the instructions on the Post Punk Kitchen Blog.

Notes
We tried both baking and cooking in a cast iron skillet. I think I prefer these in the skillet, rather than baked, only because they came out much faster.

These burgers were really good. They were even better the second day. I will be making these again and again. Note the long times until dinner is on the table. We made the lentils the night before so we didn't have to wait for them to cook on the day of. I want to mess with the texture because we added a ton of bread crumbs to the mixture and even an egg to see if we could get it to form up better, but it did not. Once it was cooked, it held up fine on the bun, but it was soo soft before cooking.

Roasted Eggplant Muffuletta Sandwich

This is a recipe from Veganomicon. I have been eyeing it since I got the cookbook and finally made it the other day. I am going to make this many times more.



You can find the recipe in it's entirety here.

I didn't change anything about recipe. It is perfect the way it is. You need to press the sandwich for a few hours prior to the devouring and you should have seen all the physics text books I had stacked on top in my office. It was comical.

Notes
My husband thought this needed a creamy layer, like a mozzarella cheese. Maybe some tofu would suffice? I thought it was great.

Hummus Pizza!

I based my lunch today on a recipe I found in Supermarket Vegan. Every time I flipped through the cookbook, this recipe stood out to me. Who can go wrong with hummus on a pizza? I used a hot pitted salad mix from the olive bar at the grocery store.





Ingredients:

hummus (I made my own based on what I did a few days ago. If you are not making your own hummus, what are you waiting for? It is fast, cheap, and you can make it exactly how you want.)
kalamata olives, chopped (I chopped the olives in my food processor until it was chunky)
sun-dried tomatoes, cut into strips
rosemary
oregano
pita bread (I used the small size, they were about the size of my hand)
olive oil

Spread a bit of olive oil over the top of the pita bread and place in the toaster oven for a minute or two under toast until the bread is warm and bendable.

Spread hummus over the top of the pita bread. Layer on the olives and sun-dried tomatoes. Sprinkle with dried rosemary and oregano. Place back in the toaster oven for a few minutes more until everything is warm and the exposed pita is getting crispy.





Next time, I would like to make my own pita bread, but this was a filling, fast lunch.