Ethiopian Feast

 

Happy MoFo Week 2, guys!

Do you like Ethiopian food? I first ate it several years ago in Philly. I remember being a little wary of scooping up the lentils and veggies with nothing but my fingers and some weird spongy bread. No utensils?  But of course it was awesome! I made it a point to eat Ethiopian food whenever I could find it from then on. However, where I live now, there's no Ethiopian restaurant nearby. After eating it in Montreal last month, I vowed to learn how to make it myself so I wouldn't have to wait until my next vacation to have it again!

First, I tried making "traditional" injera. Injera is the light, crepe-like bread that you tear into pieces and use in place of utensils to pick up the food and transfer it to your mouth. It tastes like sourdough. The way I understand it, in Ethiopia, injera is made from only teff flour and water, with a little salt added. It is fermented for at least 24 hours and up to three days. I found a recipe, mixed up the batter, and left it sitting out on my counter. The next day, my kitchen smelled like gym socks and I wasn't sure if that was good or bad, so I went ahead and made the injera. It was really flat, not puffy like the kind I've had in restaurants. It also had a strong nutty, fermented taste. There was no way anyone in my house was going to eat this injera.

Luckily I had a backup plan -- the injera recipe from Vegan Lunch Box. This sounded more like the bread that is served in Ethiopian restaurants in the U.S. -- softer and fluffier, with a mild flavor. This recipe worked perfectly -- no fermentation necessary! I couldn't believe how easy it was.

The other dishes I made were gomen (collard greens), mesir wat (spicy red lentils), and atakilt wat (cabbage and carrot stew).

The greens were my favorite -- very garlicky and gingery. The lentils were savory and spicy, and the cabbage stew was mild and buttery. I think that's why I like Ethiopian food, because each dish seems to complement the others and there's a nice variety of flavors.

The feast took about two hours to prepare. There were a ton of veggies to chop, and also, I only have one big pot, so I had to wait for the lentils to get done before I could make the cabbage stew. I didn't mind since I had my little entertainer with me. Check out his drum solo.

If you like Ethiopian food or even if you've never had it before, I encourage you to try the recipes linked above, because they are good ones and not hard to prepare. You'll be surprised how much it tastes like restaurant food, or at least, I was!

Chard on Ciabatta and a Survey

Dinner was a favorite that's in regular rotation at our house: cheezy chard on ciabatta, adapted from Vegan Yum Yum. I've written about my love for it before. Usually I make it on ciabatta rolls, but my local supermarket has stopped selling those (thanks, jerks) so this time I used a ciabatta loaf.

Chomp, chomp!

Since I don't have much else to write about today...PeaceLoveAndFruits posted this fun survey and I thought I'd take it, too!

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?

Silk Light soymilk

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?

I'm doing an Ethiopian feast this weekend...and Tony has requested chili and lasagna.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?

Jalapeno salt

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?

When I baked a chocolate cake in a springform pan and forgot to make sure the pan was fastened securely. The batter dripped all over the bottom of my oven and I had to scrape off the burnt mess.

5. Favorite pickled item?

Jalapenos

6. How do you organize your recipes?

I have a Word file, and I bookmark blog posts that have recipes I wanna try in the future

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?

Trash, we don't have those other options in our current apartment.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?

Salted almonds, ciabatta rolls (of course), giant barrel of hummus

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?

Cooking with my Granny. She let me be her kitchen helper at a young age.

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?

The kind you make by putting frozen bananas and peanut butter in the food processor.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?

Food processor

12. Spice/herb you would die without?

Basil

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?

Cooking with the Dead (hippie alert!)

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?

Strawberry

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?

Lasagna or TVP tacos

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?

I love tofu, I've really come around to seitan, but I'm still on the fence about tempeh. I only like it BBQ'ed.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?

Dinner

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?

Bottles o' booze

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.

Frozen mango, seitan sausage, pumpkin pancakes

20. What’s on your grocery list?

Oats, lemon juice, nutritional yeast

21. Favorite grocery store?

All the ones around here suck, so I'll say Whole Foods

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.

my Granny's 7-layer cookies

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?

Peas and Thank You, Vegan Crunk, Love Veggies and Yoga

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?

Lemonheads

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?

Tempeh bacon -- it was like $4.99 and I had an argument with myself in my head about whether to buy it. But my homemade tempeh bacon doesn't turn out the way I want it, and I'm trying to like tempeh better.

And so the first week of Vegan MoFo comes to an end, wooooo! It's so much fun. I can't even begin to keep up with all the posts, but I'm doing my best and I've discovered so many awesome new blogs already. Have a good weekend and I'll see y'all on Monday!

Vegan Poutine

When I talked about eating poutine in Montreal and said I would make a vegan version, I didn't know it would happen this soon. I guess I was really motivated to eat a bunch of potatoes and gravy and tofu cheese curds!

I topped my fries with the sage gravy from Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food rather than the traditional beef-based brown gravy. If I looked harder I might have been able to find some brown gravy mix that didn't contain beef fat, or make my own, but honestly, brown gravy was not doing it for me at the poutine cafe. It didn't seem to have much flavor besides salt. (If you have a recipe that will change my opionion of brown gravy, hook me up!) And when I'm making something in my own kitchen, my tastebuds win out over authenticity. This is why I also added vegan sausage, onion, and green peppers to my poutine.

Vegan Poutine

First, make the "cheese curds," preferably the day before.

8 oz. firm tofu, drained, pressed, and crumbled
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tsp. salt

In a small storage container with a lid, combine the lemon juice, oil, and salt. Gently mix in your crumbled tofu. Marinade overnight (or at least a couple hours). When you are ready to use it, rinse the tofu under warm water in a colander. This will rinse off most of the marinade, but the tangy "cheese" flavor will remain.

Now make your other components.

5 russet potatoes, peeled and cut into French fry shapes
2 links of your favorite seitan sausage (store bought or homemade), thinly sliced
1 green pepper, diced
1 onion, diced

Roast the potatoes at 425 degrees F for about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, saute the sausage in a little oil and set aside. Then, in the same pan, saute the green pepper and onion. Finally, make a vegan gravy of your choosing.

When the potatoes are done, mound some on a plate. Top with the green pepper and onion mixture, some pieces of sausage, a handful of tofu curds, and ladle some gravy on top.  Bon appétit!

The Mysterious Slow Cooker

I'm not sure where this slow cooker came from. Until a few days ago...I didn't know I had a slow cooker. I think I may have inherited it from college friends who were moving away. This would have been like ten years ago. How is it possible that this beast lurked in my kitchen cabinets for ten years, accompanying me on various moves, yet I was only vaguely aware of its existence? Look at it. Blends right into its surroundings, doesn't it?

No time to ponder the origins of its existence. I had a pound of yellow mung beans, the remnants of some long-ago attempt at Indian cooking. I had some onion and ginger and a few spices. Time to put this hulk to work.

Mung beans are somewhat like lentils. In fact, when I bought the package labeled "mung dal" at the Indian grocery, I thought they were lentils. They can be cooked like lentils, although they have a mushier texture. Mung beans with their skins on are green. With the skins removed, they are yellow. As with any dried legume, always pick through them and give them a good rinse. You never know what twigs, rocks, or seeds made it into the bag.

As I assembled my stew ingredients, the enigmatic slow cooker revealed another mystery to me. It has no light indicating that it is, in fact, turned on and cooking your food. I guess lights hadn't been invented back whenever this model came into existence. You plug it in...you turn the switch from "off" to "low"...and then...nothing. It just sits there. What's going on, slow cooker? Am I going to come back in eight hours and find a fully cooked dinner? Can you give me a sign? The suspense is killing me.

So I hovered over the thing all morning, turning it from low to high and back to low. So much for set it and forget it! Whenever it was on low, I couldn't stand it because it didn't look like it was doing anything. The veggie bullion cubes weren't even dissolving in the water -- better turn it on high again! At least when it's on high, there's a little bubbling action, a little condensation on the lid to let me know something's happening. Clearly the slow cooker is meant for someone with more patience than myself. Or someone with more faith in an appliance that hasn't been used in over ten years and looks like it's as old as I am.

As with most things, once I calmed the hell down, everything worked out OK.

Yellow Mung Bean Stew

1 lb. dried mung beans, picked over and rinsed

6 cups vegetable stock

2 cups water

1 medium onion, chopped

2 small carrots, chopped

1 Tbsp. curry powder

1 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/4 tsp. asafetida* (optional)

Add all of the ingredients to the slow cooker and stir to combine. Put the lid on the cooker and turn to High. Once the stew starts to bubble, you have a choice -- leave it on High and cook for three hours, or you can turn it down to Low and cook for eight hours.

Serves 4. Serve over rice, or with warm naan or pita bread.

* Asafetida is a spice sold at Indian grocers. It has a strong, sulfuric smell, but it won't make your stew smell funky. It adds a "little something" to lentil or bean dishes, but it's not a necessity.



Boo-berry Creeps

Sorry dudes, I know that is one terrible pun. But, since I left the Halloweenie-themed foods to the experts like Robin, I had to attempt to make my completely innocuous Halloween brunch sound at least a little spooky. And even though the most ghoulish thing about them is the scary blue stains they leave on your teeth, the cashew-filled crepes with blueberry sauce from Vegan Brunch were a perfect start to the day.

Behold the crepes...of doooooom.

Not too frightening? That's good. You should've seen the first couple crepes that went in the trash dog's bowl, though. Yikes.

I made these with whole wheat pastry flour, and there's really no t a lot of sugar in the whole recipe. Plus you get a fair amount of protein from the cashews, which are ground into a creamy ricotta-type filling.

My biggest tip for crepe-making would be this: don't even think about flipping that crepe until it is sliding around in the (nonstick!) pan of its own free will when you tilt the pan. If you try to get your spatula under it before it's moving around freely, it's gonna tear. And then your ravenous Boston terrier will be happy, but you will be sad and crepeless.

Nobody wants that, least of all this little pumpkin and her tiger cub buddy.



Spring Rolls and Carving Pumpkins

Hi all, I hope you had a fun and spooky Halloween! And if you're a new reader who has happened upon my little blog thanks to Vegan MoFo, welcome! Since my blog is a youngin' and this is my first year participating, I don't have much of a theme, other than my everyday theme of showing you the vegan food I cook for myself, my husband Tony, and our two little ones, Jackson and Olivia. I hope you'll enjoy what I've got to say and I look forward to checking out your blogs, too, if I'm not already following them!

Now for the food...on Devil's Night, the night before Halloween, we wanted a quick dinner so we would have enough time to carve pumpkins before the kids got tired. Since I had some leftover peanut baked tofu and peanut sauce, I decided to make tofu veggie spring rolls.

I use these rice paper wrappers that you can buy at Asian markets or sometimes at the supermarket.



I thought the veggies and tofu looked pretty, all chopped up and ready to roll.



To make a spring roll, fill a pie plate with cold water. Take one wrapper and soak it in the water for about a minute. You want it to be flexible but not soggy. Remove the wrapper from the water and lay it out on a clean, flat surface. Lay down a few pieces of tofu, then a little bit of each kind of veggie. Fold the ends in, then roll up. The wetness of the wrapper helps it stick together and stay rolled. Then move on to soaking the next wrapper and rolling it.



We had fun carving our pumpkins. Jackson did NOT want to reach inside the pumpkin and pull out the guts, he insisted it was "yucky yucky!"



Olivia was more interested in how the pumpkin tasted than how it looked.



Tony's pumpkin had a little too much to drink.



And I was going for a scary dragon but I think I ended up with a laughing dragon!

Tofu and Broccoli with Peanut Sauce

I love a good peanut sauce, and this one doubles as a marinade for baked tofu. It's also delicious with rice noodles or spring rolls.

1 14-oz. pkg. firm tofu, cut into 10 slices and pressed
4 cups broccoli florets
1 cup rice (1 cup uncooked)
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
3 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1 Tbsp. fresh ginger, grated
2 tsp. sriracha chile sauce
4 cloves garlic, minced

While your tofu slices are being pressed, combine the water, peanut butter, brown sugar, soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger, chile sauce and garlic in a microwave-safe cup or bowl. Microwave the sauce for about a minute and a half, until the peanut butter is melted. Whisk the sauce until thoroughly combined.

Place the tofu slices in a large ziploc bag and pour the peanut sauce over them. Marinate in the fridge for at least one hour, or longer.

Move the tofu slices to a parchment-lined baking sheet, reserving the marinade. Bake the tofu slices for 45 minutes at 425 degrees F, flipping halfway through.

Steam the broccoli until tender (about 5 minutes) and boil the rice according to package directions.

To serve, microwave the peanut sauce for 30 seconds to reheat. Mound some rice on your plate, scoop some broccoli over it, and lay two or three tofu slices on top. Drizzle with reserved peanut sauce.



Olivia wishes she could eat that instead of mushy peas.  Grow some teeth, baby girl, then we'll talk!



Happy Halloween, have a spooooky weekend, and I'll see y'all on Monday for Vegan MoFo!