"KFC" Sandwiches

It has been ages since I've made seitan, mainly because Ben has decided he doesn't like it.  I do, though, and I thought maybe he just didn't like the specific recipes I've been making, so I decided it would be a good idea to try some other ones and try to win him over.  This seitan is a recipe called No-Cluck Cutlets from Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day, and in this sandwich it's coated in batter and crushed cornflakes and fried, which I thought might help disguise the seitanness of it.

I thought this sandwich was KILLER.  Ben said, "it tastes like seitan."  Dangit!  I think I'm going to start using tofu for his portion of sandwiches like these and keeping the seitan all for myself.  I like it!

The best part of this sandwich was the sauce, which was mayo with diced pickles and onions and black pepper mixed in.  Why did I  never think of mixing stuff into mayonnaise until I tried veganism?

Empanadas

I sure don't know why we never break out the deep fryer because we fried up some empanadas the other night and they were amazing.  I did Viva Vegan's orange mojo seitan as the filling and made a big salad on the side with ancho chile dressing.

Since this dinner we are plotting all sorts of other things we could deep fry - and this is probably why I don't break it out more often.  Too dangerous!

Waffle Madness

So I keep trying to make vegan waffles and it is always a complete disaster.  I follow the directions and oil the waffle iron and let it cook for a really long time and they still stick terribly and it is an insane mess.  I decided to give it one more try last night, with the Cornmeal Waffle recipe from Vegan Brunch.  But look what happened.

This is sooooo annnnoyyyyyiinnnggg.

Anyway I made little pancakes out of them instead, and dumped the topping - sauteed seitan, onions and peppers with pantry mole sauce, avocado, and cilantro - on there.  It was great.  I will be sticking to pancakes in the future.

Vegan Cuban Sandwich

It's kind of hard to take a picture of a mushed sandwich, but here you go.

I was pretty surprised this worked out!  First of all, there are both pickles and mustard on there, which in the not-too-distant past would have been out of the question for me.  There is also Lightlife fake ham, which I sort of try to avoid just on principle.  And then there is orange mojo seitan from Viva Vegan, which is awesome under any circumstances.

In order to make a real Cuban sandwich you are supposed to mush it flat with a sandwich press while you fry it in butter (or Earth Balance).  I do not have a griddle or sandwich press or anything, so I just smashed it with my hands and then with the back of a spatula.  It worked pretty well!  And the taste was incredible!  I am always in search of a tasty, filling vegetarian sandwich so I am excited about this development.

Seitan Stroganoff

I'm a big fan of the stroganoff recipe in Vegan With a Vengeance, but I'm trying to branch out and keep trying new things so I went with American Vegan Kitchen's Beer-Simmered Seitan Stroganoff for last night's dinner.  It was really easy to throw together and tasted great, but it didn't really scream stroganoff to me - the sauce was really tomatoey and flavored mostly with smoked paprika. 

I served it over buttered (Earth Balance-d) parsley noodles and it made for a really good, hearty dinner.

Plate of Mexican-y Goodness

Normally I sit down with my cookbooks on Friday or Saturday and choose recipes and make a grocery list for the week.  We've had a crazy few weeks, though, and didn't get back in town this week until late Sunday night, so on Monday I went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of random vegetables with the intention of using them up with whatever staples we have around the house.  It's working pretty well!  Tuesday night we had quinoa, steamed broccoli, and tempeh all mixed up with peanut-lime dressing (from Appetite for Reduction) on top.

Last night I made the chipotle potato & seitan taco filling from Viva Vegan, but instead of eating it in tacos I served it over a big pile of lettuce and yellow rice with cherry tomatoes and avocado.  It was reeeeeeally good.  The discovery of how much I like to eat big mixed up piles of things is maybe my favorite unexpected side benefit of learning to cook vegan food.

I had leftovers for lunch today and even without the avocado (which naturally we polished off between the two of us last night), it was still delicious.

Sloppy Jerks

"Creamed spinach" has always sounded like a horrorshow to me, and has definitely been on the list of my Final Frontiers in what I'm willing to try.  When this recipe popped up on the PPK blog a few weeks ago I thought, "Well, I guess this is it," and I put it on the dinner list.  

Maybe it helps that it was coconut cream, I don't know, but I loved it!  And the seitan sloppy joe mix, seasoned with jerk flavors, was also great.  I like making fancy vegan sandwiches because they are hard to come by outside of my own house.

Served with tots, of course!

Upside-Down Lentil Shepherd's Pie

This is an Appetite for Reduction recipe I've made before but not posted. It's shepherd's pie filling - lentils, shiitake mushrooms, zucchini, carrots, etc. - served on top of mashed potatoes rather than baked under a mashed potato crust. Much faster and still delicious.

I added some chopped seitan left over from Sunday's gyros, too. Nice and hearty!

Gyros!

Is there anything that says "Super Bowl Sunday" more than veganized Greek food?? Just kidding. But gosh, these were delicious. The recipe (seitan, tzatziki sauce, and all) is from American Vegan Kitchen.

I made some yellow garlic rice on the side, which is more Latin than Greek but it tastes good and that's the main thing.

Portobello Pepper Steak Stew

This is one of the last recipes from Appetite for Reduction that I've really been anxious to make and haven't yet, mostly because mushrooms go bad almost instantly so they're sort of inconvenient to put on the weekly dinner plan. The seitan here is a simmered recipe - I almost always steam it, but decided to go the simmering route just to see how it turned out. The texture is not as dense as the steamed version, and I think the flavor was better. So HM. Now I have a dilemma about my preferred seitan method.

Anyway I was going to serve this stew over a nice big baked potato, but I forgot how freaking long a baked potato takes, so they weren't ready in time. It worked out fine anyway, because we had cheesecake for dessert and are eating the potatoes for lunch with stew leftovers today.

I really loved this recipe and will be making it again for sure.

We eat dinner on the couch, because we are uncultured, but these jerks took my spot so I had to sit on the floor. Hmph.

Sauteed Collards and Chorizo with Yellow Garlic Rice

MMMMM I could eat this every day. I chopped up about ten cloves of garlic and used half of them for the collards & (Viva Vegan) chorizo and half for the rice. The rice is made yellow by the addition of a tablespoon of annato-infused oil. Other than the garlic, this is flavored only by salt & pepper. How is it so delicious?? I have no idea.

Potato-Kale Soup with Chorizo

We have now entered the Detox Phase of the holidays and I'm so glad. It's such a weird thing we do, eating like maniacs for a month straight. Whyyyyy?? I feel gross and am afraid to get on the scale.

So here's some soup. It's a Viva Vegan recipe and the chorizo (vital wheat gluten-based) is hers, too. I cut the total oil in the recipe from 5 tablespoons to 2, and we didn't miss it.

It was so good I think we're just going to eat leftovers for dinner tonight instead of making something new.

Seitan Katsu with Tonkatsu Sauce

I've put this recipe (from American Vegan Kitchen) on my weekly dinner plan at least three times but for various reasons never got around to it. And now I regret that because it was awesome. I used Viva Vegan white seitan and almost skipped the breading & frying out of laziness, but I'm so glad I didn't because breaded + fried is always a good idea.

The seitan is served with a simple cabbage & carrot slaw and an awesome sweet Japanese sauce, sort of like what is commonly on fancy sushi rolls. I put the whole thing over lo mein noodles to make it a complete meal.

Ben took one bite and said, "Well, you've really outdone yourself here." I feel bad taking credit when I'm just following a recipe! It was really good, though.

Halal Cart-Style (not) Chicken & Rice With White Sauce

I saw this recipe on the internet the other day and was dying with want. So I veganized it!

The changes I made are pretty obvious ones - Earth Balance for butter, Vegenaise for mayo. I used vegan sour cream in place of the Greek yogurt, because vegan yogurts tend to be watery and sweet - even the plain versions have added sugar which would not work well for something like this. The sour cream (Follow Your Heart brand) worked perfectly. I used Viva Vegan white seitan in place of the chicken and also cut the olive oil in the marinade to 2 Tbsp and replaced the other 2 Tbsp with vegetable broth.

The whole thing was totally great. This was one of those dinners I immediately wanted to eat again right after I was finished eating it the first time. Fortunately, there are leftovers for lunch!

Braised Cabbage with Seitan

I almost didn't make this dinner, despite it being on the schedule, because a) it sounded sort of yucky and b) I was lazy and kind of headachy. If we hadn't had to pay for a new heat pump yesterday I probably would have ordered pizza, but I felt guilty about spending money.

So I made it (from Appetite for Reduction) and it's one of the most surprisingly delicious things I've made in ages. The seitan is sauteed first, and then braised with the cabbage in a thyme and garlic broth for about 15 minutes. It was super fast and the end result was super flavorful and juicy and delicious. Amazing.

Dinners like this make me glad to be vegan and also glad to have committed myself to cooking all the way through Appetite for Reduction. I would never have made this otherwise.

Sausage and Kale with Mashed Potatoes

This is vegan comfort food - quick, easy, hearty, tasty. I had the sausage (from Vegan Brunch) in the freezer and threw the rest together in just a few minutes.

I missed mashed potatoes! They've been out of the rotation recently for some reason.

Pasta with Italian Sausage

I chose the recipe for tonight's dinner by opening American Vegan Kitchen to a random page and going with it. I always mean to use that cookbook more, but the ingredient lists look intimidatingly long so I seem to unconsciously avoid it. I did make a couple changes - I halved the pasta (she called for a pound for four servings - too much!) and I added half a jar of quartered artichoke hearts that I had sitting around in the fridge. It wasn't complicated in the least - I need to make more of an effort to move AVK into regular rotation.

The sausage is a Vegan Brunch recipe I made this afternoon, and exceeded my expectations by quite a lot. I'd tried her sausages once before but I didn't wrap them tightly enough before steaming, so they weren't very firm. This time I wrapped those suckers as tight as I could and they were fantastic. I eat a lot of homemade fake meats and I wouldn't try to convince people that most of it actually tastes like meat, but these sausages could easily be substituted for those fancy packaged chicken ones and I doubt anyone would notice.

A Vegan Thanksgiving!

We had a small Thanksgiving at home, just me and Ben, but we sure did eat a lot.

I made the beer chocolate waffles from Vegan Brunch for breakfast, with a homemade chocolate sauce on top. These were my first successful vegan waffles - the ones I'd tried before stuck to the waffle iron even after spraying it with oil. Someone on the PPK message boards suggested cooking them a little longer than you think you should, and that worked!

Here is the dinner: I made a seitan pot roast with carrots & potatoes in the crockpot (recipe: Vegan Diner), roasted broccoli with garlic in the oven, and opened a can of jellied cranberry sauce because it's Ben's favorite. Even after more than a year of being vegan, I was sort of suspicious that a seitan pot roast would be any good, but it was great. A good thing, too, because we have tons of of it left over.

And then I made pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.

I used the recipe in Vegan Pie in the Sky, which uses a combination of cashews, silken tofu, and banana to stand in for the cream cheese. The consistency was incredible, just like regular cheesecake.

The flavor was not very pumpkiny, though - you could taste the banana and the citrus (orange zest & lemon juice) more than the pumpkin. This is possibly because we don't like nutmeg so I left it out. Regardless, it tasted great and is definitely something I'll make again. I need to try more things from the pie cookbook!

Sunday Night Ethiopian

I've been jonesing for the Ethiopian restaurant the last couple of weeks, but it's kind of a pain to drive to so we keep putting it off. Instead, I made some Ethiopian things for dinner.

I've made this seitan & peppers (Vegan With a Vengeance) once before, and I thought it needed to be less spicy and more saucy, so I cut the chiles by two-thirds and added an extra half-cup of vegetable broth this time around. But! I tasted the puree before I added the seitan & peppers and it was terrible, super bitter - the exact flavor of the green thai curry disaster! The only common ingredient is serrano chiles. Mystery solved!!! Serranos are hereby banned from my house. I'm thinking the last time I made this recipe, I must have used jalapenos, which I often do out of laziness. I put it in the oven regardless because peppers generally mellow out when they're baked, and it totally worked and was delicious, to my relief.

I also made the Mushroom Tibs from Appetite for Reduction, which we have also had once before.

Good dinner.

Pesto Pasta with Artichokes & Seitan

This looks like greenish goo but was really, really good and took all of 15 minutes. I had pesto and seitan in the freezer, so all I had to do was cook pasta, saute some onion and garlic, add the seitan for a little while, then mix everything together to heat through.

Next summer I'm going to plant as much basil as my porch can hold. I want lots and lots of pesto.