Roasted vegetable and hummus sandwich with fries

Simple and delicious! Roasted eggplant, zucchini, and red pepper with some thinly sliced kosher dill pickles on whole wheat pita. Roasted vegetables are easy to prepare and they don't require a lot of ingredients and they taste great with a minimal amount of seasoning. These vegetables are roasted with olive oil and a little sea salt and and a pinch of onion powder.

Sometimes I roast them with lemon, tamari and garlic as well, but for these I just kept it simple. The hummus was made from scratch (chickpeas, kombu, sea salt, lemon juice, garlic, tahini, nutritonal yeast). I usually just make the chick peas in my slow cooker. Served open faced and the folded over. The fries came from straight from the package.

Tapas and mezze for my birthday dinner

I love tapas (and mezze); so, we had a small plates dinner for my birthday (Saturday). The picture also provides a serious insight to my varied and eccentric tupperware collection. We also had a great soup, salad, roasted potatoes and dessert, none of which I made, and, of course, the wine! The tapas were my sole contribution to the meal. From top left to bottom right:

• artichoke 'butter' with lemon and thyme;
• cherry tomatoes;
• kalamata olive tapenade;
• avjar (red peppers and eggplant with sunflower seed butter);
• lentils and caramelized onions;
• hummus (straight from the package because I ran out of time);
• sundried tomato, mushroom and walnut pate;
• shiitake mushrooms poached in tamari and agave;
• kosher dill pickles;
• creamy artichoke and spinach dip (heavy on the spinach).

Everything was great (served with whole wheat pita). Although most people think of hummus and a lot of these other dishes as appetizers, tapas are becoming increasingly trendy (again, because they were trendy for a while in the 80s as well). They're also a lot of fun to make, and they provide a wide range of tastes, colors and textures to the meal. They're also relaxing, since there isn't a lot of fussing around with courses, and cutting your food, but it's a little more intimate than serving buffet.

Tapas/mezze are really a great way to entertain. With so many dishes it's hard for someone not to find a few things that they like, and the colors are usually very inviting, the food can be enjoyed a little warm, a little cool or just at room temperature. Most of these dishes were made with various nut and seed butters as well (so you get the nutritional value of the seed or nut along with the fat) and tend to keep well.

Vegan taco salad with diced pineapple, spicy lentils and green lettuce

This is a nice and simple salad. The pineapple, lettuce and salsa are all fresh. The salsa is just finely diced tomato, peppers, onions, sea salt and lime juice. I slow cook the lentils with toasted paprika, cumin, coriander, garlic, tamari, minced onion, sea salt and chili to the point that the lentils are overcooked but not disintegrating.

I usually use green or brown lentils, but they tend to pick up the color of the spice mix. I add tahini, lemon juice, agave nectar and nutritional yeast to the lentils when they are done, and then I toss everything with gold or blue corn chips. Ratios are usually about a cup of pineapple, 1 cup of dried lentils, about a half cup of salsa, one head of green lettuce and then a couple of handfuls of chips.

Spicy tofu and vegetable stirfry with wheat noodles

Just a simple stirfry with green beans, carrots, red peppers, broccoli and mushrooms. I like to roast the tofu a bit with tamari and olive oil, toss them in a little arrowroot (similar to corn starch treatments), and then stir fry them with the other vegetables. The sauce in this case was simple and spicy: chili, garlic, ginger, tamari, white vinegar, agave, sea salt and arrowroot to thicken. In this case, I served it over wheat noodles.

Canadian Thanksgiving

My partner and I had a larger meal yesterday with family, but I whipped up something today.  In this case, it was a lemon ginger cutlet with black mushroom and onion gravy, whole wheat stuffing with raisins, apples and mushrooms, and some simple grilled asparagus.

The cutlet was baked (a wheat gluten and herb mix, including tamari, lemon, ginger, paprika, evoo, tahini and corn flour) with the stuffing (whole wheat bagel, onion, herbs, black mushrooms, raisins, chopped apple, carrots and a few other odds and ends).  The gravy was a simple combination of powerded black mushrooms, onion, nutritional yeast a little olive oil thickened with arrowroot.  And of course, the asparagus was just oven roasted with a dash of sea salt and olive oil.

Romano and romaine vegan caesar salad wraps

The finished wrap isn't all that interesting looking (just whole wheat tortillas). :-) But this was a great and simple wrap.

Ingredients
About 2 1/3 cups of romano beans,
A small head of romaine lettuce (torn),
2 diced/seeded plum tomatoes
1/4 cup of nutritional yeast
2 whole wheat tortillas

About 2 tablespoons of tahini
About 2 tablespoons of tamari
About 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
About 1/3 cup of beans
About 1 tablespoon of minced garlic

Instructions.
Blend the dressing. Toss with the salad ingredients. Wrap in the tortillas. Easy and delicious!

I usually add liquid smoke and usually a sea vegetable (often kombu, but sometimes alaria) to mine, and I always do my dressing to taste and consistency (which is why it's an approximation). I like a little thinly sliced raw onion sometimes as well, but I felt like keeping it simple this time around. When I make a wrap like this, I'll typically blend some of the beans with the dressing to give it a little more cling.

Shredded cabbage, carrot and arugula salad with chopped figs, tofu and pita

Just a quick salad of cruciferous and leafy greens with a lemon/oil dressing, some pita, some marinated tofu and some chopped figs. Delicious!

Vegan cheesesteaks with TVP, squash and spinach

I was in Philadelphia recently and I got to try a vegan cheesesteak. Mostly if was ground soy round on a white bun, and it was good. I've made similar dishes with arrow-root based faux cheese sauces and seitan and thought about including a recipe for it in my upcoming cookbook. In general, I like more vegetables in my dishes and so I recreated the dish with TVP and minced shiitake mushrooms for the chew, butternut squash for the creamy texture and the orange color, and spinach for the green and for the nutrition. I also threw in a little tahini, sea salt, black pepper, red pepper, minced mushrooms, tamari and, of course, nutritional yeast. The spelt bun doesn't melt as well as a white flour version does, though.

I garnished with a little "take the rights of animals not to be used as property seriously and go vegan today", my absolute favourite seasoning.

Vegan tomato and red lentil pie

Tomato pie is a pretty common dish in the mid-Atlantic region, and it's also somewhat common in Chicago (although this has more to do with the general interest in all things pizza-related in Chicago). This is a simple, but filling dish. Basically, it's deep dish pizza dough with a filling of red lentils and tomatoes (among other flavors). For this version, I used a combination of fresh tomatoes and sundried to give it extra flavor. The lentils provide the dish with body and heartiness. Sometimes I'll add spinach and a little cornmeal (although teff will also add addition and body). Add garlic and other spices, and you have a nice alternative to pizza.

New American Vegan updates

I didn't realize it had been several months since I last blogged. I've been very busy with my dissertation and my cookbook (New American Vegan), but the former is now well on its way and the latter has been handed off. So, I should be able to post more regularly. I was also diagnosed as pre-diabetic a couple of months go, and that has meant changing my diet a bit (probably genetic as my father was diabetic). I <3 Irish genes!! Anyhow, some recent work. A couple of these are going into the cookbook, but the rest are more to push the boundaries on my cooking.


Chili and cheeze macaroni. This was a great dish, real comfort food. The chili is my standard chili, the marcaroni is just a brown rice mac that I like, and the cheeze is a tahini/etc. blend.



Mushroom cobbler with roasted asparagus. The cobbler is made with gluten flour to give it extra lift, almost like a soufflé. A great brunch recipe.


Stuffed squash with greens, lentils, rice, red and white sauces. The flavors are great, and this was a beautiful presentation dish.



Strawberry and rhubarb cobbler. This was a traditional dish (along with apple pie, brown betty and a few others) when I was growing up. It's a great and simple dish, and the rhubarb adds a lot of flavour and nutritional value.

Vegan grilled cheeze with kale and tomato salad

This was a relatively simple recipe. Arrowroot and a few other odds and ends make for a nice, melty cheese type of texture. It takes me back to my days as a kid. No tomato soup, though.

Vegan rum raisin bread pudding

This was a simple and straightforward bread pudding, with help milk, a little rum flavouring, arrowroot and help milk (and, of course, whole wheat bread), baked to a golden brown.

I served it with raspberry coulis one day (photo below) and then with an espresso caramel the next day. Bread pudding is great for breakfast. In general, I've been doing more and more work with hemp milk. It's a nice, thicker texture and it's not sweetened with can sugar (brown rice syrup, like my rice milk).