Two Dinners

Sorry about no post yesterday. That time of the month and my stomach as acting up again. Actually, I shouldn’t complain to much. It used to be like this for 3 weeks out of the month, till I went on birth control pills. However, it hasn’t come back since I had to stop taking them (since I could no longer afford to buy them or see a doctor, even at Planned Parenthood). One or two days a month, I can definitely live with.

But onto dinner last night. Yes, I did eat dinner. It wasn’t till later in the evening that my stomach started to act up. I made, what for a better term, would be a ratatouille lasagna with the leftover ratatouille and some of the polenta. The idea came from a recipe I have for a lasagna made with vegan pesto and polenta. However, finding vegan pesto in the Tampa area is just not possible and I really didn’t want to make any. But the recipe got me thinking and I wondered why something similar couldn’t be done with ratatouille. It worked, but I would do it differently the next time. The better way to do this would be to brown the rounds of polenta in some margarine, or even better, some olive oil. Warm up the ratatouille at the same time and make little stacks on the plate, sprinkling some vegan parmesan in top of each level. Then you have no need to put it in the oven and it looks a little nicer.

Tonight’s dinner is using up some leftovers. The kale, from Tuesday, and some of the Macadamia crusted seitan from last week. I cooked the kale down with some splashes of orange juice, tamari and a bit of garlic and ginger. The seitan was just reheated in the toaster oven and then sliced up and laid on the kale with the sauce. Sounds like an odd combination, but it was quite good. The kale was a bit sweet and salty and then the richness of the nut crusted seitan gets mixed in with that. And you get a bit of heat from the ginger. Kale is starting to grow on me, so it might be appearing a bit more often. Unfortunately, that will depend on how easy it is to buy small bunches of it, since the TeddyBear will not even try it.

All for this week. See you on Monday.

Stir Fry Vegetables and Raw Cashew Cheesecake with Mangos

Dinner was what I was trying to have a few weeks ago. I went back to my standard frozen stir fry vegetables and was happy to find for once, that it did not have a big chunk of broccoli in it and nothing else. However, the vegetables are not what this is about today, this is really about the glaze used on them, Sweet and Spicy Curried Miso Glaze. This is a sauce I found over at vegweb.com, a site that has tons of vegan recipes. It sounded like an interesting mix of ingredients, so it has been in the recipe book till I could give it a try. And the taste is quite interesting. It was not hot, nor spicy, nor salty, but a bit of all three with an bit of sweetness as well. I most likely could have put in more curry paste and miso, but was afraid of using to much initially. The glaze could also have mellowed from sitting in the refrigerator for a few weeks. However, I liked it just as it is and this may become my regular glaze for simple stir fries, since I really don’t want to overwhelm the vegetables and it doesn’t make a lot of glaze.

As a bonus you get to see the desert I have been eating for a the past few days. Lunch for me was late today, so I ended up eating it with dinner. This is the Raw Vegan Cashew Cheesecake from the July/August 2008 Vegetarian Times. I wanted to see if it would work to just eat the filling and not make the crust. So far it has been sitting in the refrigerator since Monday, and has set up and stayed quite firm. Of course, for me it isn’t quite raw, since I didn’t use raw agave nectar nor fresh squeezed lemon juice nor vanilla seeds, but it is still quite good. Definitely a keeper.

Seitan and Polenta Skillet with Kale

This dish is an adaption of the Seitan and Polenta Skillet with Fresh Greens in Vegan Express by Nava Atlas. For some reason, I thought the dish had kale, not Bok Choy and spinach. Since I didn’t realize this until after all the shopping was done, I decided to make the recipe with kale instead; figuring that the kale would be an acceptable substitution.

And boy is this really good. it has all these flavors and textures going at one time. The balsamic vinegar adds a nice touch of sweetness to the richness of the seitan and the kale. The polenta is crispy on the outside and soft inside, which is a nice contrast to the chewy seitan and somewhat still crisp kale leaves. And this is all with simple and basic ingredients and technique. This is a dish I could easily slip into making once a week, if I wasn’t careful.

If Vegan Express is not in your cookbook set and you need recipes that are easy and fast. This is the book for you. All of the recipes in the book are able to be made in anywhere from 15-45 minutes maximum. She also has some unrecipes for vegetables that make simple side dishes to help complete a meal, make a sandwich or a salad. Many of the dishes come with suggestions for how to turn the dish into a full meal for a family. She even has deserts. Since the book is now available as an eBook, you don’t even have to wait for the shipping. Both Mobipocket.com and Ereader.com have it for about 20 bucks. You can have it 5 minutes after ordering. Now if I could just get a nice slate touch screen computer to be attached to the refrigerator.

Ratatouille

Yes, I am having that classic French vegetable dish, ratatouille. Of course, I am about two years late, since I should have tried it the summer when that Disney movie came out. And now wonder why I haven’t had it before. Oh, that’s right, eggplant. Had to get past my eggplant reaction to give it a try.

The recipe I used surprised me though. I thought that one would taste all the herbs in it and garlic, considering all the seasoning that is used. But it wasn’t overdone. Since eggplant it a sponge, it probably needs to be over seasoned to taste correctly.

Now here I just had it on rice, but later this week, I am going to try it in a “Ratatouille Lasagna” with polenta rounds. Since I have a ton of leftovers, that should be different way to eat some of them.

Sorry about the steam, dinner was hot from the pan.

Easy Corn Cakes with Pantry Mole Rojo and Seitan

This is a recipe of Isa’s that I found over at The Veggie Patch by Vegetation. It is supposed to have corn waffles as the base for the seitan, veggies and mole sauce. Unfortunately, I have no waffle iron and no place in the kitchen to keep one, so it has been on hold for me till a suitable replacement was found. And thanks to SusanV over at Fat Free Vegan, a replacement came my way, Easy Corn Cakes.

Now my Easy Corn Cakes don’t look as nice as hers do. That may be due to the fact that I skipped the egg replacer. The recipe already has chickpea flour in it and I figured that they would be fine without the egg replacer, since it was such a low amount. I also skipped the hot pepper flakes, since the mole was going to be have enough heat in it. I should have had my pan on a higher temperature and then they might have come out better. They were still good though, with the taste and texture reminding one of cornbread.

I only really made one alteration to the Pantry Mole Rojo and Seitan, adding corn to the pepper, onion and seitan mixture. Just trying to get an extra veggie in there. However, in retrospect, I should have used less chili powder (note to self: chipotle chili powder is hotter than you think it is). It is far to spicy (had to eat a piece of bread after dinner to cool my mouth) and I couldn’t taste the chocolate in the mole. However, the mole is quite good and is much easier to prepare than the one in VCON. Will now have to try the dishes with mole from VCON to use up some of the sauce, since this recipe makes a ton. Should have done what Vegatation did, make only half a batch. There is enough mole in the refrigerator for weeks.

All for this week. Leftovers tomorrow so see you all on Monday.

Easiest Curried Amaranth with Veggies

Part of dinner tonight is this recipe from Vegweb.com. And it was quite good, but I do not get the serving size. Or maybe that is because the original uses quinoa and I used amaranth. But still, a single serving of this must be huge.

As I said earlier, the quinoa was exchanged for amaranth in this because I just cannot get past the sprouted look of quinoa. And I have tried. Amaranth is its cousin, however, so I am most likely not missing out on any nutrition. The spices and the green beans (sub for the peas) were mixed in after 15 minutes so that the spices could be stirred through and the frozen green beans heat up. The veggies are prechopped ones from the produce area. I decided to use the Lemon Cilantro Crema on top and mix the shredded carrots in with the amaranth, since I don’t have any cilantro. Very good. Quite spicy. When I finally get a job, this is a great dish to take to work. Oh, and that is more the Broccoli Slaw from last night, on the side.

Macadamia-Encrusted Seitan with Mango Broccoli Slaw

That decadent plate you see is a result of this recipe from the VegCooking site. To bad the TeddyBear doesn’t like broccoli, or this could have been Valentine’s Day dinner as well.

And even though all this doesn’t look like it goes well together, the slaw is a perfect foil to the seitan. It is crispy, a bit sweet and spicy. With an added plus of orange juice in the dressing that makes the iron in the broccoli slaw more available to the body. And broccoli slaw, is that just not a perfect invention. A very sneaky way to get people to eat the one vegetable most people hate, broccoli. The mango in the slaw adds a very nice touch. In fact, you could almost eat the slaw as a dish of its own.

The seitan is from a double batch of my Baked Seitan Steaks I made this morning. The steaks are so thick, that they had to be cut in half so that they would cook through properly. Unfortunately, when roasting the macadamia nuts, I overdid it a bit. Not a nice way to learn that 10 minutes in an oven, can be different than 10 minutes in a toaster oven. Don’t think it affected the fried seitan all that much, though. The macadamia nut flour make them very rich tasting after frying. Which is counter balanced quite well by the slaw. All in all, a very good dish.