German Apple Cake

This is the most beautiful creation I've made to date. The recipe is from The Joy of Vegan Baking and baking this cake certainly was a joy. The cake layer is very thin so the apples are really featured (I used Golden Delicious.) It's a surprisingly easy cake to make. Because the cake batter is so thick, the apples can easily be layered atop, a process I found quite fun. And even the non-vegans loved this dessert. I will definitely be making this cake again.

Creamy Avocado Potato Salad

I made this dish to bring to a day-after-the-4th barbecue. (I also brought along some more hot sauce glazed tempeh, but just for me rather than to share since everyone else was going to be having meat.) This recipe is from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's newest book: Vegan Brunch. It's great to have an alternative to the typical mayo-saturated potato salad. The creaminess here comes from avocado instead, which gives it a gorgeous green hue.

I'm really excited to try out more recipes from this book. Breakfast can seem pretty vegan-unfriendly at times but this book proves otherwise.

Fourth of July Feast!

I went home to NJ last weekend and we ended up having a 4th feast although we hadn't originally planned on it. Here are the components of a very good meal:

-Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh: Another great tempeh dish coming from Veganomicon. While the rest of my family had burgers and hot dogs, I marinated some tempeh and panfried it up. It got slightly crispy and had some bite from the hot sauce. It was perfect for the barbecue mood.

-Grilled zucchini and squashed: This side was made by my mom. I actually have never cooked on a grill. It's so simple yet so tasty with a little bit of herbed olive oil brushed on prior to grilling.

-Baked "fries," two ways: Crispy delicious fries can be created by baking! One need not ruin potatoes in a deep fryer. We made these by slicing thin potato wedges and tossing them in some olive oil in a large bowl. Some were then covered with a Cajun seasoning (pictured) and others with Herbes de Provence. They are then placed on baking sheets and put in the oven or about an hour.

Stuffed Pepper

One small pepper can hold it all: grains, protein, veggies. More specifically, the stuffing includes Israeli couscous, lentils, tomato, and shiitake mushrooms. It was a very yummy combination. The recipe comes from Vegan Cooking for One, and is one of the slightly complicated Sunday dinner recipes. There are several different steps including cooking the lentils and couscous, softening the pepper in some hot water, and cooking the veggie mixture and seasoning it, before everything can actually be assembled and baked. I think next time I'd add more veggies and less couscous/lentils so those flavors come through a little more.

Pumpkin Pancake Disaster

I'm sure this recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking is typically great, but it didn't turn out so great with the pan I was using. This pan doesn't have a non-stick coating. Typically I can deal with it and only have small issues with tofu or garlic sticking to it but can save the dish. These pancakes, however, ended up unsalvageable. The pan grabbed hold of the batter and would not let go. The result was globs of half-cooked pancakes and was a mess. I got one to look okay, albeit a bit burnt since I had trouble getting it to let go of the pan, so I placed it on top of the pile of disaster to try to make things look a bit better.

Spaghetti and Beanballs

This is one of my favorite dishes ever. So so tasty. Make it!

Another recipe from Veganomicon. The thing that makes this dish so good is that the beanballs don't try to be meatball replacements. Rather, they show off what they are: legumes. I feel like this is how vegan food should be: honest, not imitation.

The beanballs are fun to make. I baked them though there are also directions for panfrying. I also made the recipe for marinara sauce rather than using sauce from a jar. Marinara sauce is extremely easy to make and I will never use sauce from a jar again. Premade sauce has a strange flavor to it because of preservatives. But this sauce was so fresh and light. I only wish I had made more than I did to better cover all the spaghetti!

Smoky Grilled Tempeh and Collard Greens

These recipes come from Veganomicon. I was originally just going to make the tempeh but the intro to the recipe suggested making collard greens using the leftover marinade so I decided to give it a try. (I had never had collard greens and learned from this meal that I'm not a huge fan.)

The marinade for the tempeh is made using liquid smoke. I didn't know such a product existed but it's wonderful. And it seems to be available in just about every grocery store, including the ones around here which can sometimes be limited. The recipe recommends grilling but I panfried the tempeh triangles and thought it was great. I think next time I'd use kale or spinach, my preferred dark leafy greens, as a side.

Warning: marinating takes an hour, so this is not a good dish to make for those pressed for time or who are extremely impatient.

Sugar Cookies

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of these since I had made them as a surprise. Still, they were delicious and deserve a post.

I wanted to bake something a little fancy for an anniversary gift so I attempted a more involved cookie than the typical chocolate chip. The recipe for the cookies along with the royal icing I used to hold bright red sprinkles both came from The Joy of Vegan Baking.

I didn't realize how much work sugar cookies can be, especially with such little counter space. Mix the dough by hand since I have no electric mixer here, let the dough cool in the fridge, roll it out, cut out circles with the lid of a peanut butter jar since I had no cookies cutters, put the baking sheet in the fridge to cool the dough again so they don't expand too much in the oven, actually bake them, repeat the rolling out through baking again for tray 2, let cookies cool, mix icing, ice cookies, add sprinkles.....and done.

It was all worth it though. I thought the combination of the cookie and the icing was delicious.

All-veggies-left-in-the-fridge Pasta

I do my grocery shopping on Sundays so for dinner last night, I wanted to make sure I used up any veggies left over from the past week that could soon go bad. I had some leftover broccoli from last Sunday's stir-fry and some zucchini and red pepper I had planned on using for a recipe I didn't have the energy to make yesterday. I chopped up all of these and threw them in a large pan along with a can of chickpeas to sautee in a little bi of olive oil, garlic, herbs, salt, and pepper. I covered the pan to make sure everything cooked thoroughly while I boiled some rotini. Tossing the cooked rotini with a splash of olive oil and salt and pepper gave it a bit of flavor but the star of this dish was the veggies. As soon as the zucchini was cooked through, I served the veggies atop the pasta for a light, easy, and delicious dish.

Lentil Cauliflower Curry

Coming from Veganomicon, this delicious curry calls for red lentils, which I thought I had on my shelf but they turned out to be typical lentils. No problem there because curry dyes all ingredients a beautiful yellow tint; so red or brown, you can't really tell from looking at it.

This is a sweet curry rather than spicy. It's a very comforting and warm flavor. There is also parsnip in the dish along with the star ingredients, lentils and cauliflower. I've actually never had parsnip prior to this, or at least never realizes I was eating it had it been hidden in a dish. Because the spices are so overpowering, I couldn't really tell what parsnip tastes like. It certainly didn't stand out in this dish; but rather it offered a different texture for some variation.

Although curries take awhile to make, there isn't much active cooking time besides chopping during the prep stage. It's a very easy meal...if you ca be patient enough to wait!

Tuscan White Beans with Sun-dried Tomatoes

This is such a hearty delicious dish. I decided to throw in some spaghetti but once I tried it, I realized that the vegetables are great enough to stand on their own. The recipe comes from The Vegan Table and the author says that this dish and variations of it can be found in restaurants in and around Florence. Now I don't remember seeing anything similar to this dish when I was in Tuscany last summer, but we didn't look at a lot of menus, I suppose.

Veggies not included in the title but also in the dish are zucchini and spinach. Sauteeing all the vegetables with some herbs in olive oil fills them with so much flavor. This recipe feels so summery, perfect for ushering in the new season and the not-so-welcome humid heat that comes with it.

Broccoli Stir-fry with Rice Noodles

Another adventure in quick vegan cooking. I really am liking Short-Cut Vegan for easy meals when I don't feel like waiting an hour or more for dinner. This recipe provided two different options for sauces, included in the front of the book. I chose the maple and mustard sauce, very light and very tasty. The stir-fry itself had red pepper and water chestnuts along with the broccoli. Water chestnuts remind me of getting Chinese take-out as a kid. I was an even pickier eater then than now but I did love water chestnuts.

Baked Vegan Donuts

When I went vegan, I never imagined ever eating a donut again. But vegans can make donuts too! And these donuts can be just as delicious as typical donuts! The best proof of vegan donut awesomeness is Voodoo Doughnut in Portland. They bake so many varieties of vegan donuts daily, 24 hours a day. It's incredible. The absolute best one I tried there (I think I ate 6 total in my few days in Portland) was a donut topped with oreo crumbles and peanut butter.

I'll never be able to make donuts as great as those, but I did attempt some today. I found the recipe through The Urban Housewife's blog. The original recipe is from VeganYumYum, which is probably the ultimate vegan cooking blog. her photographs are stunning.

I don't have a donut pan so I had to use a muffin pan and have holeless donuts. Not having the proper baking tools also meant the texture of these isn't perfect. Not quite dense enough to be a true donut but denser than a cupcake or muffin. The taste is spot on, though, especially once I made the simple glaze to dip them in.

I'll definitely be attempting to make more donuts soon. The only way to perfect the texture is to keep making...and eating more of them.

(Note: the picture is of the donuts still on my version of a wire rack (there is none in this kitchen!) and there is extra glaze pooling around each donut.)

Tempeh and Sweetcorn Roast with Tahini-Mushroom Sauce

Okay, I'll admit that I didn't know exactly what I was making when I started this recipe. It comes from Vegan Cooking for One by Leah Leneman and since she is a Brit, some of the terminology is different than what we use in the United States. Soya milk rather than soy milk, for example. Well, I now know that this roast means basically the vegan equivalent of meatloaf.

This is a Sunday Dinner recipe in the book, which lists recipes for 9 weeks using spring/summer produce and 9 using fall/winter produce. Sunday dinners are generally a little more complex than the weeknight recipes and this one did take awhile. First the tempeh must be sauteed, then the loaf made, then the loaf baked, the sauce made, and once the loaf is out of the oven, everything can be put together and dinner served.

The loaf had a really lovely flavor. Tempeh is a great protein for a meatloaf alternative because of its texture. The tahini mushroom sauce is very savory. I also sliced up some red pepper with the dish.

Aztec Couscous

What a great book Short-Cut Vegan is, by Lorna Sass. I don't mind spending a long time cooking but it sure is nice sometimes to be able to throw things together quickly. Most of the recipes in the book take under 30 minutes to make. The estimated time for the couscous was 25.

I chose to make the recipe using Israeli couscous rather than regular couscous. Israeli couscous is wonderful. It's a larger grain than the typical version and I think it's much more fun. This recipe is so fast and so easy. Cook the couscous, open a can of black beans, throw in some thawed frozen corn, and whip up the spice mixture. Voila, dinner super fast.

I added a lot of extra spice since I didn't have jalapeno peppers. The spice mixed with fresh lime juice gave the dish quite a bite.

Butternut Squash, White Bean, and Kale Ragout

This is a wonderful veggie-heavy dish. I love grains but it is nice every once in awhile to have a dinner that stands by itself as veggies alone. The recipe comes from The Best of Vegan Cooking by Priscilla Feral. Well, she says it's actually adapted from a New York Times recipe. Either way, it's completely delicious.

Any dish with butternut squash takes some time to make. First is the task of actually having to cut the squash open. I use a gigantic knife meant for slicing crusty bread, I think. Amazingly so far no injuries. This recipe calls for cubes of squash so it takes only half as long as baking a full squash does. Creating a maple syrupy/margariney/apple-cider-vinegary glaze for the squash makes it even sweeter. The baked squash as well as dried cranberries compliment the kale and white beans nicely and almost made me feel like I was eating dessert. But I guess I have a unique concept of what counts as dessert.

I adore the recipe but I do have a complaint. Someone didn't edit the book very well. One sentence from this recipe is "Cook, stirring, over medium-high heat until margarine;..." and that's it. It's obvious that it means stir until the margarine melts. But if I were ever lucky enough to have a book published of any kind, I would pay close attention to make sure there are no errors like that.

Pad Thai

I frequent Thai restaurants a lot. They're a really easy option to please the sometimes difficult couple composed of one vegan and one pescaterian. The fantastic May cross-country road trip taught me that when you are desperate for food in sole bit of civilization amongst wilderness, the best option is to look for the one Thai place in town. Yes, even in Twin Falls, Idaho, there is a Thai restaurant! And I love sampling the vegetarian Pad Thai (sans eggs) at every place I've stumbled upon.

Tonight (now that I have bean sprouts in my possession; neither of the two grocery stores in walking distance of my apartment had any in stock) I gave cooking Pad Thai a try. This recipe comes from The Vegan Table as part of the Eastern Glow menu in the Romantic Dinners for Two chapter. Since I am just one, I get dinner and a lunch out of it, which I suppose isn't that romantic.

It's a delicious dish but it just didn't taste like Pad Thai. I think the problem is that the recipe calls for peanut butter in the sauce so the peanut flavor overwhelms all others. It was more like rice noodle/broccoli/bean sprout/tofu in a peanut sauce rather than true Pad Thai. I'll have to look at some authentic recipes and see how I can adjust the one in Vegan Table.

A wonderful new discovery that came in very handy for this dish is cubed tofu. I saved so much time being able to quickly press the cubed tofu in a paper towel to get the moisture out and throw it on the stove rather than having to drain the water out of a thick block of tofu and then chopping it up. Thanks, Nasoya!

Marvelous Mushroom Risotto

This recipe comes from The Vegan Table, another book by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. It's a beautiful cookbook, though the format is bizarre, set up by menus rather than an appetizer section, entrees, sides, etc. But that's nothing that post-it notes can't handle.

I love risotto. Love love love it. Sure it's a pain to make, stirring rice for a half hour straight. But it's pretty awesome when all of a sudden in all that stirring the rice becomes incredibly creamy. Risotto is a labor of love. The shiitake mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes make such a great combination. The dish is bursting with flavor and so rich. Give your wrist a work out and make more risotto.

Cinnamon Coffee Cake

I've actually made this recipe twice in the past few days. The recipe comes from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, a really wonderful book which is yet more proof that great desserts do not need to be packed with milk/butter/cream/eggs to taste good.

I chose to make coffee cake because I wanted something sweet that I already had all the ingredients to make. This recipe uses basic ingredients that are already in the fridge/pantry (or fridge/bookshelf, in my case) so it's very easy. These basic ingredients can also be a problem because it's too easy to make and eat this tasty dessert too often. Not only are the ingredients basic, but it's such an easy cake to make. Prep is maybe 10 minutes and it only takes 35 minutes to bake. So it is tempting to do a little baking all the time.

I first made the cake last Tuesday night on a whim. The problem was that I didn't have a proper cake pan so I had to make only half the recipe and use a tiny pan. Of course it still tasted great, just looks a bit sad in the picture.

When my parents came to visit on Saturday, I baked it again for them for their anniversary. This time I had a proper cake pan (thanks to them!) but I did get distracted talking to them and combined the crumb part too much so it no longer appeared crumbly. It was more like pouring strands of the topping on the cake rather than crumbs but still tasted just fine. I always know that a vegan recipe is good if my dad enjoys it and he did indeed like the cake.

Spicy Tempeh and Brocolli with Pasta

I'm fairly new to tempeh. I had never tried it until this past winter at Weird Fish in San Fransisco. I had not had it since but I've had a craving for it recently and looked for a good tempeh recipe. This recipe is from Veganomicon and is actually "Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe with Rotelle" but I'm more of a broccoli person. I'm not even sure if the groceries around here carry broccoli rabe anyway.

This dish is absolutely delicious. I made the full recipe so I could bring the leftovers for lunch the next day and I even had some leftover for dinner the next night. It was that good. The dish is a bit complicated to make and does take some time because there are three different parts of the cooking process: boiling the pasta, steaming the tempeh in a marinade of sorts and then stirfrying it, and also stirfrying the broccoli. The tempeh is so flavorful as a result of the marinade with the right amount of bite from red pepper flakes. I love tempeh because of its nuttiness. Tofu can be bland and its texture uninspiring but tempeh is just great.

Once the three components are cooked, all are tossed into a large bowl and mixed together. The spiral of the pasta catches crumbles of the tempeh. There is no real sauce for the dish. Rather, the tempeh and broccoli are strong enough to stand on their own and a bit of red wine vinegar and salt and pepper is sprinkled over the mixture. The lack of heavy sauce is refreshing and again, the tempeh is just so good. I will definitely be making this dish again.

Peanut Buttery Stir-fry

One day I'll get myself a real nice wok. It's on my list of kitchen stuff I want my very own kitchen to have once I graduate. (Also on the list is a fancy schmancy KitchenAid stand mixer and wooden spoons and a silicone cupcake tray.) For now I can make due with stir-frying in whatever pan is available.

This recipe comes from Vegan Cooking for One by Leah Leneman. I found this book used at Powell's Books in Portland. Powell's had a really great vegan cookbook section, as well as really great everything else sections. Basically, if you are ever in the Portland vicinity, go to Powell's. It's a must. And go during happy hour. Yes, even book stores have happy hours in Portland. The city is a vegan's paradise; perhaps I'll discuss it more in a special Portland is awesome post.

The recipe called for some veggies I did not get in my latest grocery run so I chopped up some carrots, green pepper, string beans, and shiitake mushrooms and went with that mixture. The recipe also wanted rice but I have decided to refrain from buying rice at the time being so I used some pasta as the grain replacement. The veggies get stir-fried, along with some diced tofu, as the sauce cooks. Despite my general clumsiness, I did manage to cook two different things in two different pots/pans at once, quite a feat. The peanut butter sauce is very tasty, with extra creaminess from a little bit of soy milk and just enough flavor of soy sauce/lemon.

And extra plain pasta means my lunch routine will be slightly changed up tomorrow!

Mac and Cheese!

Cooking has become a way for me to relax after coming home from my internship. I get really excited picking out recipes and making my shopping list on the weekend and I think about cooking while riding the trolley back to my apartment each evening. Today I was exhausted simply because it was a Monday and wanted comfort food. What better than mac and cheese.

I'm allergic to dairy and cheese used to beat me up terribly when I was a kid, but I still find myself craving mac and cheese quite often. I used to settle for the boxed Road's End Mac and Chreese but it never fully satisfied. Because I journeyed all the way to the nearest Whole Foods (an extra mile in wrathful shoes) last week due to Trader Joe's sucking lots, I now have a good sized bag of nutritional yeast flakes. This magical substance is a godsend for creating cheese-like perfection.

I cooked up some whole grain rotini and cauliflower and used the Cheezy Sauce recipe from Veganomicon. This sauce is super easy and quick to make. It came out much better than I expected and is fairly similar to cheese, at least as much as I can remember from 6ish years ago. The sauce is slightly tangy but is very rich and a good texture. Most impressive of all is that there is not one bit of faux-dairy in the sauce. No soymilk, no Earth Balance, nothing. Just some creative culinary chemistry.

I will definitely be returning to this recipe again.

Baked Sweet Potato and Green Pea Samosas

I figured since it is the weekend and I have a bit more time and energy (barely!), I would try to make something for dinner a little more time consuming. There is a Middle Eastern grocery, Makkah Market, right across the street from my apartment and I ventured in earlier today looking for cheap spices. Success, and ergo I chose a samosa recipe to use some of the new curry powder I found. The recipe comes from Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson. Vegan Planet is a gigantic cookbook with over 400 recipes. I've used this cookbook quite a bit in the past and I definitely will more this summer now that my shelves are a better stocked.

Sure baked is never as exciting as fried food, but it does makes these much healthier than the average samosa. The sweet potato makes them....well, sweet, which I like better than plain potatoes. The peas give them a fresh taste and the lack of frying makes them light. I think that if I make these again, however, I'll add more spices than the recipe calls for. Nonetheless, it's a yummy Sunday dinner.

The samosas were somewhat of a challenge to make due to my lack of actual counter space. The recipe told me to roll out a 16x16 inch square of dough on a floured work surface. Problem was there was no work surface so I instead used my hands to flatten the dough and form sort-of-squares directly on the baking sheet. As a result my samosas are not the most beautiful or perfect-looking in the whole world, but I think for a first try and a tiny kitchen, they're pretty awesome.

This dish is technically an appetizer but I made 4 large samosas rather than 16 tiny ones. Like always, I omitted the onion from the recipe (I can't stand onions, though the Bryn Mawr dining halls seem to love them and stick them in everything) and instead added more peas. I also was unable to find peanut oil today so I used olive oil. Active cooking time is pretty fast for the samosas but the recipe does require some prep in baking the sweet potato and letting the dough sit covered for awhile.

Pineapple-Cashew-Quinoa Stir-Fry

This recipe comes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero in their lovely book Veganomicon. Isa is perhaps my favorite vegan cookbook author and I've collected as many of her books as I can. Veganomicon is a great book, though many of the recipes are a bit time consuming so they aren't meals that can be thrown together quickly. Still, it's a must on any vegan's bookshelf.

This stir-fry is so flavorful and delicious. The quinoa is a nice change from the typical noodles. I really can never say enough wonderful things about quinoa; it truly is a superfood. I omitted the scallions and chiles from the dish and instead added more peas and red peppers.

Quinoa can be bitter if you don't rinse it properly. Because I don't have a strainer in this kitchen, I placed the quinoa in a bowl, filled it with water, and sort of scrubbed the quinoa between my hands for a minute or so. I drained the water and repeated this process two more times. It worked just fine.

An Introduction

Yes, yet another vegan cooking photoblog. I figured that since I am cooking up all these tasty creations I should post pictures of them. I won't post the recipes of others but will link to their cookbooks so everyone can get in on the vegan loveliness. Vegan does not mean boring food. And here is the proof.

Bon appeitit.