lemon zucchini bread (pictured on a bamboo plate purchased from twin cities green**)

after a bit of a break due to hectic-ness with work and life, i’ve promised myself i’d develop a few more recipes this weekend to test for the zine.  today got me baking, sautéing, and giving one of the older recipes a new twist:

polenta-baked maple-mustard-chili *tempeh* over spicy kale with thai peanut dressing

for a change, i thought i’d try my recently amended marinade on some tempeh instead, coat it in some polenta, and bake it - instead of my usual naked tofu/grill route.  it turned out delicious!  a told me it looked like baked fish sticks (”but not in a gross way”).  i served it over spicy sautéed kale with thai peanut dressing, inspired by a similar coconut-peanut-spinach curry i love to get at true thai (only, i imagine, quicker to make and less fattening).

i also baked some lemon zucchini bread, which has the perfect lemony hint and deliciously moist interior for a summer treat.  i’m bringing it into work tomorrow morning, also, in hopes that they’ll start making it in the bakery (because sadly, our vegan mini bread selection is in quite a depressed state).  here is an inside shot, fantastic alone, though also great with a little earth balance spread on top.

**twin cities green is a local eco-friendly retailer and information center that sells recycled, reclaimed, sustainable, fair-trade, natural and organic furniture, home/kitchen goods, clothing, bath products, books, baby stuff, etc.  even their labels and gift certificates are printed on the backside of used cereal boxes!  they also hold workshops on several topics like diy, bike maintenance, and eco-friendly alternatives.  if you live in the twin cities, i recommend checking them out.

crushed tomatoes, spicy tempeh sausage, fresh spinach, red onions, and basil chiffonade on a spelt-whole wheat crust; with bell’s two hearted ale and a trio of olives.

we tend to order a lot of pizza luce at our apartment (well, when we order pizza, maybe once or twice a month).  and it’s great - we can do half vegan/half vegetarian, it’s garlicky, deliciously smothered in toppings, and local.  but sometimes i want more choices (not to mention saving 18 dollars).  i want to know what all goes into my crust and my toppings.  so, i bought a pizza stone.  it changed my life over two nights.

i searched high and low for a whole grain pizza crust online, but wasn’t left with many options for quick and easy.  so my wait for pizza night lasted through an overnight delayed fermentation after finding a pared down version of peter reinhart’s recipe on 101 cookbooks (a gorgeous site with vegetarian, and several vegan, recipes).  and was it worth it?  oh yes.

i wouldn’t call myself a pizza snob in the sense that i’ve never lived in new york city (wow, have i encountered strong - though deserved - opinions there), nor do i have a very specific definition of what i think constitutes a good pizza.  they come in all shapes, sizes, and tastes.  but i’m certainly not one to settle for a cheeseless vegetarian chain pizza with too much (and a too chewy) crust.  and i, for one, appreciate a crispy thin crust when i have the option, and would generally rather skip the faux cheese (though pizza luce’s rinotta is pretty damn tasty).

garlic-stuffed olives, marinated sicilian olives, and green lucques.

a is playing a few shows out of town this weekend, so i made a pizza for the eve of her departure.  i wasn’t sure how the crust would turn out exactly, and only had some vague ideas of what to top it with to approximate the simplicity of a neopolitan-style pizza.  a friend of mine likes to point out that a lot of poorer people in italy could not afford to put cheese (or meat for that matter) on their pizzas, making it fairly authentic to create a truly vegan pizza.  with the first pizza, however, i opted for some protein on top by making a zestier version of the tempeh sausage crumbles from the millenium cookbook’s puttanesca pizza.  it complemented the tangy crushed tomatoes i used as a sauce as well as the baby spinach and red onions; when i pulled the pizza out of the oven i sprinkled it with a chiffonade of basil:

…and served it with three kinds of olives and a cold bottle of bell’s two hearted ale apiece.  mmm…

so about this crust:  i used a combination of whole spelt flour and whole wheat bread flour to make a whole grain crust, which is hard to find (most have a mix of wheat and white flour).  i mixed enough dough for 8 small crusts and froze most of them, reserving a few in the fridge for the upcoming occasions.  i shaped the dough by hand (without a rolling pin), getting a dangerously thin crust in some areas, but the heat of that magic twelve-dollar stone assured that my crust came out not-soggy, and perfectly baked.  my crust didn’t blister and blacken in spots as neopolitan pizzas tend to, but i have no complaints about the final product.  it was thin and crispy without being either hard or cardboard-like, and had an amazing flavor.

spelt-whole wheat crust with olive oil, tomatoes, grilled zucchini, red onions, salt and pepper, before baking (and before basil).

i got to try out more pizza the following night, when two of my coworkers came over to watch “eyes without a face” (which i recommend if you’re in the mood for a creepy, beautiful french film from the late 50s).  this time i made two kinds: one crust simply brushed with olive oil, then layered with tomatoes, grilled zucchini, red onions, and fresh basil, and the other with crushed tomatoes, tempeh sausage, sicilian olives, marinated mushrooms, red onions, cashew cheese, and fresh rosemary.  this crust recipe is definitely a keeper!  if you can hold off a day in finishing your pizza dough, i highly recommend it.

tempeh reuben on artisan pumpernickle bread with spring mix salad

we’re working on getting ready for a weeklong trip to texas early next week, so my internet existence has been intermittent and will cease to exist after tuesday (but only temporarily!).  and hence, no recipes and few presentable items.

my sweet vegan’s bananas foster cupcakes (pardon the lack of lighting and lack of familiarity with another camera)
i finally broke down and got my sweet vegan, though i hardly need to make any more sweets.  still, it makes for wonderful companion baking!  my friend amber and i whipped these up last weekend, making a single layer cake (not pictured) and twelve cupcakes… seriously, it makes that much cake!  they also convinced amber that vegan baking exists and is flavorful and delicious.  a slight rum flavor, creamy banana, and caramel frosting.

vegan swedish pancakes with strawberry-orange-date syrup 

one day i spent battling the vegan crepe/swedish pancake.  though i got a few good ones, and they tasted pretty good, i feel i need to work on them a little more.  unfortunately it seemed that the best ones were also the ones cooked in the most earth balance, so i feel pretty guilty about devouring crepes for breakfast, lunch and dinner (no, i’m so not kidding… i shudder to think about it).  once i feel enough time has passed to justify making these again, i’m going to hold or partake in a brunch party, and make a swedish pancake torte!!  it’s going to be amazing and full of berries.

 stack of vegan crepes, all sizes and textures…

tempeh reuben crepe… weird, but not as weird as you might think.  it’s no reuben, but makes good use of leftovers if you can survive without the toasty rye bread.

savory portobella and caramelized onion crepe torte, sans cream gravy 

savory portobella and caramelized onion with thyme cream sauce… i can’t believe i ate half of this at the end of the day.  i should be dead, shouldn’t i?  maybe not, but i can tell you the salad i had with this was a really welcome contrast.  nom nom.

so i’m not sure if i’ll have another post before i leave (i hope to), but hopefully i will have some pleasantly-surprising documentation about vegan eating in south texas, which sounds scary and unrealistic right now.  but you never know!

you’re probably sick of seeing these things, aren’t you? well i’m sorry, i just can’t get sick of making them. another breakfast cake, this time with a raspberry-tangerine syrup a la the strawberry-tangerine recipe. and served with a big mug of vanilla almond mylk from ani’s book.

that tasty lunch i was promising…

clockwise from top right: spinach salad with raw parm, rosemary potatoes with onions and jalapenos, grilled marinated tempeh with cashew-shallot-dill gravy, and grilled zucchini.

i hurriedly signed up to be a tester for mattye lee’s frugal raw cookbook… a cookbook idea very appealing to me. she comes up with really amazing raw meals (raw indian?!?) and i am excited to try out more soon. i used her raw parm recipe for topping my salad:

grilled zucchini: simple, straightforward. just olive oil, zucchini, and finished with salt and pepper.

i don’t have a closeup of the rosemary potatoes because they weren’t as pretty as i wanted them to be… i’ve got a recipe idea brewing but it needs some tweaking (as well as me not using store-bought rosemary oven potatoes). i keep wanting to recapture the glory that was my hangover tempeh “steak” but somehow i haven’t been able to do that. this was pretty good, however. i marinated tempeh in red wine, bragg’s, garlic, thyme, vegetable stock, white pepper, dijon, and nutritional yeast (my staple marinade). then i grilled it alongside the zucchini while i made a gravy out of shallots sauteed in earth balance, thyme, fresh dill, salt, pepper, vegetable stock, cashew butter, hazelnut milk, and a splash of vegan worcestershire. creamy and delicious! there is definitely no need for dairy in gravy, and i’m saying that as a former dairy addict (with a very unhappy tummy). believe the hype.

after a spicy garbanzo and tomato couscous dinner (sadly not documented), i made myself some spiced coffee with almond mylk. it reminds me of the ethiopian-style coffee i get at the blue nile sometimes, but as i just threw a couple spices in (and have no idea if they’re harar-style or not), i don’t think i can really say that this is ethiopian-style coffee. but it is good. simmer equal parts mylk and coffee (or whatever ratio you desire) with a couple shakes of cardamom and cinnamon and a pinch of cloves. serve warm. the owl mug brings happiness, though not necessarily more tastiness.

roasted tempeh with leeks and carrots and extraveganza! lemon cardamom rice with green peas

tempeh marinated in tamari, dijon, garlic, thyme, and white pepper; tossed with sliced leeks and carrots and served with lemon cardamom rice with green peas.  this was really good, but also a little bitter.  i think i need to start boiling my tempeh before marinating it when i can’t marinate it for a few hours, for one.  and the lemon cardamom rice, because of the cardamom and turmeric, i’m guessing, was also a bit bitter.  even a bit of garlic or onions would have evened it out, i think.

this morning after an early shopping trip, i made a half batch of the lemon lavender blueberry muffins, also from extraveganza!.  i was a little worried about lavender in cooking/baking, which is something i don’t have much experience with.  when i worked at cafe latte we had a lemon lavendar cake that by some accounts tasted like floor cleaner…eek!  luckily not the case here, although i may have mismeasured the baking soda/powder in halving the recipe because it had a little bit of a baking soda aftertaste.  still, they were ultra moist and flavorful, and the best part (besides using half whole spelt flour and half ww pastry flour)?  just look inside!

somehow my post-birthday, cheap-whiskey hangover dinner slipped through the cracks.

i marinated tempeh in red wine, dijon, bragg’s, garlic, and thyme and then browned it. the color is really dark and meatlike, but not in a creepy way… in a vegan delicious way! with broccoli buttercream mashed potatoes (my favorite kind of potato!), and citrus beets from extraveganza! beets are a good cleanser, and if you are a fan of beets, you know what i mean when i say you know you’ve eaten beets.

after a weird day at work yesterday i was in the mood for more comfort food. something rich, succulent, delicious. i copied down a recipe from work and veganized it into seitan bourguignon. i was a bit lazy and used smartlife bacon, but i did make my own seitan from the everyday dish website (although not exactly following the spices called for because i needed something a little more…french). served over whole wheat penne (oh what some rotini could have done for me!):

sometimes you just need something warm, and rich, and salty, and tummy-filling. both of these did the job beautifully.

up next are two dishes i’m trying to work out for a little cookzine project i’m working on with my friend dan. yes, zine. i don’t want to blow it up too much right now because it’s only in planning stages, and there will probably only be 100 copies made. it’s going to be part recipes, part art project, handmade (ie- screenprinted), and hopefully delightful!

so i’m trying to come up with about 10-12 recipes to include, and these are two ideas i’ve come up with but haven’t ironed out, and i’ll discuss how.

teriyaki tempeh rice bowl

so issue number one (for both of these actually), don’t take pictures of food you’re trying to glorify without using natural daylight. washed out, bland-looking, sadness. second, this dish needs more flavor and more color. though it wasn’t bad (rave reviews from my lady, actually), it had too much ginger, not enough tamari, and needs some different vegetables. maybe kale, maybe radishes. i need to figure out how to crisp up my tempeh in the oven better too. i’ll have to pay more attention at work next time (creepy how that is my solution, when they certainly aren’t the ones to look for concerning protein alternative preparation).

coconut-curried red bean (almost) wraps

this one is closer to the mark. i have to work out a better chapati/flatbread recipe that’s a little bit bigger and more pliable (so far i’ve only experimented with cookbook recipes) so that i can actually wrap these. then the curry needs more spices in it methinks, even though it’s meant to be a bit more of a west indies/carribean-style curry. and, some more lime flavor or something. but, tasty regardless.

so once i nail down some more presentable and formatted recipes, i’ll be seeking out some testers. not because this is going to be a blowout zine project, but because i care that the recipes work out for anybody who might buy the zine for the recipes part (though i think the art is going to kick ass too!).

in all the hubbub of pie and things, i forgot to post some pictures of some recent deliciousness.

for breakfast one morning, tempeh bacon from vwav and rosemary potatoes…maple syrup drizzled over the tempeh, and blasphemous ketchup on the potatoes (sorry, it’s just so good!):

pistachio coconut cardamom cookies from extraveganza!.  i’m glad i picked this book up again.  there is so much in it that i want to make and devour.  this were very popular, light and crispy, too.

i made the chickpeas romescu from v*con, but didn’t have any white rice for also making saffron garlic rice, so i just made brown rice to go with it.  isa and terry have made me LOVE fire roasted tomatoes.  they make such a difference in recipes, and coupled here with the roasted red peppers: just perfect.  definitely going to make this dish again, as i’ve been kind of tofu’d, tempeh’d, and seitan’d out lately.  i also got on a grilled asparagus kick, marinating them in olive oil, balsamic, and lemon zest, then sprinkling some salt and pepper on top.  in reality i also had FOUR half-pieces of toast, but i thought it might look a bit overcrowded for this picture:

the tempeh dish was a camping-weekend eve dinner made of things we needed to use up in the fridge, as well as some items i got from my very first trip to united noodle last week. i got a huge bottle of rice wine for 3 dollars, and some sweet rice, which i used for this dish. the other ingredients are peanut butter, sesame oil, garlic, onions, lime juice, broccoli, red and purple bell peppers, and pac choy. everything came out to the perfect crispy tenderness! yummy. here is is served up with sweet rice:

i’ve been promising a that i’d bake some bread when the weather got cooler, so when she threatened to buy some bread from the store i had to really do it. i wanted to make something multigrain and something easy, so after flipping through a few cookbooks i found a spelt sandwich loaf in ldv that uses baking soda (thus, no rising times). i modified the flours quite a bit and came up with a grainier loaf; dense, soft, and just the right hint of sweetness.

spelt-oat soda bread (makes 1 loaf):

3 c spelt flour
1/2 c cornmeal
1 c oats
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 c rice milk
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp maple syrup

preheat oven to 350. lightly oil a bread pan. in a large bowl, sift together the flour, oats, cornmeal, salt, and baking soda until well mixed. add the rice milk, vinegar, and maple syrup and gently stir together with a fork until just mixed. pour into loaf pan and bake on center rack for 55-60 minutes. let cool 10 minutes before removing from pan.

here are some slices topped with earth balance, which is pretty much how they’ve all gone down (some with peanut butter!):

for some reason i decided adding more soy would be a nice contrast?  oh well.  the color is pretty anyhow.