Autumn Sandwich, Breakfast, and Take Out

Inspired by Evan's post on Bjorkedoff, I sought to recreate some kind of Autumnal Sandwich. Jay made flat bread before I got home, sort of ciabatta style but with less air, from the Joy of Cooking recipe and added in some caramelized onions and herbs from our garden. We used a ton of local ingredients: red leaf lettuce, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, jonathan apples. We added soy nut butter and orange fig spread. It was exactly as good as it sounds ONLY BETTER.



Here are a couple of breakfast shots from the past week. One features local eggs, Gimme Lean sausage, homemade biscuits, and local muscadine jelly. The other is some mashed potato cakes with local BBQ sauce.




Finally, some take out from a Middle Eastern place called Ali Baba's. This is the vegetarian combo, which has two huge pitas, four dolmades, two falafel balls, some pickled salad, babaganoush, and hummus. It was more than enough for two people, and it was like $7. Kind of amazing.

Bean Burger, Shepherd's Pie, a Porch Party, and a Bento (sort of)

Okay, a few things to catch up on over the last ... however many months. New template with no dates makes me look like less of a slacker, I guess.

Here are some things I've made in the interim that I took pictures of. First, shepherd's pie with tempeh, local veggies, and local (dairy) cheese.


Nom. Next, homemade bean burgers. One shot of the patty cooking and one shot of the complete burger.



Finally, a shot of a few dishes from a big porch party we had this summer. Zatar bread, hummus, veggie roll ups, and a few other things I can't recall.


Not gonna lie, I love a potluck.

Now for something new. I've decided to try making a few bentos for lunch, and I attempted my first one last night. It's sort of a bento fail, but I'm posting it here hoping that the failure is at least a little bit endearing.


Steamed broccoli, veggie dog, baked tofu, sliced carrots, snow peas, prunes, a banana, and some graham crackers. Sauces and seasonings on the side, there.

We had a huge sushi party a couple of weeks ago, and made a big pot of chili this weekend. It's not that I'm not cooking, it's that I'm not taking pictures and, obviously, food posts without pictures are kind of like tits on a boar hog. But I am working on correcting this. I primrose.

Sushi

Sarah sent out an e-mail planning a big sushi dinner for her birthday, only the party wasn't until next Saturday. Screw that. The Rosetta household got a mad sushi craving and decided to do something about it. After hitting the Asian grocery for nori and miso paste and a few other essentials, we came home and made two courses.

The first was a big pot of miso soup, with dried shitake mushrooms, baked tofu, and hijiki. We pretty much just added the paste to the water until it tasted right, then added the other stuff and let it simmer for a long time. No real science to it.

The rolls were a little more complicated, but no one should be intimidated by making sushi. We sliced up a bunch of kale, shiso, steamed butternut squash, baked tofu, carrots, and scallions (from our own back yard). We made a bunch of jasmine rice in the rice cooker, with extra water to make it a little stickier. If you don't have sushi rice, any short or medium grain rice will work fine. When the rice was done, we mixed it with rice vinegar, salt, and sugar and let it cool off some before making the rolls. Then we sat down at the table and just kind of went for it. Everyone grabbed a sheet of nori, spread it with rice, threw various combinations of the ingredients on it, and rolled it up. I even made one inside out roll and sprinkled it with sesame seeds. We made some wasabi paste (from the powder) and some spicy mayo sauce out of vegenaise and sriracha. We ate sooooo much.

If you've never made sushi before and still think it's scary, let me share two facts. Fact 1: we made about 14 sushi rolls for under $10 total. We fed 4 people with sushi that, at a sushi bar, would have cost close to $100. We had tons of leftovers. Fact 2: The very first episode of Post Punk Kitchen gives a step by step sushi making lesson in great, immaculate detail. No more excuses. You don't even need a mat. Just go for it.

VeganMofo 5: Butternut Squash Spring Rolls, Take 2

Last time I blogged these, I followed Isa and Terry's recipe from V'con pretty precisely. This time I sort of winged it and used whatever I had laying around. I roasted half a cubed butternut squash in the oven this morning and managed to not eat all of it before lunch time. I had some leftover tofu so I diced it and deep fried it to a nice chewy consistency. We also threw in some raw spinach, rice noodles, and tempura portobello mushrooms. I made a peanut sauce with apple cider vinegar, homemade peanut butter, tamari, sriracha, oil, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

I just realized I don't really have much else to say. It's nice to be with someone who not only can appreciate my cooking but actually contribute and make it better, and has the same kinds of values I have when it comes to food.

Box of Goodies from Taiwan!

I said way back in my first post that one of my exceptions to being vegan is when I have a chance to experience something from another culture. This is the first example of that this year. My friend visited Taiwan and brought back a huge box full of goodies, and none of the packaging is in English so I have no idea if anything in here is remotely vegan. I am assuming there may be some butter and gelatin tucked away in the plethora of luscious goodies. I'm trying a little bit of everything and passing some of it along to friends and coworkers.

While I think Anthony Bourdain goes a little overboard on his blanket characterization of vegans as the enemies of good food (I really love food) and says he couldn't live in a world without veal stock, I kind of see where he's coming from. When I heard him speak a few months ago, he talked about food as a cultural passport. He said when he was in Vietnam the people in the village where he was staying offered him a whole chicken. He knew it was all the meat they could afford in a month, and it was a huge honor to be offered that, and of course he accepted. When you travel, one of the best ways to show people that you respect them and want to learn more is to try the food without reservation or judgment.

While of course my friend who brought me all these goodies isn't going to judge me, a different Taiwanese friend commented on it last night. "It's weird that you like all that stuff. Most people don't like it unless they grew up eating it." I can't imagine what's not to like about flaky, delicious pastries and chewy soft candies, but it was noteworthy to her.

That leads me to believe it's not specifically a vegan or vegetarian issue. People are generally hesitant to open up to new foods, especially when they look totally unfamiliar or have unidentifiable ingredients. Vegans, I think, have a much better reason (whether it's health or animal rights or environment) than others (where it's probably just xenophobia). When it comes to opening up my world a little bit, I try to put all my reservations aside, including those that I find very important in other circumstances.

Simple Mattar Curry

Remember how I lamented about the droopiness and yuckiness of canned vegetables in my last post? There is one exception. I love making curry with canned peas. I think it's because real curry cooks for a long time, so the peas are sort of brown and wilted by the time it's served. Frozen or fresh is superior, certainly, if you have a long time to cook or the forethought to use the crock pot. Today I was lazy, however, and threw together this really easy mattar curry. I sauteed half an onion and a few cloves of garlic, added a can of peas (undrained), and then threw curry powder all over the place along with a little salt and pepper. Then I just let it simmer for a few minutes, and served it over some short grain brown rice. Basmati would have been preferable, sure, but I didn't have any and I like the sweetness of the short grain brown. I think it's a nice compliment to a sweet yellow curry. I start work for real on Wednesday (right now I'm working but not in the office) so a lot of my posts may be of my cute little sectioned lunch box that my mom got me.

Green Thai Curry

I know, I've been abusing the hell out of the frozen stir fry veggies lately. They're just so goddamn versatile, I can't help it. For me, the quality of frozen vegetables isn't low enough that I don't enjoy the food (like it would be if they were all droopy and canned) and it's the only practical way I know to get the diversity of vegetables in the small amounts I work with.

So here's another look at them, this time with tofu. I used the Thai Kitchen brand curry paste which was sort of lame. The flavor was weak and the spice was almost nonexistent. I need to go back to Sam's Oriental and get more of that stuff in the tub. Anyway, this was super easy: a block of tofu, a bag of frozen veggies, a can of coconut milk, some vegetable broth, lemongrass, and lots and lots of curry paste until I realized it wasn't going to get spicy and just added sriracha.

Spicy Peanut Sauce

I know, it's been a while. I took the bar exam. I have no idea if I passed, and I won't know until April 4th. I took about four days to just binge on horrible, non-vegan, non-diet food and massive quantities of alcohol. It was worth it. I'm recovered now and back in the kitchen. Today for lunch (and last night for dinner) I made this super easy noodle stir fry. Seriously, it's rice noodles and frozen veggies. The sauce is about 2 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp rice vinegar, 2 tbsp chunky peanut butter, and a few dribbles of sriracha. When it cools a little bit the sauce gets all sticky and super peanutbuttery, and I live for that moment.

Noodles for a Sick Girl

It must seem like I get sick a lot. The truth is, I almost never get sick. Before I had that kidney infection a few weeks ago (when I posted the ditalini) I hadn't been sick with anything in over a year. Then that thing takes me out for a few days, followed in short order by one crazy bitch of a cold. I woke up fine on Saturday morning, went to the gym, spent the day with my grandma, and by bedtime I was hacking like a little old man with the consumption. It was on Nigella Lawson's suggestion here that I decided to use udon noodles in my sick girl soup. I didn't follow this recipe, but it turned out pretty yummy. The broth was kind of weak so on the second day I threw it out and just ate the noodles and veggies. I'm better now, so I guess it worked.

Lunch Time!

I'll go ahead and make another post, since I'm sure Sarah will be thrilled to see the corn chowder pushed off the bottom of the page. Here are a couple of things I've made for lunch this week. The first is hummus, which I ended up making with no oil or lemon juice. So, just chickpeas, tahini, cumin, and garlic. Loads of garlic. I finished off the rest of it in class last night and felt inhibited about talking to anyone afterwards. The salad has cabbage, sugar snap peas, grape tomatoes, green leaf lettuce, and I think some baby carrots with a honey mustard vinaigrette.

The second one is my lunch from today. On New Year's Day, my mom had me run by the store and get some cabbage since she's super traditional and insists on black eyed peas and cabbage for good luck. I was going to skip out this year but she sent me an email saying she'd already made vegan black eyed peas and rice with vegetable broth. How adorable. I couldn't say no. When I got to the store, cabbage was on sale for 25 cents a pound, so I bought two heads thinking I'd just nosh on them for a while. I'm totally in love with this vegetable now. Not only is it in the salad pictured above, I've also started making this stir fry every other day. It's cabbage, soy beans, and a little rice. The sauce is a rough approximation of the one from Veganomicon that accompanies the butternut squash spring rolls, using rice vinegar, soy sauce, sugar (I use splenda), sesame oil, sriracha, and some ginger.

Butternut Squash Spring Rolls

I've been itching to try the butternut squash spring rolls from Veganomicon for a while. I bought a squash last time I was at the grocery store. Something everyone should know about me and keep it in their heart of hearts forever is that I do not generally like squash. However, it's a texture issue more than a taste issue, and when prepared correctly I enjoy the sweet winter squashes quite a bit. Summer squashes and other squishy things, like eggplant and zucchini, require special magic to make them edible to me.

It wasn't until after I got the squash peeled and seeded that I realized it had to be cut into 1/4" cubes. That was tedious, but the result was worth it. I gorged myself on like six of these bad boys. I also replaced the cilantro with Thai basil, because I recently was tricked into hating cilantro. A friend of mine who used to work in the restaurant industry said that there are two kinds of people: those who love cilantro and those who think it tastes like soap. I couldn't imagine what he was talking about as I've always loved cilantro. Last week I made a big pot of green curry and chopped up a bunch of cilantro to serve with it. I took one bite and thought, in horror, "Holy shit! It DOES taste like soap!" I haven't been able to eat it since. He says it's supposed to be genetic, so maybe it tasted like soap all along and I never really noticed it.

I also replaced the vermicelli with a broader rice noodle, because I had some in my kitchen already, and the spicy oil or whatever with Sriracha.

While I've made spring rolls with rice paper before, I think the olive oil on the squash, and my fingers, made these especially difficult to get tight. I may use less if I make these again.