A week's recap

I have been a bad blogger. I have eaten things that I should have taken pictures of, and taken pictures of things that I ate yet failed to blog about. I must do something to rectify this situation. I can't be posting a ridiculously long blog once a week about every little thing I made the week prior. I mean, I can, but I don't want to. So here's a recap of what I have made (and have pictures of).

This Russian Cabbage Borscht from The New Moosewood Cookbook might be my favorite soup ever. After recently re-reading the NYTimes blog "The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating," I wanted to make something with beets. When I saw the recipe for this borscht that also included cabbage, I knew I had to make it. It was super easy and super tasty. John and I ate it three out of four days, along with chiabatta bread, sandwiches, anything really. This will definitely be back.

I also made seitan again. This time I used the recipe from Veganomicon, which supposedly was quicker than the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe. I'm not convinced, except that maybe there were less ingredients. Last time I was out of my favorite soy sauce, this ridiculously dark concoction made by Pearl River Bridge (Superior Dark Soy Sauce) so I used Bragg's instead. The dark soy sauce darkened the seitan immensely, which I liked, although it did make them look like little piles of poo and the not-completely crushed pieces of garlic only added to that image. I kneaded them longer than the recipe called for, hoping that if I formed more gluten before boiling them, they would stay together better in the water. I might have been right, but who knows? They didn't fall apart like the last batch did, and there were minimal "crumbs" left in the broth when I was finished. Not that I'm complaining -- I added the bit that I collected in the strainer and added them to all the little crumbs from the last batch, which is currently residing in the freezer, and they will be "ground beef" in some recipe, sometime.

I also used up the last of the red curry paste on this delicious dish, which means soon I will have to make another batch. This is when I really love Brandon's Vitamix. It makes the curry paste so smooth and creamy compared to what I made before with the little chopper. I know, I know, I should be using my mortar and pestle to make curry paste but that takes sooooo much time and the lemongrass is so tough while the Vitamix shreds through it like nothing.

For anyone interested in Thai cooking, Real Vegetarian Thai by Nancy McDermott has been my bestest friend ever. I have broken the spine of the book from overuse. Although now I'm confident enough in my curry-making abilities to not reference her recipes (that often), I still use the recipes for the curry pastes themselves.

One of the nice things about making curries is emptying out the fridge -- pretty much any vegetable is fair game. The only constant in my curries is onion. And fried tofu, of course. This time I used the remaining half of a butternut squash that had been hanging out for several weeks, a bell pepper that was wrinkly and about to expire, and a zucchini that I had planned to use earlier but forgot about and was also getting a little wrinkly. I didn't have to cook the butternut squash prior to throwing it in the curry -- I just let it simmer for 20-30 minutes before I added the bell pepper and zucchini which didn't need as much time. The one thing I forgot that would've made this curry perfect? Cashews. So sad, but it was so delicious that I forgave myself.

Seitan's Fingers

I made seitan for the first time over the weekend, and I'm fairly happy with the results -- considering it was my first time. I looked at a whole lot of recipes online until it dawned on me that I probably had several recipes in my own home. Sure enough I did, both from Isa Chandra Moskowitz -- one from Veganomicon and the other Vegan with a Vengeance. The recipe from Veganomicon is actually adapted from her original recipe in VwaV, but I decided to go with the original. Looking back now, I think I needed to let the gluten firm up more before boiling it. The outside ended up being a little spongy, and I lost quite a bit to the water/bouillon, but the inside was nice and firm. Next time I will take pictures since I wanted guideposts to see what it should look like each step of the process. Once I was finished, my two cups of vital wheat gluten turned into about 32oz. of yummy seitan. I put all the crumblier pieces in a baggy in the freezer to make ground "beef" later, and kept the rest in the refrigerator in its broth.

John worked late that night so when he got home I was debating how to serve my new seitan. There was a recipe for jerk seitan in VwaV that I knew I wanted to try but it needed to marinate several hours in the jerk sauce, so that was out. I decided just to fry it up, like chicken. I searched online and found a recipe for breading that sounded tasty. It required 4T of nutritional yeast -- which would have been about all the n.y. that Brandon had left and I don't want to be that kind of roommate -- so I only used 1T and subbed flour for the rest. It was my first attempt at frying something I had breaded myself, and I was pleasantly surprised with how easy everything went. The breading stayed on (for the most part) and once fried up the inch thick slices of seitan looked like chicken fingers. John whipped up a batch of homemade mac & cheese and decided to open up a can of chipotle peppers for some added spice, though he underestimated the powerful punch of those little peppers and used three where two -- or even one! -- would have given plenty of flavor. But it was definitely the most flavorful mac & cheese he's made, and I hope he tries again. The seitan fingers were tasty, and only a little spongy inside the breading, and the texture inside was meaty, just as promised. We did end up drizzling them with John's homemade peanut sauce because the breading wasn't especially flavorful, which I blame on using flour rather than nutritional yeast.

A few days later I made the jerk seitan from VwaV and WHOA! It was amazing!For a side dish I made "rice and peas" -- "peas" really being kidney beans -- that included coconut milk, thyme, and cinnamon, and topped with toasted coconut. Bad blogger that I am, I forgot to take pictures before John and I scarfed it all down. Next time, I promise.

Today I wanted a big lunch since we have plans for the evening, and I wanted to use up the last bit of seitan in the fridge. There wasn't much -- about 8oz. -- so I knew I'd have to go heavy on the sides. After the delicious Russian Cabbage Borscht yesterday (post coming another day), I had some beet greens that needed to be used as well. I wanted to try my hand at frying again, and greens would go well with fried anything. I rounded it out with my own version of a recipe I found on AllRecipes.com for mashed potatoes that were then baked with sautéed onions, shredded cheddar, chopped green onions, and vegan bacon bits. I couldn't find the original recipe I'd used for frying last weekend so I did more searching and found one much, much, much better: Chicken Fried Seitan from the Voracious Vegan. I was really intrigued by using mustard in the wet ingredients, as well as the combination of spices in both wet and dry. Since I didn't have much seitan I decided to double-dip the pieces, and I'm glad I did, as it added needed bulk.The seitan fried up even nicer than it did the first time with even less trouble with breading. They tasted like chicken nuggets, only better! The mashed potatoes were delicious -- only needed salt and pepper, which I somehow forgot to add before throwing them in the oven -- and were just like eating a baked potato. As tasty as everything was, I think the beet greens were my favorite. I used a recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison for collard greens but using beet greens instead, and they were to die for! Onions, garlic, and red pepper flakes sautéed in butter before adding the slightly boiled greens -- yum! I think beets will be a new addition to my garden this year.