Pub Grub at Home

I love a good (veggie) burger and fries–preferably with beer–but given the post-holiday pinch on both my wallet and my fat-consumption, I’ve avoided heading down to my favorite pub to indulge that love.  To make up for that sacrifice, Josh and I put together this tasty meal of mini veggie burgers on baguettes, spicy red-cabbage slaw and roasted potatoes.

The slaw is an adaptation of Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen recipe (see previous post for more info on that), and is truly amazing.  The original calls for green and red cabbage, but since 1) I love red cabbage and 2) the only head of it we could get in the store was huge, we just made the entire thing with red.  To that, we added shredded carrots, and a dressing made of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, horseradish mustard, honey, salt and cayenne.  After mixing the dressing thoroughly with the slaw, we let the whole thing hang out in the fridge for an hour or so, before topping it with sesame seeds.  (Tip: though this makes a crapload of slaw, it gets even better the longer you leave it in the fridge, so having it around for the next week is not a bad thing.)

The potatoes were simple: we just cut up yukon golds into bitesize pieces, tossed them in olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary, and roasted them in the oven at 425 degrees till they were golden and delicious.

The burgers…well, I’d like to be able to tell you that we made them from scratch, but alas, they are store-bought.  We did, however, liven them up with baby spinach, old white cheddar and peach chutney (a combination reminiscent of one done by my favorite pub here in Guelph, The Woolwich.)

So, not quite your typical pub fare, but something that makes a great substitute in a pinch.  And bonus: no post-fry regrets.

Vegetarian Soul Dinner

I mentioned in an earlier post that we got several new and exciting cookbooks for Christmas–this meal is one of the first we made using our favorite of the bunch, Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen.  It’s full of really wonderful recipes (complete with soul soundtrack suggestions), which we tend to adapt to make them vegetarian, rather than strictly vegan.  This is partially because we don’t tend to keep things like rice milk on hand, and partially because we’ve never really gotten over our love of butter.

This particular night, we made our own version of Terry’s cumin-cayenne mashed potatoes, greens with lemon-tahini dressing, and rosemary roasted tofu.

I’ll start with the tofu, since it was the simplest.  We cut a package of tofu into large-ish bite size pieces–though, if I were doing this again, I’d recommend going with something a bit larger, since they got pretty crunchy–and gently tossed them in a mixture of olive oil, salt, paprika and rosemary.  We then roasted the tofu in a 450 degree oven for about half an hour.  When they came out, they were golden brown (thanks, Paprika!), with a nice texture and flavor.  Simple, but really good.

We served the tofu over the potatoes, which have quickly become one of my favorite things to make.  While I’m boiling the potatoes (I like yellow or red ones for this), I caramelize an entire yellow or Vidalia onion in olive oil mixed with a bit of salt, a couple of tablespoons of cumin and a little cayenne pepper.  When the potatoes are done, I mash them together with the onion mixture, plus butter and milk (sorry, Bryant Terry and vegans!), and a bit of black pepper for good measure.  The results are seriously amazing.  Your potatoes shall be revolutionized.

The greens we made were a combination of kale and spinach, though the recipe called for Swiss chard.  We started by sauteeing a sliced shallot in butter, then added the greens (minus the stalks) and cooked them for a few minutes.  While this was happening, we made a dressing by mixing tahini with lemon juice, salt, water, minced garlic and balsamic vinegar.  We finished the whole thing by tossing the warm greens in the dressing.  And when we were done?  Well, I really can’t say enough about the virtues of these greens.  Look, I know what you’re thinking:

“That woman is crazy if she thinks I’m putting hummus ingredients on my greens.”

Look, I get it.  I was skeptical too.  In fact, my actual words were, “this is going to taste like we dunked our greens in hummus, and then threw vinegar on them.”  But let me tell you: this is not a bad thing.  I am not going to sit here and claim that the greens didn’t bear a striking taste resemblance to hummus.  Here’s what I will say, though–what if they did? Would that be so bad?  Free your mind, people.  Let your greens be whoever they want to be.  We’ve been letting them be pork-y for years, and lord knows collards don’t taste like fatback in the wild.  Imagine a world in which kale can taste like hummus, tofu can be crunchy and satisfying, and mashed potatoes are earthy, spicy and sweet all at once.

Bryant Terry has seen that world.  I have glimpsed it.  And it is good.

Crawfish Étouffée

Recently, I went on a voyage back to Louisiana, and while there, I picked up a package of those magical little critters known almost as much for their mud-dwelling as for their deliciousness: crawfish.  If you’re a regular reader of this blog (if such things exist!), you know that most of the food we make is vegetarian…but we do make exceptions for fish, and especially crawfish.  Indeed, I was a strict vegetarian for almost two years, and eventually, well, the crawfish-deprivation just became too much to bear.  If you’ve never had them, you should absolutely find a way to remedy this tragic state of affairs as soon as possible. * Between now and then, however, you should simply know that while they’re about the size of smallish shrimp, their texture is far better (not rubbery), and their flavor is more like lobster, but better.

Seriously.  I recognize that, as a Louisiana native, I am certainly biased–but I cannot help but believe that if more people had crawfish, lobster wouldn’t be held in such high esteem.  They’re big, of course, but nowhere near as flavorful as the lowly mudbug.

Anyway, there are millions of ways to eat crawfish (crawfish soup, crawfish enchiladas, and crawfish pasta with cream sauce are only a few of my other favorites), but one of the best–and most classic–is Crawfish Etouffee.  “Etouffee” means “smothered” in French, and any etouffee (they, too, come in a variety of iterations) is essentially a rich, spicy gravy with seafood and veggies served over rice.  It’s actually quite a bit like gumbo (minus the okra), but thicker.

Interestingly, to make sure that the crawfish texture stays on track, most of the etouffee-making process is totally crawfish-free.  I started by making a light brown roux (with butter, a little oil, and flour), in which I sauteed onion, celery and green bell pepper.  When these had softened, I added garlic, and then a little crushed tomato, creole seasoning, salt, pepper and thyme.  Then, I slowly added several cups of vegetable broth, plus cayenne and a pinch of sugar.  I let this all simmer together and reduce for about half an hour, and then at the end, added the crawfish and chopped green onions.  When everything had come up to temperature, we served it over rice and with crusty bread (to soak up the extra, of course).

What can one say about etouffee?  How can you capture its awesomeness?  It’s impossible, of course, so I’ll just let you know that it was my favorite food as a child, and it continues to be right up there today: spicy, savory, rich, and completely, uniquely Louisiana.

*If you are from Louisiana, nothing from this point on will be news to you.

“Sausage” ‘n Biscuits

Do you ever have one of those mornings when you wake up hungry, only to realize that there’s nothing to eat in the house?  I hate when this happens, primarily because I am not particularly fond of waiting to eat (grouchiness ensues!) and the prospect of going to the store pre-coffee is enough to send me over the edge.  Well, today was one of those mornings–but surprisingly, it ended up much, much better than I could have hoped, because we managed to turn “nothing to eat” into something fantastic.

We had no milk, yogurt, fruit (except a banana that is, to put it mildly, past its prime) or bread, so all the usual breakfast items were out.  However, Josh managed some quick thinking–a feat, as far as I’m concerned, given our pre-coffee status–and he whipped up some quick buttermilk biscuits, while I constructed some veggie sausage out of TVP, an egg, and flour.

Now, I know the meat-eaters amongst you may think this sounds a bit odd, but believe me when I tell you that it was really, really good.  TVP behaves a lot like ground beef after it’s been browned, so making sausage patties out of it makes perfect sense.  After re-hydrating the TVP with boiling water (it comes in a dry form), I seasoned it pretty aggressively with garlic salt, fennel, sage, cayenne and black pepper, and then combined it with the egg and flour to form a mixture that held together.  I then formed it into patties, which I browned on each side in a little bit of olive oil–et voila!  “Sausage”!  It was savory, spicy and satisfying, just like a good Southern breakfast should be.

(Those of you who are still skeptical are hereby warned that I may just substitute your pork sausage with TVP without your knowledge.)