Beet Burger Lunch

Beet burger recipe here: http://www.theppk.com/2012/02/quarter-pounder-beet-burger/. These are so fantastically tasty. We try to make them every time we have beets in the house. This time we added about 2 tablespoons of vital wheat gluten and the burgers held together so so well.

Served with kiwi, apples, carrots, celery, and hummus.

Tempeh Rice Lunch

Ingredients
Rice
Cilantro
Lime
Tempeh
Onion

Method
Cook rice in rice cooker. After cooking, add chopped cilantro and lime juice.

Cook up a couple of tempeh bacon slices and onions on the stove top.

Notes
Served with kimchi, carrot, avocado, hummus, and blood orange.

Bonus picture of a tea sample I have from Upton. This tea from Indonesia is amazingly tasty. I had everyone smell the tea after I opened it. Too bad I can only have a 1/2 cup a day due to my caffeine intolerance.

Winter Rice Salad lunch

Ingredients
Rice
Chickpeas
Chard
Butternut squash
chipotle powder
olive oil

Tahini Sauce
2 parts tahini
2 parts soy sauce
1 part black vinegar
1 part rice vinegar
0.5 part hot sauce
1 partish water

Method
Preheat oven to 400F.

Cut butternut squash is half lengthwise. Clean out seeds and place cut side down in a baking dish with high sides. Fill the bottom of the dish with water to cover about 1/2 inch of the squash. Bake for about 30 minutes until the flesh is soft.

Drain and rinse chickpeas, saving brine for Aquafaba experiments, if desired. On a baking sheet covered in parchment paper lay out chickpeas and drizzle with a little bit of olive oil and chipotle chili powder or any other spices desired. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes until chickpeas are firm. They crisp up more as they cool down.

Cook rice in rice cooker. Can you cook rice any other way? I argue that there is only one way to cook rice and that is with a rice cooker.

Chop up chard into bite size pieces.

Whisk everything together for the tahini sauce adding more water if needed to get tahini to blend nicely.

In a bowl place rice, a couple of spoonfuls of butternut squash, chickpeas, chard and drizzle with sauce. Mix until blended together.

Notes
This was super tasty and a great way to use up the butternut squash that has been sitting on my counter for the past 3 months. The tahini sauce was adapted from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook.

This is what it looks like before mixing everything up. The squash sort of disappears in the dish.

The salad was served with carrots, apple, and hummus.

BBQ Tofu Lunch

Ingredients
Extra Firm Tofu
BBQ Sauce

Method
Heat oven to 400F. Press tofu, if desired, I have this press. Chop tofu into 1 inch cubes. Place tofu in a baking dish big enough for the tofu to lay in a single layer. Smother with BBQ sauce and mix until everything is covered. Bake tofu covered with foil for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake 15 more minutes until tofu is firm. I'm still playing around with the baking times, so adjust to what tastes best to you.

Notes
My lunch also included: kimchi, avocado, cucumber, bell pepper, carrot, apple, and hummus. We ate the rest of the BBQ tofu leftovers today on toast with vegan mayo and avocado.

Tempeh Wrap Lunch

Lunch in my new Monbento lunch box. This bento box holds enough food for lunch and either a morning or afternoon snack.

Today's bento includes:
Tempeh, avocado, hummus wrap
carrots
hummus
cucumbers
pineapple
orange
Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cup



This is what the bento box looks like when it is closed up. Each level has an airtight lid. I like this bento box a lot!

Veggie Noodle Lunch

Ingredients
1 zucchini
1 carrot
3 chard leaves
1 stalk celery
1/4 avocado
1-2 strips of tempeh
peanut sauce (I used Fire on the Mountain Spicy Peanut sauce)

Method
Using a spiralizer, mandolin, or serrated vegetable peeler, make noodles out of the zucchini and carrot. Place into a bowl. Chop up the chard, celery, and avocado into small chunks and add to bowl.

Cook tempeh in a cast iron skillet for about 2-3 minutes per side until browned. Chop into chunks and add to the bowl.

Drizzle everything with peanut sauce.

Add anything else that would taste good raw - bell pepper, cucumber, apple.


Notes
This was super tasty the day when it was freshly made. After the vegetables sat in the peanut sauce over night, the texture became super mushy and not as appetizing. I would eating this quickly after adding the sauce and devour entirely. It is fantastic when it is fresh! If you use pasta noodles instead of just vegetables, I bet the noodles would taste better after sitting overnight in peanut sauce. It was nice to have a dinner consisting of mostly vegetables. Winter time is coming to a close!

The small dip container holds toasted onion hummus for the carrots and celery.

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.

Soy Curls with rice and broccoli

Back by popular request (well, one person requested that I start posting again)!


Sorry for the crappy cell phone photo! Sometimes the delicious food does not want to wait for the good camera to get out for the party.

Have you heard of soy curls? They are the new faux meat of choice here in Portland and I have really enjoyed trying all the different takes on them around town. I first tried them in a Buffalo "Chicken" sub at the Sweet Hereafter (all vegan bar) and fell in love. My next taste test was at the Double Dragon with the Orange Sesame Soy Curl sandwich. In a Mexican iteration, Los Gorditos allows you to add soy curls to practically any menu item so I had them in Gordito form, which was delicious. The latest soy curl consumption came from Canteen (another all vegan place) in the Southern bowl (see below).


The Southern Bowl and Apple Ginger Greens smoothie from the Canteen.

My husband was walking by the vegan grocery store after work a few weeks ago and picked up a package of soy curls for us. We just finished cooking through the 1lb bag (which lasted about five meals for the two of us) and I am eager to go pick up another package (or twelve). The texture is what I find so amazing about them. They are very substantial and don't break down like tofu can do. They also really do take up whatever flavour you put on them (like tofu is SUPPOSED to do) and don't require several long steps to get a good texture consistency (pressing, then marinating, then cooking it just right), just some rehydration, some sort of sauce, and go. They are wonderful!

Other things we tried with our package of soy curls:
- rehydrating and sautéing them with veggie broth, white wine, and butter, served with rice and vegeteables
- rehydrating with veggie broth, then sautéing with cumin and chili powder for use in fajitas

Ideas that look tasty from other food blogs:
Mongolian Soy Curls
BBQ Soy Curls
Sesame Soy Curls
Thai Soy Curl Pizza
Smokey Soy Curl Chili
And for more ideas, Pinterest seems to have a lot of recipes for these amazing bits of awesome.

Ingredients
warm veggie broth
1/4-1/3 cup of soy curls (for 1 VERY large serving or two normal size servings)
sweet chili sauce

fresh ginger, minced
fresh garlic, minced
broccoli, chopped

rice
water

Method
Start cooking rice in whatever method you choose (I can't live without my rice cooker).

While the rice is cooking, put the soy curls in the veggie broth and allow to rehydrate and marinate.

In a skillet over medium heat, add some olive oil and sauté the garlic and ginger for a few minutes until fragrant. Add the broccoli and some of the veggie broth (about 1/4 cup) from the soy curls. Stir, then cover and steam for about 5 minutes until the broccoli is to the desired doneness. I like it more on the crunchy side than soft. Taste for salt and pepper needs. Remove broccoli from pan.

In the same skillet used for the broccoli (no need to wash it!), add the soy curls with about 1/4 cup of the veggie broth and several glugs of the sweet chili sauce. Sauté over medium high heat until the broth has evaporated and the chili sauce is coated around the soy curls.

Serve soy curls with the rice and broccoli.

Notes
Seriously, get your hands on soy curls. This was a winning dish and I can't wait to get another package for more experimentation!

Vegan Pho - Inspiration

I recently moved back to the Vegan Mecca - Portland, Oregon! I am so happy that I am now able to get a wide variety of vegan options at pretty much any restaurant I go into. My problem is, however, that when a restaurant makes a vegetarian dish from what is traditionally a meat dish, they tend to add vegetables to bulk up the meal that don't always go with the dish - green beans, bell peppers, zucchini, cauliflower, ugh. When I order a vegetarian version of a meat dish, I would like to just have tofu/tempeh/beans/whatever protein sub is appropriate to substitute for the meat and I want the same vegetables as you would get with the original dish. For example, I have ordered veggie fajitas from Mexican places only to be given mixed frozen vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, carrots) to put in my tortillas, instead of just getting the bell peppers and onions. And if I modify a dish to fit my diet it can end up being mediocre because I took off something that was essential to the flavour of the dish.

Anyway, all of this is to say, I don't want to order veggie pho with mushrooms, green beans, bell peppers and whatever other random vegetables they want to throw in, so I am going to make it at home. I spent some time searching for recipes online this afternoon and I thought I would share them on here.

I searched for recipes that made their own broth using flavourful ingredients because that is the most important part of any pho.

http://www.steamykitchen.com/271-vietnamese-beef-noodle-soup-pho.html (NOT VEGAN, but I am including it for ideas on what spices/veggies to use).

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/health/nutrition/noodle-soups-from-the-garden-simple-vegetarian-pho-broth.html?_r=0 (Onions as well as the ginger is grilled before making the broth... count me intrigued on how that brings out that real ginger flavour).

http://thecozyherbivore.blogspot.com/2012/12/vegan-pho-with-green-tea-broth.html (This is made with my favourite green tea - gen mai cha! I'm not sure if I want a "popcorn" flavour in my pho, but it is something to consider).

http://www.oneingredientchef.com/vegan-pho/ (If you are not following this blog, I highly suggest that you do so. Each of his recipes uses "one ingredient" - meaning only whole foods. Everything is as minimally processed as possible and all the recipes look super tasty).

I'm going to be at my sister's house in the 'burbs this weekend and I'll probably take the opportunity to go by Uwajimaya for proper rice noodles, fried tofu cubes, and Thai basil without paying "white people" prices.

Have you made Vegan Pho? If so, any recipe you recommend? Or do you know of some place in Portland that I should check out?

Orange Tofu with rice and broccoli

We bought a tofu press this week. This one to be exact. It is essentially two plastic cutting boards with screws on two sides to compress the tofu. It is amazing. I looked at the reviews for both this one and the Tofu Xpress and decided to go with the simpler gadget. It took about 20 minutes to press the block of tofu down to dense deliciousness. For the first go with the press, I decided to use the resulting tofu in an orange sauce over rice with broccoli. I used a combination of three recipes for the orange sauce (Food52, Vegetarian Ventures, and the PPK).

Ingredients
1 16 oz package extra firm tofu, drained and pressed
olive oil

zest from 1 orange
juice from two oranges
2 - 4 T rice wine vinegar (I think the higher amount balances out the sweet and salty well)
1 T maple syrup
1 - 2 T soy sauce
2 inch chopped fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic
Sriracha (or a fresh chili, or red chili flakes)
1 T cornstarch

rice
water

1 head broccoli
olive oil
salt
pepper

green onions, chopped

Method
Press tofu using whatever device you fancy until it is firm, dense, and dry. It took about 20 minutes with our new gadget.

Cook rice in whatever way you fancy. We have a cheapo rice cooker and I'm not sure how I cooked rice without it.

Preheat oven or toaster oven to 400F. Chop broccoli into pieces and coat with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Put on a small pan in a single layer and place in the oven. Cook for about 15 minutes until the florets are a bit burnt and the stalk is tender.

While the tofu is pressing, rice is steaming, and broccoli is roasting, whisk together all the ingredients for the sauce in a medium bowl. Taste and adjust sauce, although not too much, the character changes a bit when it is heated. Make sure there are no clumps from the cornstarch.

When tofu is done pressing, cut into slices. Heat some olive oil in a cast iron pan over medium heat and add slices. Cook on each side until crispy, about 10 minutes all together.

Once the tofu goes into the pan, add the sauce to a large high sided skillet. Heat the sauce over medium heat until it starts to bubble and thicken and turn off the heat. Stir every so often to keep the sauce from becoming too stiff. Add the broccoli and tofu to the sauce when they are done and stir to coat. Serve over rice with fresh green onions.


Notes
We both loved the texture of the tofu after pressing it and the sauce was delicious. The tofu was chewy and not mushy at all. I am a tofu press convert. I cut the tofu into cubes and because I didn't marinate the tofu before cooking, the tofu was a bit bland in the middle. I suggest cutting thin slabs for this dish or marinating in the sauce before cooking. I am eating the leftovers for lunch tomorrow and perhaps the sauce will soak in by then.