My Weekend: Seitan Picatta, Brunch, and Cake!!! February 9, 2009
Posted by Jay in Brunch, Desserts, Seitan, Veganomicon Recipes.7 comments
Hey everyone! This weekend was really fun in terms of cooking! So here is what I cooked/baked this past weekend. After looking at so many blogs especially Sweet Eats and Another One Bites the Crust, I was really craving some cake. These two amazing foodies are so fun to read, they go to various vegan restaurants and blog about them. I spent so much time reading these blogs as I am obsessed about going to Candle Cafe. Hopefully I can go this month! I really want to go there and Erica of Sweet Eats and Nicole of Another One Bites the Crust both went to Candle and write countless posts about Candle and many more vegan restaurants! They have posted so much cake that they eaten so I decided to make a cake of my own. I saw that they had eaten a Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake which looked really good. I set out to make my own version which sadly I didn’t complete more on that later.
I doubled the Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World chocolate cupcake recipe and made two round cakes. I then also used the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes to make a tasty Peanut Buttercream Frosting which was really good! I baked my cakes for about 23 minutes and I took them out when the knife came out clean. I let them cool and then when I lifted them they were so fragile! This has never happened to me and I blame myself for not baking them a couple minutes more. It was slightly under-baked so this stopped me from completing my mission for creating an amazing cake that I had seen on those two amazing blogs! I just frosted my cake with the Peanut Buttercream and wasn’t in the mood to make the Ganche. The cake was so fragile in fact one of it fell apart but lucky I was able to fix it with frosting. The cake was also lacking in the flavor dept. which I think is because of my cocoa powder. I bought a big bag of Hershey’s Cocoa powder from Restaurant Depot and it has been living in my freezer for one year and has not been producing quality chocolate desserts. The flavor does come out strong, I think it has went stale. The best part of the cake was the frosting! It was so Peanut Buttery and Awesome! Hopefully one day I will be able to create that amazing cake from Vegan Treats that was featured on Sweet Eats and Another One Bites the Crust.
Moving on to Saturday. On Saturday my dad’s cousin came so I wanted to make some brunch! I made her some Banana-Nut Waffles from Veganomicon.
I have been eating a lot of waffles this best month which I think is awesome because I love them so much! These waffles were sweet and tasty and very banana tasting, it was like eating dessert because I decided to add some brown sugar along with the recipe’s maple syrup. I tasted the batter and the first waffle and it didn’t seem sweet so I just added the brown sugar but I think it was two much. Next time I will add the brown sugar and leave out the maple syrup. I had these waffles with just some maple syrup, these waffles really didn’t need any syrup since I already made them sweet enough. I also served them with some blueberries and bananas and put a nice healthy shake of powdered sugar! These were amazing!
That same day I was craving seitan! Thanksgiving was the last time I had seitan! I don’t know how I lived so long without seitan! I had an extreme craving for seitan where I though about it for about half a period in school! After looking at so many pictures of seitan on Sweet Eats and Another One Bites the Crust I had to make it again! Me and Seitan have had a couple of bumpy roads but we are finally learning to accept each other! Sometimes I make seitan and it comes out rubbery, one time I made it and it was so so so chewy! I had a couple of nice times with seitan but Saturday was the best experience that I had with seitan! I used the Veganiomicon recipe for the Simple Seitan. My only addition was chickpea flour. I find that chickpea flour makes seitan nice and tender. I divided the seitan dough into two equal pieces. I then set up the broth and put the raw seitan in there. I made sure to stay right there and make sure it didn’t boil. As soon as it started to boil I turned the heat to simmer. I simmered it for one hour and the result was amazing. The texture and flavor was the best yet. It was slightly chewy, tender, dense in the middle and very meatlike. I looked at a lot of Candle Cafe pictures and I really like how they cut their seitan. It looks really nice to the eye. So I took the two even pieces and cut them into slightly thin slices. It was as close as I get to Candle Cafe. I have been wanting to make Picatta for so long so I made it from the recipe from V’con. The recipe was really tasty but I though it had a too many shallots. The only changes I did was use a non alcoholic wine in place of the wine and I finished the sauce with some Earth Balance and lemon slices. I also made some awesome mashed potatoes with lots of Earth Balance of course and some awesome Kale! The sauteed kale came out really good better than ever. I did this my accident but I let my pan get really hot and added the oil. When I put the kale in it charred slighty at the bottom so I kept turning it so it wouldn’t burn. The result was some delicious Kale with a nice slightly charred taste. I really felt like I was eating at some fancy restaurant it was so good! The seitan flavor was the best that I have ever had yet. I really want to get more experimental with seitan and try to create some interesting recipes!
Lastly after looking at another amazing blog, Vegan Yum Yum I saw the pancakes that she blogged about a while back.
These pancakes looked so good so I gave the recipe a shot. I normally use the VWAV recipe which is very similar. The Vegan Yum Yum just has one teaspoon less baking powder which made flatter pancakes. These pancakes were really good! I was really bad at making pancakes but now I am getting the hang of them. I really want to get a griddle so I can get perfect browned pancakes like on the boxes that you see. Does anyone know if a griddle will get the job done? What do you use for your pancakes?
Alright everyone, I guess that’s it.
Perfect Fall Dinner- Panfried Tempeh with Mushroom Ragout, Stuffed Acorn Squash and Apple Pie and Coconut Lemon Bundt Cake November 14, 2008
Posted by Jay in Apples, Desserts, My Recipes, Squash, Tempeh, Veganomicon Recipes, Vegetables.5 comments
This week I made some really tasty things!! The inspiration for this week’s dinner came from Isa’s Blog. For the House of Dreams benefit dinner, Isa made Temeph over Kale, with mushroom ragout, and stuffed acorn squash. I really wish I was in Portland so I could have went to this dinner. I decided to recreate what Isa made myself based on that photo. I made the best tempeh I ever tasted! It was so tasty. I made a simple marinade to marinade the tempeh in and I boiled it in a soy sauce and water mixture which I think really helped the flavor. I then panfried it until nice and golden! I served the tempeh was a mushroom ragout which really complemented the tempeh. I also had spinach under the tempeh. Here’s the recipe for the tempeh and mushroom ragout below.
Pan Fried Tempeh, Mushroom Ragout, Stuffed Acorn Squash and Garlicky Spianch
Panfried Tempeh
Serves about 4
Ingredients:
For the marinade
3/4 cup white wine or vegetable broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce plus 2-3 tablespoons soy sauce
half a lemon squeezed
2 garlic cloves
2-3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
Pepper to taste
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 packages of tempeh
Olive Oil for frying
Cut each block of tempeh in to 4 triangles. First cut it across in the middle then cut the two squares diagonally, into triangles.
Bring a pot of water to boil and add some soy sauce to it about 2-3 tablespoons to the water. Add the tempeh and boil on medium for about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine all the other ingredients for the marinade.
After 10 minutes add the tempeh to the marinate and marinate for about an hour or more if you want.
After it has marinated, heat a pan over medium high heat with olive oil for pan-frying.
Pan Fry the tempeh until golden about 2-3 minutes per side.
Mushroom Ragout
Ingredients
1 pound of cremini mushrooms thinly sliced
About half a cup of white wine or vegetable broth
1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste
2-3 medium Shallots minced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary
A pinch of dried thyme
Salt and Pepper to taste
Olive Oil
Heat a pan with olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallots and saute for about 5-8 minutes, until they are translucent. Add the herbs and tomato paste. Then add the mushrooms and wine or vegetable broth and saute for about 8-10 minutes until the mushrooms have reduced. If it seems a little dry add more wine/vegetable broth. Season with Salt and Pepper.
For my acorn squash, I used Isa’s recipe for Cornbread Stuffing with Pears and Pecans and just substituted some ingredients based on what I had. For example I use rosemary instead of thyme, apples instead of pears, and shallots instead of onions. I also added some carrots and celery and omitted the celery seed. Oh and I halved the recipe. I really suggest Isa’s recipe for cornbread stuffing, it was so tasty! I will defiantly make this stuffing for Thanksgiving! Now let’s talk about the acorn squash itself. It was my first time having acorn squash. I was very surprised with the taste, it tasted so different from the other squashes. It was good but I think next time I will roast it with earth balance and maple syrup for extra goodness!
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I also made some awesome baked goods this week. I made a really awesome bundt cake from Veganomicon. I made the Coconut- Lemon Bundt cake. This bundt cake was so moist and full of lemony and coconut flavor! I think it was the most moist cake when I have ever had. I will defiantly make this again!
Coconut Lemon Bundt Cake
I made my very first apple pie! It came out really good! I even made a lattice crust for it. The only thing I will probaly do next time is reduce the spices I used in the apple filling. I need to work a bit more on my crust though. This apple pie went really fast. I only had a slice and I wanted more!! I can’t wait to make this again for Thanksgiving.
Apple Pie
