An Italian Stallion in the Kitchen

There are certain ingredients I almost always have on hand - stuff like carrots and celery, soy sauce and olive oil. I keep a pretty generic inventory, but when it comes down to the real STAPLES of my cooking, the food and flavors that take priority, there's definitely an Italian slant. A good cook would probably die without the holy trinity, the foundations of so many cuisines, the carrots, celery, and onion that make mirepoix. I, on the other hand, feel forlorn when I open my vegetable crisper, and I can't find mushrooms, spinach, peas, and (okay, sometimes) artichoke hearts. I always have cans of crushed tomatoes in my cupboard ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. What, you need some marinara? How about just a generic tomato base for that rice? And the cornerstones of my spice rack - the grandfathers for all my seasonings - are easily basil and oregano (which don't belong together in marinara unless you're using it for pizza, BY THE WAY).

I'm from an Italian household and grew up on Italian cooking. (With a name like Micco, would you have ever guessed otherwise?) For Italians, food and family go hand in hand. My dad taught me the marinara that his mother taught him, which her mother (in law) taught her, and so on. Some kids brought PB&Js or Lunchables to school, but my lunchbox came with tupperware containers of leftover lasagna or subs filled with meatballs my dad and I made together. One of the first things I learned to make was fettucini alfredo, and how much garlic was too much garlic, was an issue of constant debate in my household. When I went vegan four years ago, my dad felt thrown for a loop. Coming from a culture covered in cheese with bits of meat floating around in it, this way of eating was completely foreign to him. It wasn't such a big deal as a vegetarian, but a vegan? I kid you not: he was worried he'd have to write me out of Christmas dinner.

My dad's correct, in that a lot of what's hit my plate in recent years is totally different from what I grew up on. (I mean, did I really used to eat beef tacquitos...?) I think it's funny when people ask what vegans eat because, after going vegan, I think I've tried more foods from more countries with more exotic ingredients than most omnis. Still, as my palate has expanded and matured, I've always come back to my roots. The recipes have changed a little, but the food hasn't (I now have vegan versions of most of my great grandma's Christmas cookies!), and it's been kind of special teaching my family new takes on the things they've taught me.

One thing we ate a lot in my family was stuffed peppers. The filling formula was basically: grain + veggie + sauce + cheese +/- meat. Now currently, I'm trying to make up for a lot of the bad eating I did at school - save some calories, up the quality, you know - and I thought, Why not update those peppers to reflect that? The flavors in this are very generic Italian, but to appease my current eating goals, I substituted mashed cauliflower for the grain and mixed it with vegan yogurt for a rich but healthy meal. I think it packs a lot of flavor for how spare it is on the calories (probably around 200 per pepper), and it's a nutrition powerhouse that will leave you quite satiated. Serve it with a side of green beans in light olive oil with minced garlic and maybe some crusty ciabatta, for a truly Italian feast.



STUFF-YOU-FULL-O-GOODNESS STUFFED PEPPERS
+ 2 bell peppers
+ 1/2 head cauliflower
+ 3 - 4 mushrooms, finely diced
+ 1/3 c frozen spinach
+ 3 - 4 frozen artichoke hearts
+ 1/4 c plain vegan yogurt*
+ 1/4 c nutritional yeast
+ 1 - 2 T white wine
+ garlic powder (or 1 clove of fresh garlic, minced)
+ dried Italian herbs (dealer's choice)
+ white pepper
+ salt

01. Preheat the oven to 375˚. Cut the tops off the peppers and scrape out those insides. Lightly oil a baking dish (I used a loaf pan since there were only two) and the sides of the peppers, then place them in the dish, and pop them in the oven for fifteen minutes. (Note: some people put the tops back on their peppers and cook them that way, but you can also chop the tops up and use them for salads or stir-fries later. OR roast them with your peppers, but then save them for tapenade - or maybe a Mediterranean influenced sandwich or pizza? Yum.)

02. While your peppers roast, set a pot of water to boil for your cauliflower. Break down your cauliflower half into its little florets, and steam them until super soft. Of course, if you're like me and without a steamer at the moment, you can just boil them mushy and then drain the excess water, but steaming is better because it maintains more nutrients.

03. Transfer your cooked cauliflower to a bowl, and use a sturdy fork to mash it up. You don't want a texture quit as smooth as mashed potatoes (pre-liquid, of course) but it shouldn't look like renegade floret crumbles, either. This dish is meant to be creamy, but the cauliflower is subbing for grain here, so it should be at least slightly toothsome. Then add your yogurt, nutritional yeast, wine, and seasonings (to taste). If you're using garlic powder, this is when you add it, too.

04. Back on the stove, heat up a skillet with some oil over medium heat, and saute your mushrooms. Toss in your spinach and artichokes, and continue cooking until the mushrooms and spinach darken and the artichokes begin to soften. Use your spatula to separate the leaves a little; no one wants to eat a pepper stuffed with nothing but chunky bits of whatnot, but there needs to be a variety of textures and flavors. Then transfer your veggies to your cauliflower bowl, and give it some quick stirs to incorporate all the ingredients.

05. At this point, your peppers should be finished with their first round in the oven, so start filling them. Fill them as high as you want. Fill them until they're practically overflowing. (If you're really daring, save a little room a crumb-coat topping, and put it on half way through the peppers' baking.) Add a little bit of water to the bottom of your baking dish - just enough so the peppers' little butts don't dry out or cook funny (maybe a quarter of an inch). Then return the peppers to the oven, and cook them for an additional thirty minutes. Let them cool, then stuff yourself. (Ooooh, I'm so witty...!)





This makes two peppers, which I guess could be split four ways, but these are so good, who would want to?

* This is roughly the amount that I used, but my filling turned out a little dryer than some might prefer. However, I'm really trying to make up for my bad eating, so I'm trimming calories where I can, and, well, vegan yogurt has a lot of calories. At this amount, I'd say these peppers "taste like health food" (sort of) but increase it a little and they'll border on decadent. It's your call. To spare even more calories, substitute marinara.

Rainy Day Eats

I'm doing really well in school, but nothing else seems to be going my way. I'm trying not to dwell, but my moods get diluted like watercolors in these thick rains we've been suffering. Yesterday, I was driving home from an errand, and though it'd only been raining for about ten minutes, the roads had already flooded three or four inches. It was like driving through gauze with lots of swerving, so I pretty much wrote off the rest of the day and curled up with a lot of oatmeal and movies. When it rains in Savannah, it POURS, and that about sums up my life.

Suffice it to say, chik'n and dumpling soup has been a recurring theme for me lately. It warms me when I'm fresh from the cold, and it's easy to manage when watching all those films. It's also wickedly easy to make, and I've been doing it gluten-free. I'm beginning to suspect chik'n and dumpling soup is the height of vegan culinary greatness, but that might be the rain's influence. Either way, it's been super delicious and one highlight of these otherwise soggy times.


GLUTEN-FREE CHIK'N & DUMPLINGS
+ 2 T olive oil
+ 2 carrots, diced
+ 2 celery stalks, diced
+ 1 - 3 cloves of garlic, minced
+ 8 oz mushrooms, sliced
+ 1/2 c frozen spinach
+ 1/4 - 1/2 c TVP*
+ 4 c veggie broth
+ 1/2 c chik'n broth powder
+ 1/2 c nutritional yeast
+ salt'n'peppa

+ 1/2 c brown rice flour
+ 1/4 c sorghum flour
+ 1/4 c potato starch
+ 1 t baking powder
+ 1/2 t guar gum
+ salt
+ 2 1/2 T Earth Balance
+ 1/4 - 1/2 c water

01. In a large pot, heat up your oil over medium heat. When the pan is warm, toss in the carrots, celery, and garlic, and sautee for three to five minutes or until the celery and garlic take on a sort of translucent quality. Add the mushrooms, and let them brown a little before adding the spinach, TVP, broth, powder, and yeast. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil.

02. While waiting for the soup to boil, assemble your biscuit dough. Mix all the dry ingredients together with a sifter or fork, then cut in the Earth Balance with a fork, knife, or pastry cutter. You're looking for a course, crumble-y texture that's somewhat uniform in its meal-y quality. Slowly add the water, mixing as you go, until the mixture is JUST combined. Since it's gluten free, you can mix it as much as you want without it getting dense or chewy, so it's okay to hold back a little and stir a lot to gauge the moisture of your dough. When you make the balls, the dough should stick to your fingers a little bit but it shouldn't be sticky. After I was finished, I had hardly any dough residue left in the bowl, and that's what you're shooting for.

03. Take little wads of dough - about a tablespoon's worth - and roll them in your hands until they're smooth little spheres of gluten-free goodness. Then toss them in your boiling soup, bring down the heat to a simmer, and put a lid on top. Let the soup continuing cooking for fifteen to twenty minutes. As tempting as it is to check on your dumplings, don't! The steam is what cooks them, and if you break the seal created by the lid, that lets out the steam, and your dumplings won't cook properly. It's a lot like resisting the urge to open the oven door when baking cupcakes or muffins.

04. But when the time IS up, you can take off the lid, let the soup cool, dish it up, and then sit down to watch a really good movie. Here are some of the movies I've been watching lately:

Knocked Up: bumbling goof with curly hair gets foxy blonde pregnant; comedy and romance ensue; nine months later, there's a baby. From the Einsteins behind Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, and Forty Year Old Virgin. (Should I admit I love their movies?)
Annie Hall: what happens when neurosis dates neurosis; sometimes, it's just not meant to be.
The Way We Were: the dramatic version of Annie Hall, ca. forty years earlier; sometimes, it's just not meant to be.
An Affair to Remember: witty and attractive man and woman have fling on boat, then agree to meet at the Empire State Building six months later to resume the affair. Will they? Won't they? Why are there musical moments?
Wristcutters: boy kills himself over girl; finds himself in world even more depressing than life; discovers girl has also killed herself and is somewhere in this new world; goes on a road trip with Gogol Bordello in search of girl. Romance, nonsense, shenanigans, Tom Waits. (I fucking love this movie.)
Harold and Maude: quirky boy falls in love with old woman. Romance, nonsense, shenanigans, no Tom Waits. (I also fucking love this movie.)
Terms of Endearment: Shirley McClaine as a controlling old woman that owns a Renoire; Jack Nicholson as an aging alcoholic astronaut; Jeff Daniels pre-Dumb and Dumber; some lady I didn't recognize who gets breast cancer. An exploration of unconditional love.
Taxi Driver: young Robert DeNiro going crazy with misanthropy. Amazing cinematography and mostly A-list actors. Find yourself asking, "How did Cybil Shepard go from this to Cybil to The L Word?" Strangely identify with DeNiro's commitment to discipline and healthy living. (So good.)
Get Smart: middle-aged cutie becomes secret agent in classic underdog romantic comedy. Anne Hathaway finally plays a role that doesn't involve being confused and/or helpless 90% of the time, and a glimpse of Steve Carell's naked backside.
Good Will Hunting: cutie with a booty and a high IQ struggles to overcome inhibitions about intimacy. Some classic lines and Ben Affleck actually doing a good job.
American Psycho: sociopath on Wallstreet obsessed with appearance and status; extreme misanthropy; includes a scene of dropping a chain saw on a woman three stories down. Christian Bale post-Velvet Goldmine but pre-Machinist and especially pre-Dark Knight. (I point this out because look at how much his body successively changed for each role! INSANE!)



By the way, this recipe serves four.

So, what are some of the movies you've been watching lately?

* TVP is not technically gluten-free, but I think ya'll are clever enough to omit or even substitute for this if you're actually a celiac. And frankly, nothing in the soup portion has to be absolute. Soup - especially broth-based soups - are such a good way to use whatever's lying around in your fridge, especially the produce drawer, so just throw in whatever you want plus some broth and add the dumplings. So simple!

TGRWT # 16: "Chicken" and Rose

Caught up in my post-class malaise, I was >THISCLOSE< to not revisiting this month's flavor combination of chicken and rose. But I had made that delightful batch of chik'n seitan last night, and my first attempt was just good enough to make me want to continue experimenting. Home from class, I hopped in my car and picked up some raspberry jam for a raspberry rose water glaze that turned out to be the perfect complement for my seitan. Interestingly, this had actually been my first inclination when I thought about the pairing, but then I over-thought it and made that failed cream sauce. Let this be a lesson to follow your gut! (Ha, get it?)

The taste of the glaze with the chik'n really popped. Substituting jam for frozen raspberries pronounced the raspberry flavor and kicked it up a notch with that little added sweetness. While the raspberry was certainly the main focus, the rose was like a smooth bottom note that gave the raspberry's flavor volume. When they were combined with the chik'n, the fruitiness of the rose-raspberry combo really stood out and the chik'n lost some of its salty, savory quality - which wasn't a bad thing at all. Like I said yesterday, I'm not sure if vegan "chicken" can combine with raspberry the same way regular chicken can, but the flavors worked together in SOME way that I found very pleasing.

I served the seitan with my favorite salad at the moment: sunflower seeds, raisins, tomatoes, and cucumbers over mixed greens. Ideally, I would eat this with a tahini-based dressing, but tonight I went with Annie's Goddess Dressing because it's what I had on hand. To be fair, with this salad the Annie's is a close second to a tahini dressing, so I am not complaining. Definitely give this a try; there's something about having all four elements together that makes this salad really exciting. I've tried it in every combination with one ingredient missing, and it's simply not the same. This salad rules hard. Hard. Eat it anywhere, everywhere, always.

Okay, now for the recipe you really care about:


CHIK'N-STYLE SEITAN WITH RASPBERRY-ROSE GLAZE
+ 2 servings of chik'n style seitan
+ 2 T raspberry jam
+ 1 T rosewater
+ 1/2 t Earth Balance
+ 1/2 t corn starch

01. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease up a baking sheet. Place the seitan on the baking sheet, then set it aside.

02. In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the jam, rosewater, and Earth Balance. Pop it in the microwave for about fifteen seconds, and then stir them until well-mixed. Dissolve the corn starch into the warmed jam mixture.

03. Return to your baking sheet, and evenly spread the glaze across both sides of a piece of seitan. Repeat with the other piece, and then pop the baking sheet in the oven and wait ten minutes. Remove, cool, and enjoy.




This serves one lonely little person.

Hail Seitan

So, steaming seitan? Totally the way to go. Over the years, my attempts at homemade seitan have been less than stellar - not inedible but definitely not like anything you'd find in a restaurant. I'm always doing someting too much or too little: kneading, boiling, baking... Even after extensive research, vital wheat gluten has remained a cruel, cruel mistress - that is, until now. Having discovered steaming, I have one more gem in my cooking crown, and soon I shall be king of the vegan universe!!!

The experiment started as a response to this month's They Go Really Well Together. The current flavor combination is rose and chicken, and while it's difficult to respond to meat pairings, chicken is one of the easier meats to mimic (or at least hint at) in the vegan world. Now, there are some good pre-made chicken substitutes out there (Morning Star's grilled chik'n strips come to mind...), but developing my own chik'n recipe has been long overdue. I'd heard that steaming is a pretty no-fail approach to seitan, and I wanted a meat analogue worthy of being featured on an omni blog, so it seemed worth a shot. And oh, success tastes good.

The rose-raspberry cream sauce I paired it with, on the other hand, did not taste so good. I thought it was a genius combination: rose and raspberry with a little basil and a hint of white wine, but the basil drowned out the other flavors, and without it, there was still something missing. I was so disappointed in the sauce, I almost didn't bother using it, but fuck, I'm a broke college student so waste not, want not. I'm kind of glad I went for it, though, because it regained some life once paired with the chik'n. Scientifically, I'm not sure if chik'n and rose "combine" in the same way that chicken and rose do (or should), but they really did taste good together and inspire me to continue experimenting. Still, I am hesitant to post the recipe. Clever though it may be, it just isn't something I'm proud of. Instead, I think I am going to attempt a rose-raspberry glaze tomorrow. I'll likely post the better of the two.

In the mean time, let's learn to make some seitan, shall we?


SEITAN IS GREAT...AN
+ 1 1/2 c vital wheat gluten
+ 1/4 c chik'n broth powder
+ 1/2 c nutritional yeast
+ 1 t paprika
+ 1/2 t onion powder
+ 1/2 t garlic powder
+ 1 - 2 t "seasoning" (e.g. poultry seasoning, creole seasoning, whatever)

+ 1 1/4 c chik'n broth
+ 1 T oil
+ 1 T sesame oil
+ 1 T soy sauce

01. In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. They need to be well combined so the flavor is evenly distributed. Then make a little well, and pour the two oils and soy sauce inside. Add a little bit of chik'n broth, and gently stir with a spatula until just combined. Add a little bit more and stir again until you've added just enough broth that the mixture is moist but not mushy. The bowl should house what looks like a big heap of savory cookie dough.

02. Knead the dough until it gets sort of string-y and has lightened slightly in color - about three minutes. Then divide the dough into six equal pieces. You can just tear off little handfuls; ain't nothin' fancy goin' on here.

03. Get the water boiling in your steamer. Tear off six sheets of aluminum foil about ten inches long, and stack them. Take a wad of dough, put it in the center of your first sheet, and press it into a little disc with the palm of your hand. Then pull together the right and left side of the foil and fold over about a half inch. Keep folding until you reach your disc, then smooth it over flat against your seitan to create a little seam. Press into the disc again to get it a little flatter, then fold the other two flaps the same way and set your little foil packet aside. Repeat with the remaining foil and seitan.

04. Arrange your little foil packets flat across the steamer. I'm pretty sure they shouldn't overlap because then the seitan won't heat evenly. I had to steam my seitan in batches to prevent overlapping, but trust me, it's worth it. For every batch, steam for about twenty-five minutes. When finished, remove the packet(s) from the steamer and set aside to cool. Leave the seitan in the foil until you're ready to eat them. I kept my unused seitan in their foil, and now they're sitting on my fridge door.




Obviously, this recipe makes six servings. Six AWESOME servings.

Coconut Whipped Cream... the Redux! (Plus Noodles)

It's been a week without updates, and what do I do the next time I log in but revisit coconut whipped cream. Yesterday was my dad's birthday, and he's pre-diabetic so I made a special cake with this in mind. It was free of just about everything a traditional cake might entail: gluten, eggs, dairy, sugar, nuts... You'd think it'd be pretty lackluster, but I've certainly had worse cakes. I think the recipe could use some tweaking, so I'm not prepared to share it yet, but I do want to discuss the frosting because it was just my coconut whipped cream. This time, though, I introduced the concept of a hand mixer and extra Whip It, and oh, what a difference they made!

I prepared the frosting much per my previous instructions (cans in the fridge, separating the cream, etc. etc.), but instead of doing a 1:1 ratio of coconut cream to Whip It, I did about a 1:1.5 ratio. So in total, I used three cans of coconut milk and four packets of Whip It. I also omitted the powdered sugar (because this was a sugar-free dessert!) and substituted agave nectar (maybe a tablespoon or two?). Combining everything with the hand mixer made it really light and fluffy like whipped cream, but the Whip It held it together nicely. It was thick and full-bodied, and the vanilla over-rode much of the coconut flavor. Really, it was quite the vegan forgery.

Now, I didn't make enough whipped cream for piping (besides which, I didn't have my piping tools), so I can't say how well it'd hold up for decorating. (I speculate it would be fine, but anyone with high decorating aspirations that doesn't want to chance it should try Diet, Dessert, and Dogs' Whipped Cream.) However, as a frosting, it was spectacular - easy to apply, simple to smooth. I don't have an offset spatula or cake... spinny... thing, and I didn't do a crumb coat or an ace job of leveling my cake top, either. Still, when one of my roommates saw the cake sitting on the counter, she said, "Wow, that's a smooth cake!" Frankly, without the aid of fancy tools, I'd say this is the most forgiving frosting I've ever worked with - and it's pretty effin' good for you as far as frostings go. Plus, as our last entry established, you don't have to use it for just frosting because, duh, it's really whipped cream. Be glad I revisited this one.

Okay, so if you've been making as much whipped cream as I have, you've got all these half-used cans of coconut milk in your fridge. I've been making Thai peanut noodles to get rid of them. Please note these measurements aren't exact because I do everything to taste. It says to do the pepper to taste since everyone's so picky about their spice level, but really, do everything to taste. These were guestimations:


THAI PEANUT NOODLES
+ 12 oz spaghetti
+ 1 red bell pepper, diced
+ 3 cloves garlic, minced
+ 1 c mushrooms, sliced
+ 13.5 oz coconut milk (or roughly two leftover cans)
+ 1/2 c peanut butter*
+ 4 T soy sauce
+ 1 T apple cider vinegar
+ 1 1/2 t ginger
+ cayenne pepper, to taste
+ red pepper flakes, to taste

01. Prepare your pasta per package instructions. Before draining, be sure to set aside just a little bit of pasta water. Later, you're going to add about a tablespoon or so to the sauce because it'll help the sauce gel with the noodles.

02. Oil up a large fry pan, and put it on the stove over medium heat. Once warm, toss in the pepper and garlic, and sautee until a little glossy. Add the mushrooms, and continue cooking until the mushrooms are gently browned.

03. Turn up the heat to medium-high. Pour in the coconut milk, soy sauce, peanut butter, vinegar, and spices. Gently stir to combine and bring to a boil.

04. Once boiling, bring the heat back to medium (maybe even medium low!), and continue cooking until some of the liquid cooks off and a thin skin begins to form on the surface. Stir periodically.

05. Once the sauce has significantly thickened, add that pasta water, cook a little more, and then add all the pasta. Turn off the heat, and toss the pasta to coat. Serve hot or cold.




This recipe feeds two to four and tastes even better the second day.

* If your peanut butter does not come sweetened, consider adding about a tablespoon of sweetener. Sugar is always a component of Thai cooking, and I think it adds to this dish.