Guatita

I'm back! After a visit to Kansas City last weekend, I took it easy the first couple of nights back and made things I've made before - baked pumpkin ziti (I thought I had already posted this but apparently not) and polenta rancheros.

I did make this new-to-me recipe last night, though: Guatita, a creamy potato peanut butter stew served over white rice, from Viva Vegan. I've been eyeing the recipe for a while and finally got around to it. I used chickpeas in place of the called-for TVP, and the texture worked really well with the creaminess of the potatoes and peanut buttery sauce. Delicious!

Chocolatey Crinkle Cookies

I almost forgot! Ben made these cookies (from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar) while I was cooking dinner and they were fantastic.

Banana likes to have a supervisory role.

Lentils & Rice with Caramelized Onions

This hardly counts as a World Vegetarian recipe because we have been making it consistently for close to ten years. It's kind of a McClure recipe at this point. It is so, so good, though, that I couldn't have a week of Madhur Jaffrey without including it. And even so, every time I make this, I doubt the recipe - how can rice and lentils and onions genuinely be as delicious as I remember? BUT IT IS.

The key is the caramelized onions, cooked for a long long time over low heat until they get all sweet and crispy and perfect. Look how the onions go from raw and boring to caramelized perfection:

And the final product, served with a side of kale. Yum.

Chili Glazed Tofu with Sesame Rice

I'm failing at World Vegetarian week!

I was supposed to make sweet & sour tempeh tonight but I just couldn't deal with a new recipe plus I didn't feel like going to the store for kale. If we hadn't gone out for lunch today I probably would have ordered takeout, but I felt like I should be somewhat financially responsible. So I threw together an old standby: Chili Glazed Tofu. This is the recipe that helped me finally figure out how to make tofu taste good, and I still make it all the time. The recipe calls for serving the tofu over asparagus and rice, but I will often throw in some sort of frozen vegetable instead (edamame is good) if asparagus is out of season.

Tonight I located a box of broccoli in the freezer and chopped it up into tiny bits, grated up some carrots, and mixed that into the rice for vegetables. This whole thing took about 15 minutes. So easy and so delicious! I can't believe I haven't made it in the entire life of the blog up to this point. Anyway, here it is.

Israeli Couscous with Asparagus and Mushrooms

Day two of World Vegetarian week: this is a pretty basic mushroom & asparagus saute in a sauce of white wine, garlic, and shallots, served over Israeli couscous. I used a little package of mixed mushrooms to fancy it up, and also added some seitan for protein.

Persian Ratatouille

Since I went vegan I've been cooking almost exclusively from vegan cookbooks and basically ignoring everything else. This week I decided to change that and have a week devoted to cooking from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, a cookbook I've had for at least ten years. I've made a few things from it over the years but not nearly enough.

Tonight I made her Persian "Ratatouille", a layered baked dish of lots of different vegetables and fruits: onion, eggplant, carrots, apples, zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes... I think that's all. There are chopped dried apricots and prunes on the top, and then seasoned tomato juice is poured over the top before baking.

The pictures are extremely unimpressive, but the flavors in this thing were amazing. Definite win! Looking forward to the rest of the week.

Appetizery Dinner

When we were little, my favorite dinner was what my dad called a Platter, which was cold cuts and sweet pickles and Chicken in a Biskit crackers. Honestly, we thought it was heaven. Tonight I decided to make a vegan version of Platter. It was slightly fancier, and with more vegetables, but the same basic idea.

I make stuffed mushrooms at the slightest opportunity. I remove the stems, chop them into tiny pieces and saute them with garlic, then mix that with cream cheese and salt & pepper to fill the mushrooms caps. I topped these with some chives from our "garden" (which is 1 chives plant and 1 basil plant, in pots on the porch). This is the first time I've done them with vegan cream cheese but they were the same.

I also roasted some asparagus with jerk seasonings (I am all about the jerk seasonings lately), and then we had water crackers, sliced cucumber, vegan sausages (homemade, naturally), and spreadable garlicky cheeze (ditto).

Here is a little cracker sandwich thing.

This dinner totally hit the spot. I'm easy to please.

Dinner for One

Ben had a work meeting tonight, so I threw together dinner for myself in about 10 minutes. Earlier this week, I roasted half a cup of chickpeas (leftover from the cutlets) and some cherry tomatoes because both were going to go bad soon. So, for tonight's dinner, I boiled up some macaroni and mixed it with that roasty goodness, topped with some chopped green onion.

Just some good, old fashioned macaroni and chickpeas. Ha. But seriously it was really good.

Jerk Seitan, Coconut Rice, and Collards

The marinade for this seitan (from Vegan with a Vengeance) was out of this world, made with pureed onion and garlic and ginger plus jamaican jerk spices like allspice and cinnamon. I left out the called for nutmeg because we hate it, and also - wisely, and for once - left out the cayenne so it wouldn't be too spicy for me. I put it together last night and let it marinate all day long. YUM.

Wet Bean Burritos

I chose this recipe (from American Vegan Kitchen) largely because I knew Ben would be super grossed out by the idea of eating something called a wet bean burrito. I'm a fun wife. And: success! He looked horrified when I told him what was for dinner. But really, these are just black bean & spinach burritos baked with an enchilada-type sauce on top.

The sauce was super fast and easy - it called for rehydrated dried chiles but I just used a couple of chipotles from the freezer instead.

I used some of the ranch from last night and a big pile of shredded green leaf lettuce to cool it down a little bit, because I'm a pretty big wimp when it comes to spice. This was a surprisingly quick dinner!

Burgers & Onion Rings

We've had a deep fryer for nearly 2 months and have only used it once! Unacceptable. So tonight we made two kinds of onion rings - one beer-battered, one with a crispy chickpea flour base. Ben was in charge of the frying, which actually isn't nearly a big hassle as I thought it would be. Aaaaaaand the whole thing was a total, awesome success.

The burgers were the extra Incrediburgers I made and froze a few weeks ago, and I also made a vegan ranch to go on both the burgers and to dip the onion rings into. Yummo!

Buckwheat..... Somethings

I wasn't going to post this but Ben said I had to.

HAHA. Um, yeah. This was supposed to be buckwheat waffles with tarragon mushroom red wine gravy. Unfortunately, the waffles stuck like crazy to the waffle iron so we were forced to make them into pancakes. But then the pancakes were super thin, so they were really like crepes, almost. And then they turned out to be the exact color of the gravy, which makes for a sort of horrifying photo.

We also ate some sauteed kale, out of bowls in the kitchen as we both stood there watching the "pancakes" cook, wondering if we would need to call and order Chinese food.

The thing is, though, the flavor of this meal was very good. It's just a shame the whole waffle part of the equation didn't work out. I made the batter about an hour before we cooked them, and I'm wondering if that was the problem? I might try again sometime soon. What else am I going to do with a bunch of buckwheat flour?

Here are some pictures of the my cute babies to cleanse the palate.

Sunday Brunch

I'm proud of what I cobbled together from leftovers this morning! I sauteed tempeh (the other half of the package was used in yesterday's sushi) with garlic and roasted vegetables from last night's dinner, and served it over roasted potatoes with tahini-dill sauce.

STUFFED.

Saturday Dinner

Chickpea cutlets are a dependable McClure household favorite - I think they're Ben's all-time vegan favorite, actually. I made a tahini-dill sauce to go on top, and attempted the broccoli millet croquette recipe from Veganomicon for accompaniment. They didn't really croquet up, however, so it was kind of just like fried broccoli millet mush with tahini-dill sauce - which, fortunately, tasted fantastic. Then I roasted some asparagus and roasted red peppers in olive oil, lemon zest, and salt & pepper for extra vegetables.

It was a kind of complicated dinner, even for me, but ended up being worth it. I have leftover cutlets and millet/broccoli mixture for lunch tomorrow, and I'm going to use the asparagus and red pepper in a tempeh scramble for breakfast. I'm all about the efficiency over here.

Spicy Tempeh Nori Rolls

I made sushi rolls for lunch today. The filling is avocado, scallion, and tempeh mixed with vegenaise, crushed red pepper, and sesame oil. Every time I make sushi I realize why it costs so much for rice and vegetables; this is time consuming and takes skill! I'm not very good at the rolling part, and our knives are apparently crap because it was a chore cutting them up. But! They tasted great and we didn't have to spend $50.

This is not a very good picture but look! There's Banana!