Entries Tagged 'Entrees' ↓

It’s funny–those brief moments of cooking genius never occur when you think they will; and they’re never associated with a complicated multi-course meal. It’s always when you’re hungry and improvising.

In southeast Michigan, you can get tempeh everywhere. So it’s no surprise that a few different restaurants have tempeh wraps–the TLT at Seva, the lemon tempeh hummus wrap at Aut Bar, tempeh burgers at just about every bar…. Having made a giant batch of hummus for VeganYumYum’s Avocado Wasabi Salad, I was itching to make something with hummus. About two weeks ago, I made a salad with smokey tempeh, so I got the notion to combine to the two.  This recipe is super simple–make a batch of hummus (or buy it, if you want to kick it really easy), saute a little tempeh, chop some lettuce and/or spinach, and you’re set.

Smokey Tempeh Hummus Wrap

• 1 pkg tempeh. cut into strips
• 1/4 purple onion
• 1/2 bag spinach (1/4 lb?)
• 3 large leaves or 6 small-medium leaves of lettuce, cut into strips
• 3 large whole wheat wraps
• 1/4 batch of hummus
  
• ~ 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 capful Liquid Smoke ™
• ~ 2 tbsp peanut oil
• salt & pepper, to taste

For brevity’s sake, I’ll assume you’ve made/bought the hummus already. This may be foolish. But.

Saute the tempeh strips in peanut oil, soy sauce, and Liquid Smoke ™ in a large-ish frying pan over medium heat. Don’t use all of the liquids right away; start with a little peanut oil, then douse the tempeh with about half the soy sauce and Liquid Smoke ™. Once the tempeh is nicely browned on one side, flip and pour in a little more peanut oil and the rest of the soy sauce and Liquid Smoke ™. Salt and pepper to taste.

When the tempeh is browned on several sides, remove from heat.

Slather hummus on one half of a wrap. Place a row of spinach down the center, then a row of lettuce on top of that. Run a row of tempeh down the the center, then garnish with onions and salt/pepper.

Roll the dry half tightly into the hummus-slathered half. Cut the wrap in half on a diagonal.

Wrap extra wraps in plastic wrap for lunches!

Amy decreed yesterday that today would be Raw Food Tuesday (stolen shamelessly from What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway), which probably means that we shouldn’t have had that Chik’n Club Sammich for lunch…we did, however blaze a new trail in raw food dinners. Well, a new trail for us: rawsage & pesto-laden zucchini-based pasta with mushrooms.

Eating raw is something you hear about or read about and know that it has to be awesome, that you’d feel like a new person if could get over your need for hot things; if you didn’t love cooking; if bread weren’t so tasty. You even know that you don’t have to always eat raw, just that now and again it’d probably be really good for you. But when it comes time to dig in, you give in to the temptation of cooking. Well, if you’re anything like us you do.

Not that we’ve never eaten raw–just had a big ol’ salad for dinner or gone to a raw restaurant–we just don’t tend to “cook” raw.

This recipe is from The Complete Book of Raw Food, a book we’ve owned for years and scarcely cracked open. The results from our first foray were largely good, with a few minor caveats. The rawsage, while delicious, was pretty much just a zesty pesto. It wasn’t at all solid and tasted closer to pesto than to sausage. The zucchini turned out pretty tasty, and worked fairly well just using a grater. It probably would have been fluffier–and thus more enjoyable–if we had one of those spiral-y duders. I halved both recipes (since they were supposed to serve 4) and was surprised at how little there was. I thought we’d be scavenging for more food within minutes of completing the meal, but it was astonishingly filling. One small plateful and we were both very satisfied. In general, I hear that raw food is more filling (since none of the nutrients have been cooked out), so you typically don’t need to eat as much of it.

We made a few modifications, so check it:

Pesto Pasta & Rawsage

Rawsage (aka Zesty Pesto…errr…Zesto!)

• 3/4 cup raw, shelled pumpkin seeds
• small handful of fresh basil
• 1/4 head of lettuce
• 2 – 3 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 cup onion powder
• 1/4 cup olive oil (less if you’re going for something more solid)
• 1.5 tsp dried sage
• 1/2 tsp fennel or caraway seed
• 1/2 tsp salt (optional)

Grind everything together in a food processor. Try it without the olive oil if you want to get these into proper patties. Just add it little by little to get the desired consistency. For this recipe, you’ll use half of it in the pasta; so if you’re going for patties, start with no olive oil and use half of ground mix to make patties. Then add 1/8 cup of olive oil and grind some more for the pesto part.

Raw Pesto Pasta

• 1 medium-sized zucchini, spiraled or grated
• ~ 6 small-medium-sized mushrooms, sliced very thinly (optional)
• sun-dried tomatoes, soaked until soft and sliced (optional; we didn’t use these this time)
• 2 large handfuls of spinach
• Zesto! from above, or perhaps a few frozen pesto cubes
• olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and/or pepper to dress

In a medium-large-ish bowl, mix the zucchini, mushrooms, and Zesto!/pesto. When the zucchini-noodles are nicely coated, toss a handful of spinach into a plate, bowl, or, ideally, bowlplate. Spread the pesto pasta over the spinach. Garnish with sun-dried tomato strips, rawsage patties, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and/or pepper. Be forewarned: this is really filling!

Every once in a while, “Use whatever is about to go bad” isn’t an act of desperation, a culinary hail mary; it’s a reminder to your current self that your past self had BIG plans. Stop cooking like a jerk and use those Brussels sprouts, green and red peppers, onions, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, tofu, and quinoa. So maybe this is a little extreme in that I used everything–but the result was a pleasantly awesome surprise: Roasted Veggies, Quinoa, & Teriyaki-Glazed Tofu.

We’ve had roasted vegetables on the brain since Amy’s birthday dinner at Eve and only now just got around to trying our hand at them post-Eve. We used a greater variety of veggies than she did, so ours turned out pretty different, but were still pretty tasty.

Roasted Veggies & Quinoa

Veggies

• 1/2 large green bell pepper, cut into bit-size pieces
• 1/2 large red bell pepper, cut into bit-size pieces
• 1/2 large white onion, cut into petals
• 1/2 large purple onion, cut into petals
• 1.5 heads of garlic, minced coarsely
• 4 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 large carrot, peeled and cut into disks
• 1 bag  (~4 cups) of Brussels sprouts, cut in half

Quinoa

• 2 cups quinoa
• 4 cups veggie stock

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Toss the veggies in a high-heat oil in a 13″ x 9″  baking pan/casserole dish. Salt and pepper. Toss some more. Salt and pepper some more. Pop it in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove and stir, adding oil if things seem dry. Pop it back in the oven for another 15 minutes and stir again. Finally, bake for a paltry additional 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your quinoa. Bring the veggie stock to a boil (or bring water to a boil and toss in your bouillon). Add in the quinoa. Cook until the broth has boiled off and the quinoa is soft enough to eat, but still a tad crisp (unless like it mushy, in which case you can cook it as long as you like). Salt it, if need be.

Serve the veggies on or adjacent to the quinoa. Fantastic!

For some reason, I’ve also had a wild hare to make baked glazed tofu. I was finally spurred into action by Zoa at The Airy Way, who in turn was inspired by this recipe from Vegan Planet. I followed the marinade recipe exactly, but the tofu just didn’t have the zang I was hoping for when it was done. Maybe I didn’t marinade it long enough? Is 2 hours sufficient? So I decided to augment the remaining marinade and create a drizzly/dipping glaze, which did the trick nicely.

Teriyaki-Glazed Tofu

• 1 lb tofu, pressed and cut into thin triangles
• 6 tbsp soy sauce
• 6 tbsp orange juice
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tbsp peanut oil
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp soybean paste

Marinade

Combine half of all of the above ingredients, except the soybean paste, cornstarch, and peanut oil. Marinade the tofu in this. For a long time. 2 hours didn’t seem like enough to me. I’d recommend overnight, if you’re the kind of person that can start preparing a meal that far in advance (which I am not). Bake the tofu at 425 degrees, 15 – 20 minutes to a side–flipping when nicely browned. Like cookies, these will firm up once they sit out for a few minutes, so try not to overcook them (though even overdone, they’re still delicious).

Meanwhile, combine the remaining ingredients, except the soybean paste and cornstarch in a small saucepan over medium heat. Slowly whisk in the cornstarch, thickening. You can use a little less if you like the sauce more drizzly. Finally, stir in the soybean paste. Remove from heat and either drizzle on the tofu or pour into small dipping vessels.

Magnifico!

Every once in a while we can’t, for the life of us, decide whether we want a soup or something more “entree”-like. In that event, the best bet is almost always a casserole–something most of us learn to a despise from a young age, but which can actually be awesome. This has broccoli, for supra health powers, white beans, for supra protein powers, and rice, for supra cheapness powers. For how easy this was to make, it was unbelievably delicious.

Broccoli & Rice Bake-em-up

• 2 cups white rice
• 4 cups veggie stock
• 1 – 2 stalks of broccoli, chopped into small florets and/or medium-sized pieces
• 1 cup cooked white beans
• 2 cups unsweetened faux milk
• 1 cup ground cashews
• 1 large white onion, diced
• 6 cloves of garlic, diced or pressed
• 1/2 one-pound block of soft (but not silken) tofu
• salt and pepper, to taste
• saltine crackers (optional, but almost excessively awesome)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, Fahrenheit and start the rice cooking in the veggie stock. In a medium-sized frying pan, sautee the onions and garlic over medium heat, until soft. In a blender, puree the beans, faux milk, ground cashews, and tofu. When the onions and garlic are soft, add them to the puree, blend until smooth, then salt and pepper to taste.

Steam the broccoli until it’s tender, but not at all mushy–you’re going to bake this, so it better to err on the side of underdone. This will only take 5 – 10 minutes and should be done around the same time as–if not a little before–the rice. Once the rice is done, stir the rice, broccoli, and puree together in a 13×9 baking pan or casserole dish.

NOTE: we didn’t end up using all of the puree, but you’ll find it’s awkward to have just over a cup of white beans left, and just over half a block of tofu. The moral of the story is: add the puree in stages; just enough to get everything coated really well. Alternatively, you could add another 1/2 cup of rice to make a larger casserole. The power is yours.

Finally, drizzle safflower and/or olive oil on top and pop it in the oven for 30 minutes. If you’ve opted to add the cracker topping–an excellent choice, dear reader–then you’ll want to crumble enough crackers over the top of the casserole to cover it thoroughly then drizzle more oil on top of that. Bake for an additional 10 minutes. If you’ve decided to forgo the cracker topping, you can just bake it for 40 minutes straight.

We had this with a delicious salad, bread, and Tom/John Collinses.

I first made a version of this with my excellent pals Nick and Uncle Nathan for Friend Thanksgiving years and years ago. I don’t know where Uncle Nathan found the recipe, but over the years it’s become Amy’s and my staple Spanksgiving centerpiece. What’s great about this (aside from being delicious) is that it doesn’t attempt to mock a turkey; this means that (a) if you’re giving spanks with omnivores, they might enjoy this too (Amy’s dad ate some at Spanksgiving and had some instead of turkey the next day for leftovers), and (b) you can start a new tradition that doesn’t ape one you don’t support.

Spanksgiving Faux-Turkey

• 2/3 batch (2 packages if store-bought) of seitan
• 1/2 box of Fillo dough
• buttery spread (I like Earth Balance Whipped Buttery Spread)
• ~6 – 8 pieces of bread
• 1 large (but not huge) white onion, diced
• 1 handful fresh sage, diced (or ~3 tbsp dried sage / 1 tbsp if dried and ground)
• salt
• pepper
• 1 cup veggie stock (I like to use the seitan broth)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

This is all about the stuffing, really.  Either by hand or in a food processor, shred the bread into small pieces and crumblins and dump into a large mixing bowl.  Dice the onion and sage and add to the bread.  Mix the dry ingredients together briefly by hand.  Add the veggie stock incrementally in small pours until the mixture is just moist (you may not use all of the veggie stock–this depends largely on how dense your bread is).  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.  Tear the seitan into smaller pieces (it will probably come in pieces) and form a mound of seitan 8 – 10 inches around in the center of the cookie sheet.

Pack the stuffing over the mound of seitan, preserving the roundness and shape of the mound.

One by one (or two by two like a damned ark if your fillo dough sheets won’t cover the whole mound) place the fillo dough sheets on the mound and brush with melted buttery spread.

That’s right.  EACH layer gets brushed with butter.  This ensures that your crust will be flakier than Lindsay Lohan.

Keep applying dough until you can’t see through it anymore and it’s a solid brown-white in color (you may later find that you like thinner or thicker crust).

Bake until crust is golden brown.

Though it’s really good by itself, I recommend a little gravy to go with it.

After making chili last weekend, we had some leftover black beans to use up–but my traditional black bean soup is much too close to a chili to seriously entertain as a post-chili-black-bean-use-em-up ™. So I says to myself, “Self, let’s shake things up! Let’s make this more soupy…and tangy! Like a cilantro lime black bean rice, but a soup?!”

While it was pretty tasty, it was still too close to the chili we’d just had, and Amy wouldn’t deign to eat it, so last night, I combined it with some refried beans, cooked the liquid down, and used it like rice & beans for !taco salad!

This taco salad was amazing.

This is probably because all taco salads are amazing, and this taco salad is a subset of all taco salads. Q.E.D.

But first, you have to make the soup:

Phase 1: Tangy Black Bean Barley Soup

• 1 large white onion, diced
• 2 small or 1 large stalk of celery, chopped
• 2 medium-sized carrots, peeled and cut into disks or half-disks
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 4 cups (2 cans) cooked black beans (with liquid, if possible–always keep this when pressure cooking!)
• 1 tomato, diced (I used leftover tomato juice from canning)
• 6 cups (or more, to desired consistency) veggie stock
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
• 2 tsp toasted, ground cumin (or just ground, if you don’t have seeds on hand)
• 2 tsp smoked chili powder
• salt & pepper, to taste

In a large pot, begin the Traditional Ceremonial Soup Dance (i.e sautee the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic in oil over medium heat until soft). If using cumin seeds, toast them over medium high heat until fragrant, then grind into a powder using a mortar and pestle. Add the cumin, chili, and some salt and mix well. Add in the black beans, tomatoes (if using), and liquid(s). Continue Traditional Ceremonial Soup Dance by bringing to a boil and then lowering heat and simmering, covered, for 30 – 60 minutes. About 5 minutes before serving, add in the chopped cilantro, and complete the Traditional Ceremonial Soup Dance by salting and peppering to taste.

With Phase 1 complete, move in to Phase 2.

Phase2: Eat the soup.

Now let’s move to Phase 3.

Phase3: Taco Salad

We’ve already made you privy to the taco salad particulars, so the only crucial piece of information is this: In a medium-sized saucepan, combine the remaining soup with 2 cups of refried beans (i’m assuming that 2 people each ate one bowl of soup–adjust accordingly) and cook down the liquid until everything’s “all beany”.

Use in place of normal refried beans in a delicious and nutritious taco salad!

So you’ve probably noticed by now–recipes/menus often come in waves here at IV. This is largely because we rarely deign to countenance leftovers twice, except as lunch. Instead, we try to rethink stuff we’ve already made and pair it with something else we’ve already made and/or with something fresh.

We made taco salad a few nights ago and had leftover refried beans and taco tempeh. For leftovers numero uno, we made quesadillas with the taco tempeh, Follow Your Heart ™ cheddar, and diced jalapenos. We served it with the refried beans and sliced avocados.

Okay. So the taco leftovers were successfully eliminated. But wait. Now we had leftover cheese. This stuff goes bad within a month, so you have to use it up once you’ve opened it.

So leftovers numero dos was quesadillas again, this time made with just tortilla and cheese. We served it in typical conflated culture fashion with Spanish rice w/beans and guacamole.

Making a quesadilla is simple: lighlty oil a frying pan, and place it on a burner at medium heat. Toss in a flour tortilla. Sprinkle on a generous layer of your favorite faux-cheese; top with taco tempeh, soyrizo, mexican-style chik’n strips; sprinkle in some onions and/or bell/jalapeno peppers; sprinkle on another layer of faux cheese; top with another tortilla. When the cheese is mostly melted, flip quesadilla and cook until browned and crispy.

Alternatively, you can make this with just faux cheese and two tortillas.

Cut in half to serve. Delicious!

Last year for Amy’s birthday, we went out to a local bar that we’d been meaning to eat at–and they served the most amazing taco salad we’d ever eaten, made vegan just for us. They never seemed to have served it again, though, much to our dismay. So we’ve had this year-long hankerin’ for taco salad which, I’m happy to say, we laid to rest on Sunday.

The secret, friends, is making your own refried beans. We’d been using canned refried beans for years and no combination of spices, veggies, shortening, unicorn tears, etc. ever made them even half as delicious as the kind you get in a good Mexican restaurant. So, having just gotten a pressure cooker, what better time than now to try to make these suckers from scratch–and holy hell does it make a difference! I don’t know if we can ever go back to canned refried beans again. Maybe in a pinch, I’d use canned pinto beans to make refried beans.

We also experimented for the first time in making our own taco bowls. This was really easy; we just soaked two soft taco shells in a very shallow layer of oil, placed them in oven safe bowls (to shape them), and cooked them for 10 – 15 minutes at 425 degrees Fahrenheit. We did we never think of this before?

The rest of the taco salad is pretty easy–in the baked shell, layer the beans, taco tempeh (follow the recipe for the tempeh), chopped lettuce/onions/tomatoes, guacamole, and salsa.

Here’s how to make the beans:

Refried Beans

• 2 cups dried pinto beans pressure cooked in 10 cups of water for 30 – 35 minutes
• OR ~ 3 – 4 cups cooked pinto beans (using your preferred method)
• 3 cups veggie stock
• 1/2 white or yellow onion, diced
• 3 large cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup shortening (we used Earth Balance)
• 2 – 3 tbsps chili powder
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• salt, to taste
• 1 cup (2 small cans) mild green chilis (optional)

In a large (ideally big enough to hold the beans and stock) frying pan, sautee the onions and garlic in shortening over medium heat, until tender. Add in the beans and 2 cups of the stock and cook for about 20 minutes. Mash the beans to the consistency you like (some people like some whole beans left, some don’t). Add the final cup of veggie stock, stir well, and add in spices. Cook for about another 20 minutes, until the excess liquid has boiled off. Adjust spices to taste. This will put any canned refried beans to shame. I’m for serious.

This isn’t the kind of meal I’d want to eat every day, but when I do get that occasional hankerin’, I can’t get it out of my head and I have to make it. This isn’t terribly hard–if you have seitan and cashew cream on hand. Otherwise, it’s a little labor-intensive, but still worth it–very rich and filling.

I adapted this incarnation (the perfect stroganoff is a work-in-progress) from this VegWeb recipe–”The Czar’s Own Stroganoff”. On the whole, the recipe seemed pretty good, but I’m positive the czar would be into pepper. And in a perfect world, he wouldn’t want tomatoes in his stroganoff. Well, he would, but all he would have available is meat and cream, scorched earth, and a hardened soul. But no tomatoes. I subbed cashew cream for the tofu stuff–but go easy on the lemon.  I didn’t, but would, reduce the amount of paprika. The cream already adds some sweetness, so too much paprika just pushes this over the top. Also, since this calls for a “beefy” kinda seitan, I recommend the PPK’s version, not Jennifer’s/Joanna’s (which I used because I had it on hand–just marinade for a few hours in veggie stock and soy sauce). Finally, because I need to get this off my chest: I’m not into cubed seitan. I say that with some reservation, as I’m sure there’s some recipe in which it would perform magnificently. But in general, cubed food seems kind of unnatural to me. I like strips or pieces, and getting different types of bites. Sometimes I even cut my tofu or tempeh irregularly, even though their natural shape is a block. I’m just sayin’ is all.

Seitan Stroganoff

• ~ 3 cups chopped seitan (1 “ball” if you made the PPK recipe)
• 1 medium-large white onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 2 – 3 cups fresh mushrooms, sliced thick
• 1 cup veggie stock (I like to use the stock from the seitan)
• 3/4 cup cashew cream (but go easy on the lemon! you can add more later)
  
• 1 tbsp tarragon
• 1 tsp paprika (add 1/4 tsp at a time and taste!)
• salt and papper, to taste
• unsweetened milk-like beverage (you may want to thin, esp. if you have leftovers)
• a splash of soy sauce
• noodles of your choice

As you’d expect, sautee the onion, garlic, and mushrooms in oil and a splash of soy sauce in a large skillet over medium heat. Once they’ve started to become tender, add in the seitan and cook until the seitan starts to brown (or get browner, as the case may be). Add in the stock, tarragon, lots of pepper, and cashew cream, stirring well. Salt to taste. Add in 1/4 tsp paprika and taste. If you want your stroganoff a little sweeter with a hint of spice, add another 1/4 tsp. This is truly a matter of personal preference. I don’t like a lot of paprika in my stroganoff. Some people might. Depending on how easy you went with the lemon in the cashew cream, you may find you want to add a squeeze or two now. As with the paprika, do this little by little. You can’t take it back. Reduce heat and let simmer while you’re finishing/starting your noodles.

At some point, you will have wanted to start your noodles. If your sauce gets too thick, add in a but of unsweetened milk-like-product (we like almond milk for this).

As anticipated, serve stroganoff over noodles. Invite the czar. We had this with brussels sprouts, which the czar also loves.

For me, cooking is largely a creative endeavor, like making art–something steeped in inspiration and which doesn’t like being bossed around. For the first few weeks, the MoFo was just a great way to push myself a little harder, a context for creation. But in the last few days, it’s become harder–for better or worse. Maybe now is the most important time–when it’s no longer easy and I have to start making real decisions, instead of being blown by the winds of whimsy.

It was in this state that I approached last night’s meal: Seitan Bread Bake, Roasted Acorn Squash Soup, and Scalloped Potatoes. With the additional caveat: I must not produce any more leftovers that Amy won’t eat (it gets a little old eating pot pie for lunch every day for a week). So, I wanted to craft a meal that catered to all of Amy’s cravings.

(I’m feeling a bit loquacious today–feel free to skip to THE ACTION)

Mulling over how to put all of this together without creating a hodgepodge of crap, I took inspiration from this really attractive meal at The Airy Way. It reminded me of two things that I often really like in a meal: lots of different, small portions and a nice mix of complex recipes with simple ones.

We usually approach a soup as a meal, but every once in a while I get a wild hare to do an appetizer-type soup. We had a few acorn squash to use up, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity for Roasted Acorn (and Garlic!) Soup. Riding out the Autumn trend (which happened to be saddled to the Amy’s-Craving trend), it seemed like a good night to take another stab at Faux Gratin Potatoes. We’ve been a little nooched out of late, so we decided that a simpler, cleaner Scalloped Potato might be a nice change.

The surprise champeen of the dinner, to my surprise, was the Seitan Bread Bake. We had tomatoes and bread to use up and Amy mentioned this sort of tomato and bread bake that a friend’s dad used to make. My interest was piqued. Of course, we also nad seitan to use up (there’s a theme here). The original recipe used basil, but we have a mess of pesto in the freezer right now–this, I firmly believe, was the crucial element. I don’t have words for how awesome this stuff tastes. You could prepare it faster than I could describe it.

In any case, here’s THE ACTION:

Roasted Acorn Squash (and Garlic!) Soup

• 2 small acorn squash, cut in half and degutted
• 1 HEAD of garlic
• 1/2 medium-sized yellow onion, diced
• 3 cups veggie stock
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice the acorn squash in half, remove the guts, then place on an oiled cooking sheet. Slice off the top of the head of garlic, place in foil, and douse with olive oil. Bake the squash for 45 minutes and the garlic for 30 minutes (i.e. just put garlic in 15 minutes after the squash).

Meanwhile, sautee the onion in oil or Earth Balance in a medium-sized pot over medium heat, untill soft. When the squash and garlic are done, remove them from the oven and give them at least 10 minutes to cool. Spoon and knife the squash and garlic, respectively, into the pot with the onion. Add in the stock, stir well, then blend with an immersion blender. If you’re using a standard blender, you can put all the ingredients directly in the blender, then transfer to the pot. Blend until very smooth. Add the cumin, then salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with a swirl of Rooster Sauce.

Scalloped Potatoes

• 4 medium – large potatoes, cut into thin disks (peel, if using brown taters)
• 1/2 medium-sized white onion, diced
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 1/2 cup cooked white beans, drained
• 1/2 cup ground cashews
• 1/2 cup milk-like product
• tsp ground mustard seed
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp Earth Balance
• salt and pepper, to taste
• bread crumbs (optional)

This is very much like the Al-Faux-Do sauce, but with white beans and a bit more lemon. It’s a bit thicker and, despite the lemon, a tinch less sharp (and even less so after baking).

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare the potatoes. Sautee the onion and garlic in the Earth Balance over medium heat. Once they’re soft, add them to the blender along with the other ingredients (except the potatoes) and blend until smooth.

Put the potatoes in an oven-safe casserole dish and pour the the sauce over them, mixing very thoroughly. The more shallow you stack the potatoes, the faster they’ll and the more bread crumbs you can fit on top. Your call.

Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and add bread crumbs (if you’re using them). Bake for an additional 15 minutes. Check the potatoes with a fork–if they’re nice and soft, you’re done. Otherwise, cook for an additional 5 minutes and check again. Repeat as necessary.

Seitan Bread Bake

• 2 thick pieces of bread, cut into large cubes (we used our homemade bread; use 3 pieces if using sandwich bread)
• 1 large seitan cutlet (or two smaller ones), cut into large cubes
• 3 small tomatoes (or 1 large tomato–use your judgment), cut into pieces
• 3 cubes frozen pesto (~1/2 cup) OR fresh garlic and basil, minced
• olive oil

Preheat oven to 425. Place the bread, seitan, and tomatoes in an oiled oven-safe casserole dish or cooking sheet with a little depth (there will be a fair amount of oil and tomato juice–so you don’t want a totally flat sheet). Mix them up, so everything is fairly evenly distributed. Douse generously with olive oil, then spread pesto on top (if you’re thawing, you’ll probably need a little olive oil to the pest when warming). Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes. Remove foil, stir everything thoroughly, and bake for another 15 minutes, until bread and seitan are somewhat firm. Prepare your tastebuds. Fantastic!