Entries Tagged 'Baked' ↓

Having slogged my way through those first two funky batches of soymilk, it was time to try again, this time using the proper measurements. It turns out that one SoyQuick cup = 1/2 actual cup. Of course! Does anyone else see this as a disaster waiting to happen? That being said, the first batch wasn’t a total disaster–many recipes actually call for “2 cups” of soybeans (i.e. 1 actual cup, which is what I used). For this most recent batch, I followed Julie Hasson’s recipe pretty closely, but used Zoa’s filtration method, to compare against the previous batch. Though still a tad beany, it was much smoother and tastier than the first round. I would actually dunk a cookie in this batch, did in fact enjoy it on a bowl of cereal. Observe:

To get a sense of the taste, and where I might want to go with it, I didn’t add anything to the soymilk initially. Though not as beany as the first batches, it was still just outside the drinkable-on-its-own range. As per Julie’s recipe, I added in 4 tbsp malt extract powder (make sure it’s extract powder, not just powder; and don’t use syrup; you can find it at shops that sell home-brewing supplies). This gives the soymilk a richer taste, and sweetens it just a hair–not enough for it to be “sweet”, but enough to cut any bitter edge and cut down on the beany flavor. If I were going to use this as my unsweetened batch, I would have stopped there. But I wanted a drinkable version that I could put on my cereal, so I added 1 tbsp of sugar. It’s still not sweet, per se, but was awesome on my cereal.

Aside from using too many beans and not filtering enough the first time, I think I also made a few mistakes with sweeteners. I used agave in one and brown rice syrup in the other–and then re-filtered the soymilk after adding the syrups. This caused the second jug of the first batch to separate horribly.  I should have been much more scientific in my approach, but I can’t recall which jug had which sweetener. Using the powers of inductive reasoning, I’ve concluded that it was the brown rice syrup batch that separated, as that was supposed to be the “unsweetened” batch, and it was the unsweetened batch that separated. So. Agave would appear to be safe. Additionally, I don’t know if it was the brown rice syrup, the second filtration, or the combination of the two that was truly at fault. I think as a general rule of thumb, stick with powders over syrups. Syrups separate. The best bet for sweetening is probably to follow Zoa’s lead and just add raw dates to the soymilk maker up front.

With a new batch of soymilk on the way, I also had a new batch of okara on the way–meaning I needed to use up my previous store. I didn’t do anything to dry my okara out, beyond mashing it with a spoon into the filters during the filtration process. So, my okara is “wet”. Before I explore the intricacies of wringing out the okara a little, I thought I’d explore the limits of laziness and establish some uses for a wetter okara.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I made Zoa’s Okara Seitan Chik’n. Aside from the salad and bowties, I made a veggie & chik’n couscous–using not only the okara seitan, but also cooking the couscous in the broth from the seitan. Everything in its place.

The next night, Joe treated me to his famous Spicy Ramen (recipe forthcoming!), a true delicacy. Made, not surprisingly, with seitan chik’n.

As you may have noticed, asparagus is no longer in season, and broccoli now is. Farewell asparagus! Welcome broccoli!

Even after making the okara seitan, I still had 2 full cups (actual cups, not SoyQuick cups!) of okara leftover. What to do with it? Then it hit me–broccoli & rice bake-em-up! I replaced the tofu with the 2 cups of wet okara and the 2 cups of faux milk with 1.5 cups of water. Also, since the farmer’s market was the next morning and I’d run out of broccoli, I used kale from our garden, subbing 2 cups of chopped kale for the broccoli. It turned out perfectly!

As is true of the standard version of this recipe, you will end up with too much sauce. Save out 1 – 1.5 cups, and you should be left with just the right amount. You can use the leftover sauce for Okara Chik’n Al-faux-do–for a double dose of okara action!

And what better time? Summer squash is popping up everywhere at the farmer’s market. But maybe this is too much? I’ve gone off the okara/soymilk deep end?

Perhaps, perhaps. Of course, this is just the sort of challenge I appreciate–and just the sort of challenge you’ve come to know and love during my occasional bachelorhoods: how can we use everything up without wasting anything? In general, we should train ourselves to see reducing waste and getting the most out of the resources that we use as a fun challenge, rather than an oppressive burden. In centuries past, this is how people had to cook–something that we’ve moved away from with advent of better preservation and, ultimately, processed, packaged, single-serving meals.

Consider it: making one batch of soymilk has shaped, in many ways, two weeks of cooking. Not quite the same as buying a carton of soymilk. And what happens to all of the waste produced during the commercial soymilk-making process?

[A]s a significant byproduct of soy milk and tofu manufacturing, okara is commonly used as animal feed since its production usually exceeds demands for human consumption. For this reason, it is not uncommon for tofu and soymilk factories to be located close to animal farms in many Asian countries. In Western countries, okara is used almost exclusively for the production of pig and cattle feed, although it does appear as an ingredient for vegetarian burger patties. – Wikipedia entry on Okara (food)

So, chances are that if you’re consuming commercial soymilk, you’re contributing (very) indirectly to factory farming. I say this uncritically, as we’re all enmeshed in the tangled system and can only extricate ourselves one bit at a time. The focus here is not on why you want to avoid commercial soymilks, but why you might want to make your own–as a way to be closer to your food and its production; to reduce physical waste; to eat more locally; and to understand your diet holistically, to see your food choices not in the context of a single meal, but rather as a week of meals, a month, a season.

Okay. I’m getting off my soapbox now and heating up some leftovers!

The Indian Feast Saturday night would not have been the same without pakora.  We especially like that our version is baked, not deep fried.  If you know anything about us here at IV, you know that we leave frying to greasy spoons and love adapting fried recipes to delicious (and healthier) baked ones almost as much as we like converting meaty, cheesy, eggy dishes to delicious (and healthier) vegan versions.

When we told our friend Mad Dog about this recipe last night, she nearly squealed with glee.  We hope you receive it with just as much enthusiasm.  Adapted to vegan from this recipe, it sure was fun to make (even more fun to eat).  At the last minute, we got the bright idea to make dhaniya dipping sauce to accompany the fresh pakora.  Ken was a champ and served as our runner, heading out the local food coop for a big bunch of cilantro (in southeast Asia, it’s called coriander) to make it happen.  Without further ado, we give you:

Baked Pakora and Dhaniya (Coriander Chutney)

Pakora:

• three medium-sized soft-skinned potatoes (such as red or yukon gold) or peeled russet potatoes, grated
• one large onion (any color), diced
• one overflowing handful of chopped spinach
• any other veggies you might want to add such as grated carrots, peas, or diced cauliflower.
• 2 cups chickpea (garbanzo bean) flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp curry powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp red pepper (optional)
• 1 1/2 tsp dried coriander (cilantro)
• 1 1/2 cups water

Preheat oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients (flour, spices, herbs, baking power).  Stir in enough water to make a batter.  Do it a bit at a time, making sure that is it about the consistency of pancake batter.  Ours was a little too thin, but didn’t affect the overall deliciocity of the outcome.

In a separate bowl, combine all veggies, and mix well with your hands.  Pour the batter into the veggies, stirring to a homogeneous consistency.

Use a spoon to ladle little bundles of battered veggies onto an oiled cookie sheet.

Bake for 8 minutes, then flip and bake for 10 more minutes until toasty around the edges.  This batch made about 30 pakora for us, but the final quantity really just depends on the size you make each one.

Dhaniya

(We used this recipe and are rewriting it here with some measurement and ingredient changes.)

• one large bunch of fresh coriander (cilantro), leaves peeled from the stems
• a one-inch square chunk of fresh ginger, grated on a ginger grater (or about 1 tbsp of dry ginger)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• the juice of half of a lemon
• a whole green chili (we used half of a poblano pepper since that’s all we had)
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• 1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)
• enough olive oil to make into a sauce (1/4-1/2 cup)

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.  If you want enough dhaniya to accompany all of the pakora in the recipe above, I suggest at least tripling this recipe.

Stef is allergic to wheat products, so we rocked the gluten-free naan action for the Indian Feast.  She and Ken came prepared with this recipe, which we veganized.  It was some superlative naan, I assure you.  I should mention that before they arrived on Saturday night, I searched high and low all over the interwebs for vegan AND gluten free naan to no avail.  So this might be one of the only recipes of this sort you’ll find for this Indian curry-scooping staple.  Here’s the translation:

Veganized Gluten Free Naan

• 1 cup tepid unsweetened soy milk
• 1/2 cup brown rice flour (superfine)
• 1/2 cup white rice flour
• 1/2 cup sweet rice flour
• 3 tbsp chickpea (garbanzo bean) and/or fava bean flour (we didn’t have the required teff flour and this worked fine)
• 1/2 cup tapioca flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp gluten free baking powder
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp dried active yeast
• 2 tsp vegetable oil
• 1 cup soy creamer (or soymilk) with 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar and 2 tbsp cornstarch added as replacement for the yogurt [plain soy, coconut or rice yogurt would probably work fine too if you have one of them on hand (we didn't)]
• 1 tbsp ground flax seed combined with 3 tbsp water as replacement for the egg
• 1 tsp xanthan gum
• melted Earth Balance ™ for brushing atop naan prior to baking
• onion powder and more salt for sprinkling onto naan prior to baking
• optional fresh minced chives–either mix into dough or sprinkle atop each piece prior to baking (ideally both!)

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the tepid soymilk and store in a warm place for 10 minutes or so. Make the “egg” and set aside. Make the “yogurt” by whisking the ingredients together and set aside. In a large-ish bowl, sift the dry ingredients (flours, salt, baking powder, xanthan gum) together. Mix the wet ingredients (“egg”, “yogurt”, and yeast-milk) into the dry and continue mixing until a smooth dough is formed.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Divide dough into about six separate balls, and roll each one into a thin flat round using the traditional rolling pin method (be sure to use one of the flours on the rolling pin and surface first), or use a floured plastic bag or piece of parchment paper between the rolling pin and the dough. It should look something like this:

Place each piece onto an oiled cookie sheet and bake for about three minutes. Flip bread and bake for 2 minutes more.  Watch for brown spots to appear on top of each piece. You may need to put it under the broiler for additional browning, or add baking time depending on your oven.

Celiacs and vegans alike can rejoice over this one!  The naan was an essential component to our feast.  Victory!

Holy hell, these things are killer! Here’s the recipe I followed on PPK’s Facebook page. I pretty much followed the directions exactly, but I used a yellow onion, which worked out great. We did use some of the smaller rings in addition to the largest rings (love those little guys!) and also made our own breadcrumbs in a food processor instead of using storebought. Those are the only changes.

I would like to try them sometime with the suggested Videlia onions, we just never seem to have any on hand. One suggestion: be sure to time these so that you can eat them AS SOON AS they come out of the oven.  We waited a bit and some of them got a little flaccid as a result.  We served them with BBQ seitan sammiches with the leftover BBQ sauce from the other night, and grilled spicy asparagus (in season- huzzah local eatin’!). This time to maximize the BBQ deliciocity-to-chik’n ratio, Mark cut the seitan cutlets into strips, coated the outside with the requisite rub and sauce and grilled away.  Once finished, he coated with more sauce.  See?

A yummy mid-sping chilly night of grilling and baking goodness, to be sure!

Every time we visit Amy’s folks–and every time they visit us–Amy’s mom makes us these phenomenal oatmeal cookies. She veganized her original recipe by subbing Ener-g Egg Replacer ™ for the egg–that simple!

Originally, she made two batches for most visits (one for us, the other for them and Amy’s brother), but for the last year or two, she’s just made the one batch for everyone. No one seems to to notice or care that they don’t have eggs, because they’re amazing–chewy and sweet with a hint of saltiness.

And they have oatmeal in them, so they’re good for you, right? They’re practically healthy.

Marty’s Famous Oatmeal Cookies

• 3/4 cup vegetable shortening
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• Ener-g Egg Replacer ™ substitute for 1 egg
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 cups oats, uncooked
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat together shortening, sugars, water, and vanilla, until creamy. Add egg replacer and mix well. Add remaining ingredients. Mix just until moistened. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheet. Bake for 11 minutes.

Since we’ve used up all of our canned sauce from last year–and for a change of pace–we’ve been making a lot of white sauces lately. This is a variation of our standard lasagna, taking a page from the al-faux-do book.

White Lasagna

The Essentials

• white sauce
• 12 large lasagna noodles
• faux-ricotta
• 2 medium-sized tomatoes, sliced thinly
• 1 zucchini, sliced thinly
• 6 – 8 crimini mushrooms, sliced thinly (optional)
• vegan parmesan (optional)

White Sauce

• 1 medium-sized yellow or white onion, chopped
• 6 cloves of garlic, diced
• 1/4 cup Earth Balance ™
• ~1/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp ground mustard seed
• 1 cup soy milk
• salt & pepper, to taste

Faux Ricotta

• 2 cups spinach OR lightly steamed kale
• 1 lb/package extra firm tofu
• 2 tbsp nu yeast
• 1.5 tsp oregano (2 large sprigs fresh)
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder OR 2 – 4 cloves fresh garlic, pressed
• fresh basil, to taste
• 1/2 tsp rosemary (chopped if fresh, crushed if dry)
• 1/8 tsp cayenne
• salt, to taste

White Sauce

Sautee the onion and garlic in olive oil in a large pan over medium heat until they are soft and just starting to brown, then remove from heat. In a small pot, melt the Earth Balance ™ over medium heat. Once it’s melted, whisk in the flour a little at a time, until you have a thick roux. Add the onions and garlic to the blender, then pour in the soymilk. Add in the roux and ground mustard seed and blend until smooth. Salt and pepper to taste.

Faux Ricotta

Blend the tofu and spinach/kale in a food processor, until well-mixed and somewhat smooth. Add in the remaining filling ingredients and blend until smooth, salting to taste. You can use this filling in any Italian-ish recipe that calls for ricotta.

Mushrooms (optional)

Sautee the mushrooms in olive oil–in the pan you used for the onions and garlic–over medium heat until the mushrooms are tender. That’s it.

Lasagna

Since the white sauce is much creamier than standard tomato sauce, I’m afraid you’re going to have to suck it up and boil some noodles. But just until they’re al dente.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375. In a 9 x 12 pan, spread enough white sauce to thoroughly cover the bottom of the pan. Add in a layer of noodles. Then add a layer of zucchini, then one of tomatoes.

Add another layer of noodles. Spread a layer of half the faux ricotta on top of the noodles. If you’re using them, spread a layer of mushrooms over the filling.

Cover with another layer of noodles. Now spread the rest of the faux ricotta on top of them. Now put one more layer of noodles down.

Add one final layer of tomatoes then cover thoroughly with the remaining sauce.

Cover the pan with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, top with vegan parmesan cheese (if using) and bake for another 30 minutes. Let it cool for about 15 minutes before cutting and/or serving. Use your will power. I know you can do it. Eat!

Remember the days before awesome vegan cheese? When you were mocked at every turn by faux-ass non-vegan soy cheese? Or the days of terrible vegan cheese perhaps? After myriad pizza disasters, Amy and I discovered that just leaving out the cheese could be awesome–especially if you leave out the processed sauce and use fresh tomatoes.

This li’l guy has way more in common with the thin, fresh Italian-style Pizza Marinara than with traditional American pizza (except Pizza Marinara usually has–not surprisingly–sauce). This is a really nice break from standard pizza–it totally scratches the pizza itch, but is much lighter and fresher, without any processed ingredients.

We used:

• 3 tomatoes, de-boogered and sliced thinly
• 4 cloves of diced garlic
• 1/2 a zucchini, sliced into thin half-moons
• a handful of crimini mushrooms, sliced thinly
• a handful of spinach, diced
• a small handful of fresh basil, diced
• 1/8 – 1/4 purple onion, sliced thinly and chopped
• oregano
• thyme
• salt & pepper
• pizza crust of choice

So that last one is a bit of a cop out. We would love to know your pizza crust of choice, as we’ve had mixed luck with lots of crusts and have yet to settle on one we really love. While the one we used for this recipe turned out pretty tasty with a lot of doctoring, it was so far off the mark in its original form that I’d be hard pressed to tell you how to replicate it (add way more flour, for one). Now is the time to give back: share your favorite crust recipes!

Meanwhile, salivate:

Amy’s triumphant return from Budapest brought Grab ‘n’ Growl week to an end, as well as a large bag of authentic Hungarian paprika. Given these two fantastic new developments, it was time to cook it the hell down.

We’d been searching for a good recipe for Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup for quite some time, never really satisfied. I recently stumbled upon this one from Sweet Cheeks in the Kitchen, in turn nabbed from the Candle Cafe Cookbook. It was sufficiently awesome that it required almost no modification–we added half a cup of soy creamer; that’s it. I also learned something really interesting: when a recipe calls for a dry white wine, it’s acceptable–nay, preferable–to use a dry vermouth. It’s cheaper, dryer, and saves better than an average white wine.

Not surprisingly, we rounded the soup out with breadsticks and an amazing salad based on our recently acquired paprika.

The salad was inspired by VeganYumYum’s Avocado Wasabi Salad, with paprika taking the central role in place of wasabi.

Check it:

Paprika Cashew Chickpea Salad

Cashews & Chickpeas

• 1 cup raw cashews
• 2 tbsp paprika
• 1 cup cooked chickpeas
• 2 tsp sugar OR enough maple syrup to coat the cashews
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tbsp soy sauce/tamari/shoyu
• salt & pepper, to taste

You can approach the cashews one of two ways: baking or sauteing. We sauteed them, but our friend Ryan has baked them with better results. So.

Baked Candied Cashews

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium-sized bowl, coat the cashews in maple syrup. Once thoroughly coated, toss in 1 tbsp paprika, oregano, salt, and pepper. Bake until brown, stirring often.

Fried Candied Cashews

In a medium-sized pan over medium heat, saute the cashews in high heat oil, coating in sugar, 1 tbsp paprika, oregano, salt, and pepper. Cook until the spices and oil have congealed. Remove from heat. Note: they’ll seem soft at first, but they’ll firm up.

Paprika Chickpeas

In the same pan (if such a beast was used) as you cooked the cashews, saute the chickpeas in the soy sauce and remaining spices, until well coated and no liquid remains, salting and peppering to taste.

Salad Dressing

• 1/4 cup hummus
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp honey/agave
• water, to desired consistency

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Finally, the salad

Toss the chickpeas, cashews, some diced purple onions, and cherry/grape tomatoes (optional) in with some fresh lettuce and enough dressing to coat lightly.

Growing up, I ate a lot of leftovers. My parents both worked two jobs so it was much more efficient to make a few big meals and then eat leftovers on off nights–especially since I could heat them up myself. Since you can’t always eke out a full meal from a single leftover, you often have to combine things or eat separate dishes. My mom referred to this as “Grab ‘n’ Growl”, a term passed down through the generations in my family’s unique (read: very bizarre) lexicon, which posits a family as a bunch of Neanderthals scavenging the fridge for food, battling over the best bits. Closer to the truth, perhaps, than we’d like to admit.

With Amy in Budapest, it’s officially grab ‘n growl week. This is sort of weird, since it’s just me, but I feel less lonely if I growl. Since I tend to do most of the cooking, the swingin’ bachelor life doesn’t necessitate eating cold beans out of cans, scratching my crotch, and drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. I may prowl the house growling, but I can still drink whiskey from a glass. What the bachelor life does invoke, however, is my occasional need to purge the refrigerator of leftovers and about-to-go-bad food. On a small scale, this is best accomplished in a single meal. But with Amy gone–taking her need for delicious, inventive cuisine with her–I’m free to do a major purge, using up everything in strange and sometimes wonderful/sometimes not combinations.  In other words, this isn’t generally the kind of food I’d foist on other people.

But from the ashes doth arise the phoenix! Behold these Curried Potato Everything Cakes aka Poor Man’s Pakora:

These puppies used up mashed potatoes, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, kale, and a scosh of raw sushi filling, as well as some leftover Chik’n Almond Bake and crushed crackers for the breading. For combining so many different–and somewhat disparate–ingredients, these were actually pretty awesome. The cracker/Chik’n Almond Bake combo was the key.

I enjoyed this with leftover Avocado Wasabi Salad ala Vegan Yum Yum:

Remember that Roasted Poblano Chili? The leftover beans (I still haven’t mastered the exact yield of dry beans when you cook them) were a perfect base (along with rice, obviously) for beans and rice.

On Saturday, I made a green Thai curry out of a small smattering of frozen veggies (ack! I know), tofu, and the leftover raw Siamese Dream Soup.

And finally, last night I made a version of Zuppa Toscana, using up the rest of the mashed potatoes; some dilapidated turnips that didn’t make it into the Potato, Turnip, & Rosemary Soup; and the unused tempeh (we get it in bulk) from the Smoky Tempeh Hummus Wraps.

That’s a lot of food! As I’ve chiseled away at out leftovers (and this post), it’s become clear to me that we both cook and shop for our palettes, not from our resources. Forgive me if I’m stretching here, but this, in a general sense, is one the key problems with the American food industry. You can get as much of anything, from anywhere, at any time, as you want.  The variety comes from the store, not from your kitchen and brain.

Equally problematic is the amount of time between trips to the grocery store. Like most Americans, we tend to go once a week, if that. We task ourselves with predicting what our future selves will want to eat–based on what? How can we know what we’ll want to eat 3 days from now? This means that as the week wears on, we become less satisfied with our choices and less likely to cook with what we bought. Scanning our half-full fridge, nothing looks good. So we either (a) settle on something merely “acceptable” or (b) give up completely and go out for dinner. I’m not against going out to eat, but I think it should be a deliberate choice–because you want to, not because you need to. But (a) is a bit of a crapshoot; on nights when I’m feeling creative, it’s a fun challenge and usually turns out pretty tasty. On off nights, it’s a burden and “edible” suffices.

One solution to this is to shop more frequently and buy less. This also helps ensure the freshness of your food. The other solution, I’m afraid to say, may be getting comfortable with “pretty good” some of the time. Maybe it’s been a good week for culinary creativity, but I feel like I’ve eaten pretty well with nary a thought of hitting up the grocery store (okay…that’s not entirely true…when I ran out of soy sauce, I felt a ripple of panic). This may owe, in part, to the very fact that I’ve used up almost everything in the fridge; my choices have dwindled as the week wore on. While some choice is certainly good, a lot of choice, it turns out, is actually rather bad (think about your occasional trip to an all-vegan restaurant–it’s almost paralyzing; you’re not accustomed to so many choices). The problem with too many choices is our tendency to weigh any single choice against the combined best parts of all the other choices. While this doesn’t actually change how good any single choice is, it does change how satisfied we feel.

So my final thought, in this lazy cognitive meandering, is that our enjoyment of our food is often based on our frame of reference. Given my limited options, what I came up with seemed really good–as soon as I’d eliminated the other possibilities. This is the fulcrum on which “leftovers” become “leftover surprise”.

Rrrrrooaawww!

If you’re like us, you often feel nostalgic for things that maybe aren’t that awesome. But there’s a context, a larger experience that imbues them with something better, gives them a prominent place in our happy memories. The Olive Garden is one of those for us. For both of our families, it was one of the “going out to eat someplace ‘fancy’” defaults. When we (independently of each other) became vegetarian, it became an even better option, since there were still many things on the menu we could eat. Once we became vegan, though, things got a little dicier. Depending on who you ask, the minestrone, breadsticks, capellini pomodoro, and salad are or aren’t vegan. The pasta may or may not have eggs. The marinara may or may not have meat broth. The salad dressing definitely has cheese in it–there are no vegan dressings.

Since (a) we’ve never been able to get a straight answer and (b) we now live in an area with other family-suitable options (namely, Chinese), we don’t eat at the Olive Garden any more. But every once in a while, we get the hankering for the enveloping warmth of minestrone and hot fresh breadsticks–and a big ol’ vegan salad. So last night, we created some real “hospitaliano”–vegan style.

The minestrone was only slightly modified from this excellent recipe.

Olive Garden-style Minestrone

• 1 medium-sized white onion, diced
• 4 – 6 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 1 stalk of celery, diced finely
• 1/2 medium-sized zucchini, cut into small one-inch pieces or half-moons
• 1 small carrot (or half of a large carrot), grated
• a large handful of Italian/Spanish-style green beans (the flat ones–you can sub normal green beans in a pinch), cut into one-inch pieces
• 4 large stalks of kale (the curly kind), cut from the stalk and chopped coarsely
• 4 cups (2 cans) of cooked kidney beans
• 2 cups (1 can) cooked cannellini beans or white beans
• 4 cups (1 large can or 1 large jar) cooked tomatoes, with their juice
• 4 cups veggie broth
• 3 cups water
• 1/2 cup small shell pasta
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley, minced
• 1.5 tsp dried oregano (1.5 tbsp fresh, minced)
• 1/2 tsp dried basil (1.5 tsp fresh, minced)
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme (1 tsp  fresh, minced)
• salt & pepper, to taste
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup red wine (optional)

As you’d expect, saute the onion, garlic, and celery in a large pot over medium heat–in the oil of your choice (I recommend choosing safflower). When the onion has gotten soft, add in the broth, water, tomatoes, carrots, and herbs/spices. Bring it to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. In a separate pot, cook the shells. When they’re done–but al dente–remove from heat, strain, and blanch with cold water. This will help prevent them from getting as bloated and mushy in the soup. A lazier person may decided to add the shells directly to the soup. But you wouldn’t do that. This is hospitaliano.

Once the 20 minutes is up, add in the remaining ingredients and cook until the zucchini and green beans are tender. It’s this crucial step that allows you to trump the Olive Garden–you can add veggies in at the end, ensuring their crispness, a paean to non-flaccid vegetables.

Now let’s trump their bread.

We used this recipe, unmodified, but reposted here for your convenience.

Breadsticks

• 1 1/3 cups of water
• 4 tsp melted Earth Balance ™
• 4 cups of flour
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp yeast
• additional melted Earth Balance ™, for brushing on top
• additional salt, for sprinkling on top
• granulated garlic, for sprinkling on top

Combine all of the dry ingredients, minus 1 cup of flour, ideally in a mixer, using the bread hook attachment.

(We like to keep a giant thing of flour on hand so we can make bread any time we want.)

If you don’t have a mixer, you can theoretically mix by hand and then knead (we just got one for christmas and this was it’s maiden voyage–it was awesome). Combine the wet ingredients in a separate bowl/cup and then add slowly to the dry, while mixing. Now add in the remaining flour. Once the dough is mixed well (about 2 minutes in the mixer), roll out in to 16 long pieces. (We made about 12 and they were slightly fatter than the Olive Garden’s, but still awesome.)  Cover them and let them rise for at least 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees, Fahrenheit. Brush the bread with Earth Balance ™ and sprinkle salt on top.  Bake for 15 minutes. When you take them out, brush with Earth Balance ™ again and then sprinkle with granulated garlic.

And finally, the salad.

The salad, to be faithful to the OG original, should have lettuce (obviously), croutons, purple onion, roma tomatoes, black olives, peppers, and shredded carrots. We didn’t have any fresh tomatoes or black olives (which I don’t like) on hand, so we had to make due with some sliced zucchini instead. We made the croutons fresh, from a piece of bread cut into squares, lightly doused on olive oil, salt/pepper/garlic-ed, and toasted. The original salad should also have some sort of cheesy mayonnaise vinaigrette dressing, which we didn’t deign to copy. Instead, we made this vinaigrette, slightly modified.

Italian Vinaigrette Dressing

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp fresh dill
• 1/4 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp dried basil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp agave nectar
• pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in a cruet and shake well.

When you’re vegan, you’re family!