Lentils Ballz and Pasta

I was helping my friend RC pull wallpaper in her new house and she had made some veggie soup with "lentil balls" in it for lunch. I was impressed enough trying them in the soup that I decided to make some for dinner. She used the Chickpea Cutlet recipe from Vcon, subbing in french lentils for the beans. I only had red lentils, so I used those in the recipe, along with some good sourdough we picked up at Honest Weight. Paired them with pasta and this made a pretty quick and nice meal. I think these would be good in a sandwich also.

Carrot-Beet Salad with Raw Sundried Tomato Cheeze

It as been a while since I've posted. Finals, winter break, sickness, holidays, family visiting, and other random madness (snow storms!) left me with just a bit of time to keep from going crazy! I did spend some time thinking about life and figuring out how to deal with some of the issues I've been having on a personal level. This lead to some heavy reading in macrobiotics and raw foods. I'm not sure where things will really end up in terms of my diet and cooking, but for now I'm working on cleaning things up!!

I've been inspired by the raw chat thread on vegweb so I decided to make some raw stuff today. I have some crackers (sweet apricot flavor) in my dehydrator and I made some quite excellent sundried tomato cheese from Ani Phyo's book Ani's Raw Food Kitchen. It was a bit thick, so I used a scoop to make "cheese balls" for the top of this salad. The base is spinach and the pink "stuff" is carrot and beet that were grated in my food processor. Ha, that made a mess! Topped it with sunflour seeds and some flax oil. The cheese is really strong, but tasty. It would be easy to thin it down to make a spread or dressing.

Curried Carrot Soup

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. Things have been a bit nuts in the homestead, with the semester coming to an end and the dissertation "coming along" in a real way. I haven't been cooking as much as normal, so posting would be pretty lame and repetitive (ha! boca burgers again! ha! pizza again!). But I did find this jem that I made and apparently didn't report on. It's the curried carrot soup from one of the Kramer books (who knows, I have a couple of them). It was very easy and very good. Coconut milk, carrots, curry powder, some other stuff and love. And it looks good too!

Baked Tofu with Asparagus

Quick and easy tonight. The tofu was iron chefed. I put soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, oil, oregano, and red pepper flakes in a baking dish and added some water and sliced tofu. It went into the oven for 20 minutes, got flipped, and then back in for another 20 minutes. It worked really well and I didn't even have to press it! I roasted some asparagus on the side, dressed with oil, salt and pepper.

Calzone with Spicy Seitan

This meal was a lot of fun. I can't remember why I wanted to do something complex this week, but I've been in a good mood. The diss is coming along, my students aren't driving me too batty, and making new stuff is fun. My buddy Megan was telling me about how she made some smokie moz cheeze from the Uncheese Cookbook. After a mixed review, she offered to give me some. I thought, sweet! What could I do with this? Some ideas went thought and I ended up with calzones. However, our scheduals didn't line up (Thursday is her busy day - she is also a PhD student) and I was left cheezeless. So I told Scoots and DR to get some FYH while I made Soyrizo Seitan. Yeah, you heard it: seitan made with soyrizo. It was pretty good! I've included the recipe below. I would suggest BLENDING THE HECK out of the wet mix. I just mixed it and it was, um, fun kneading the seitan. I made pizza dough and wrapped hunks of baked seitan in with some cheeze. The sauce (yum!) was silken tofu blended with a little agave, lemon juice, and spices, including a touch of cinnamon. It was savory and sweet and went well with the spicy calzones.

Soyrizo Seitan

wet
1/2 package (1 "link") vegan soyrizo
1 c tomato juice

dry
2 c VWG
1/4 c (or so) nutritional yeast
spices: garlic powder, onion powder, paprika. I didn't measure. :)

Blend the wet together (if you want soyrizo chunks, just mix). Mix into the dry, adding a little more tomato juice (1/4 c or so total) to make a nice dough. Knead it for a bit and allow to rest for the gluten to relax. Cook as desired. I rolled mine into a fat log in foil because it was very delicate because of the chunks'o'soyrizo. I baked it for a while in the oven and then unwrapped it and sliced it up. The soyrizo adds a lot of flavor and gives it a looser texture. Megan and I have talked about messing around with mixing different protiens with the VWG to see what textures we get. I guess adding soyrizo doesn't do anything great, but it isn't too shabby!

Roasted Fennel and Beet Salad

Yeah, I thought I was nuts too when I came up with this. I had a ton of beets (thanks to Cammers and my CSA box) and some fennel that needed to be eaten, so I thought about what to do with them. I figured I would roast them and add them to some grain dish, similar to how I have dished up roasted veggies in the past. However, when I got my CSA box and it's gallons of salad mixes, I decided to just toss them on top of the lettuce with some dressing. For the dressing, I made the spicy mustard dressing in Veganomicon, subbing in agave for maple syrup. It was fantastic enough that DR ate her beets and then even snunk some into the salad she packed herself for work tomorrow. Winner! I love roasted anythings. Roasted fennel is up there with foods that make me drool.

Fettuccine with Leeks and Butternut Squash

Okay, I have to admit I used whole wheat "normal" spagetti noodles for this, but to each their own. This is a recipe from Pirello's Cooking the Whole Foods Way, which is 100 percent vegan if you get the newest edition. She as a vegan (pretty sure she said that) macrobiotics past and has a cooking show on PBS. My friend and I used to watch the PBS cooking shows a couple years back, but I don't remember ever seeing this show. Anyways, it is a fantastic cookbook with lots of fun and new ideas in it--something for every mood. I especially like that she uses a lot of different veggies in different ways than my other books. It is also cool that she talks a lot about her journeys with vegan and macro (she is a cancer surviver) and how the recipes really promote health and life. This recipe was pretty good, although the dinner crew wasn't thrilled. The sauce is leeks and squash that are cooked with some spices and liquids and then blended into a puree, which is then used on the pasta like a sauce. I made some frozen mixed veggies to go with them, but they are under my "pile" in the bowl. For fun (and because I had one) I included some fennel greens.