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!

It’s…(drum roll)…Chik’n Caesar Salad!

But why?

1. A friend was eating a chicken-y version at the bar the previous night
2. It’s grilling season
3. Seitan chik’n cutlets are like crack, except they probably won’t destroy your life
4. It’s the salad that eats like a meal!

Caesar Dressing

• juice of one lemon
• 2 tsp dijon mustard
• 1/2 cup good quality olive oil
• 2 heaping tablespoons Veganaise ™
• 2-4 tsp vegan worcestershire
• plenty of fresh ground pepper
• pinch of sea salt
• 4 big cloves of garlic, finely minced or crushed in a garlic press
• several sprinkles of homemade vegan parmesan (recipe below) to taste

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and whisk briskly until smooth.  Transfer to a cruet and chill.

Homemade Vegan Parmesan

• 1/2 cup raw pine nuts
• 1 tbsp white or yellow miso
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1-2 tsp salt (to taste) (careful-we like our salt!)

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until ground to fine crumbly bits.  Try to stop before the mix gets pasty.

Seitan Chik’n Cutlets

It’s worth reposting this, since (a) we’ve strayed a bit from the traditional course, and (b) we’ve been making them every few weeks. The thing I love about these–the genius of them–is the cutlet form. Flattening them out makes them dense and very easy to work with in other recipes. In the not-too-distant-future (lalala), I’m gonna rock the PPK’s version as cutlets.

• 2 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 tbsp onion powder
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tsp granulated garlic
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 1/2 cups cold water
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced
• fresh rosemary and thyme sprigs
• fresh oregano and sage leaves
• 2 bay leaves
• 8 cups cold unchicken/veggie broth (we use the bulk unchicken broth from Frontier ™)

In a large bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients, mixing well (I like to use a fork for this, since wheat gluten is so light). In a smaller bowl, combine the garlic and water. Mix the garlic-y water in with the dry ingredients. Knead into a uniform dough.

Fill a large pot with the cold broth and add the herbs and bay leaves.

Rip off a piece of dough in roughly golf-ball-sized chunks and ball it in your hands. Using wax paper or a ziploc bag, flatten the ball out as thin as you can. It’ll stretch back once you peel if it off the paper/bag. Drop it into the broth. Repeat for the remainder of the dough. After you’ve dropped the final bit in, let them all sit in the cold broth for 10 minutes. Then, bring the water to a gentle boil, reduce heat, and cover, cooking for 1 hour. Remove from heat and let sit for 30 minutes. Note: These aren’t super zesty on their own; that’s part of what makes them awesome in so many different dishes. They’re now ready to grill/bake/bread/fry/eat raw caveman-style.

Finally, building the salad

• Green leaf or romaine lettuce, torn into bite-sizeable shreds
• 2 seitan chik’n cutlets, grilled and cut into strips
• 1/4 large purple onion, cut into thin slices then quartered
• croutons (we make our own out of old bread–just cut into cubes, douse with olive oil and herbs/spices, and bake at 400 for 10 – 20 minutes, until crunchy)

Grill two cutlets until they’re cooked through and, ideally, have grill marks. Grilling is about grill marks more than anything. Take heed.

Fill a large bowl with the lettuce, onions, and croutons. When the cutlets are done, cut them into strips and add them to the rest of the salad. Toss the whole thing lightly with the salad dressing.

Then eat, eat, eat…and keep eating, all you want. It’s salad.

This is going to seem weird: baked potatoes slathered in Earth Balance ™, topped with homemade chili, topped with homemade tempeh soysage. Behold, the Li’l Spudley!

But furrealz, is it any weirder than chili cheese fries? I think not. Amy’s had a taste for some kind of chili potato for the last few days, so I thought I’d surprise her by acquiescing (note 1: I was the initial hater). Sadly, I hadn’t though in advance to soak cashews to make sour cream and we were out of silken tofu. But chili and potato somehow wouldn’t be enough…so why not move in the entirely other direction?, thought I: tempeh soysage. Amy has highly skeptical of this twist (note 2: Now Amy’s the hater). Luckily, our friend Maddog was here and was game for my experiment, putting the pressure on Amy to indulge my strange flight of culinary fancy. As it turns out, this was pretty awesome (note 3: It’s awesome!). The buttery potato brings out the sweetness of the chili, while the soysage brings out the spice. It’s just right.

All you need is:

• baked potatoes
• Earth Balance ™, optional
• chili: Roasted Poblano Chili or Standard Chili (I recommend the Poblano for this)
• tempeh soysage (you could also use tempeh soyrizo, for a switch)
• green onions (optional)

We had this again a few nights later, with green onions. Unlike Amy, I’m a potato musher-downer. Deal with it.

Fantastic!

Amy left last week for a return trip to Budapest to finish a video collaboration, make new work, and prepare for an opening there (if you’re in or around Budapest, be sure to check it out). She’s kicking so much ass it’s hard not to feel ineffectual!

Since she was flying at night, we had time for a nice dinner. Here main requests were “protein power and potatoes”. After rummaging around the intertubes for a while, we decided to kick it eclectic-style and settled on:

• mashed potatoes
• sauteed mushrooms
• Vegan Dad’s Crispy Cajun Chickpea Cakes
• steamed broccoli
• carrot, beet, and lettuce salad, tossed in a light vinaigrette

Chickpea Cake Mixins

Bright, crispy, and delicious

Take heart fellow vegans, small victories are still possible! This year, for the first time ever, we did away with the traditional mixed Spanksgiving (omni/vegan) “Separate but Equal” dinner in favor of something more communal. You know the meal–an entire vegan feast alongside an entire non-vegan feast, a multitude of dishes that are identical, save soymilk, Earth Balance, and veggie stock in lieu of milk, butter, and turkey stock.

The weekend got off to a great start when we were greeted at the door with vegan oatmeal cookies, which Amy’s omni brother deemed “perfect”. How awesome is Amy’s mom? How awesome is it that Amy’s brother, in a single phrase, eliminated any further necessity to make non-vegan oatmeal cookies?

The vegan bonanza continued through to Spanksgiving too; Amy’s mom typically makes two dressings (you know, stuffing, but not in the turkey)–one with veggie stock and one with turkey/chicken stock. This year, she decided it was too much trouble and that no one would miss the meat stock, which they didn’t. She also traditionally makes both vegan and non-vegan mashed sweet potatoes with candied pecan topping. Though she did decide to make a non-vegan version as well at the last minute, Amy’s brother–our omni-acceptability-barometer–decreed the vegan version just as good, freeing Amy’s mom from any future obligation to make two versions.

Add to this homemade bread and steamed broccoli and cauliflower (there was a cheese sauce for the omnivores), and you have quite a shared meal! The omnivores had turkey and turkey gravy, while Amy and I had Spanksgiving Seitan Faux-Turkey and seitan gravy–though Amy’s dad had some of ours as well.

While it may not always be possible to convince your friends and family of your values, it is possible to achieve acceptance, to build respect, and to erode some of the barriers that keep us from meeting halfway and enjoying a meal together–which, history notwithstanding, is what Spanksgiving is all about.

Spanksgiving Menu:

• Spanksgiving Seitan Faux-Turkey
• Dressing
• Mashed Potatoes
• Steamed Broccoli & Cauliflower
• Mashed Sweet Potatoes w/ Candied Pecan Topping
• Homemade Rolls
• Seitan Gravy
• (Cranberry Sauce – Amy’s fambly ate this)
• (Turkey – Amy’s fambly ate this)

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.

Wait. Fake chickens have fake fingers?

Amy was skeptical at first, but after she tried one, she had to admit they were pretty awesome. It was her genius idea, though, to gussy up what could have been a fairly plain meal with roasted cauliflower and smashed potatoes with a fancy roasted-garlic, wine, and carmelized-onion reduction.

We made the Chik’n Fingers from the seitan we made the other night from Jennifer’s version of Joanna’s recipe, cut into thin strips (about an inch wide), battered in Chik’n Almond Bake, and baked 15 minutes to a side at 425 degrees. Super simple and kind of a nice change of pace.

These would also work nicely on that amazing looking club sammich over at Lisa’s Thoughts, for those of you looking to avoid processed faux meats (just cook them at 10 minutes to a side instead).

We nabbed the roasted cauliflower recipe from our ol’ stalwart companion, VegWeb.

The smashed potatoes were the usual deal (well, almost…we used unpeeled purple potatoes). The reduction is as follows:

Fancy Garlic-Onion-Wine Reduction

• 1/2 large purple onion, diced
• 1 HEAD of garlic, roasted
• ~ 1/2 cup white wine (or sub red, for a something a bit heavier/richer)
  
• 3 tbsp (aka 1/4 cup) Earth Balance

In a carmelizing-able pan (nonstick pans usually won’t carmelize), begin carmelizing the onion in the Earth Balance over medium heat. After about 5 minutes, once the onions havae begun to soften, add in half the wine. When the onions have carmelized, remove the cloves of roasted garlic with a butter knife and add to the onions. With the mashing implement of your choice, mash the onions and garlic together thoroughly. Add in the remaining wine (or more, for desired consistency) and cook for another few minutes.

Serve as just a light drizzle; this is not a gravy! (some things, you have to learn the hard way…)

Hi ya’ll.  Amy here filling in for Mark with my first post on IV.  He spent the entire evening helping me stretch the canvas for a ten-foot painting, so he deserves a break.  It’s salad time…just in time for your fall crop of lettuce.  Sadly ours got eaten by hoggish vermin.  We’ll take better precautions next year.

Mark and I each take different approaches to preparing a salad.  I tend to put ANYTHING in the fridge on some lettuce and voila!  Mark has a more regimented approach.  We can agree that any good salad has some sort of protein such as nuts, seeds, or beans.  We both also really enjoy a good homemade dressing.  So here we have, for your consideration, two salads- the first is a collaborative effort and the second is one of my weird (but delicious!) creations.

Salad 1: We had this one the other night.  Let’s call it Chloe’s Fall Salad.  I’m giving cred to our friend Chloe for the dressing recipe.

So of course you can put anything you like on this salad.  The apples are what make it a “Fall” salad.  Copycat these moves if you want to replicate the tastiness in the photo.

Salad:

• mixed red leaf  and green leaf lettuce washed and torn into shreds
• shredded carrots (we use a cheese grater for this)
• toasted pine nuts (pop raw pine nuts into a pan on medium heat, stirring constantly until aromatic)
• thinly cut apple slices
• pepper to taste

Chloe’s Dressing:

• 2 tbsp tahini
• 1 tsp pomegranate molasses (you can get this at Whole Foods or Middle Eastern grocers)
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• fresh chives, finely chopped
• water to desired viscosity

Mix all ingredients in a blender.  Measurements are approximate.  I just kind-of keep dumping ingredients in until it tastes right, so feel free to doctor to suit your preferences.  Stores for weeks in the fridge (if it lasts that long!)

Salad 2: Amy’s “Everything Goes” Salad (furreal people)

This particular salad contains:

• green leaf lettuce, washed and torn into shreds
• chopped red onion
• cooked corn from the cob (we save ours in the fridge so it’s cold when put on the salad)
• blueberries
• hemp seed
• pepper to taste

Dressing (my take on a Japanese sesame ginger dressing):

• 4 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 6 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp soy sauce (or gluten-free tamari)
• 2 tsp sake
• 4 tbsp freshly grated ginger (or from a jar)
• 3 tsp vegan sugar
• 10-12 baby carrots (or 2 medium-large carrots)
• 5 tsp tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup chopped onion

Combine all ingredients in a blender starting with liquids and gradually adding solid ingredients and blend until smooth-ish.  Add water if necessary to thin.  Again, measurements are approximate.  We like this dressing to be rather sweet, so feel free to cut the sugar down some.  You can also substitute agave nectar or another sweetener of your choice.  This one saves for weeks too.

Let us hear your favorite salad mix-em-ups and dressings.  The more unexpected, the better!

The thing everyone hates about lasagna is boiling the noodles and then trying to work with them. If you don’t hate this, feel free to move on to a different recipe, one that is more work and involves a panoply of pointless masochistic tasks.

Conversely, there are a variety of ways to make this recipe much harder to make–but with the added benefit of making it even more intensely awesome. It’s a culinary Choose Your Own Adventure ™. Any number of choices will result in your death. Only a few will lead to victory.

No-Boil Choose Your Own Lasagna

The Essentials

• 4 – 6 cups of pasta sauce (about a jar and a half or 8 tomatoes-worth)
• 12 large lasagna noodles
• faux-ricotta

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
• 1 tsp basil (1 tbsp, fresh & diced)
• 1/2 tsp rosemary (chopped if fresh, crushed if dry)
• 1/8 tsp cayenne
• salt, to taste

Sauce (optional)

• ~ 8 medium – large tomatoes, diced
• 1 HEAD of garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 1/8 cup fresh oregano, diced
• salt & pepper, to taste

Mushrooms (optional)

• 1/2 lb mushrooms, cut into thin slices
• 1/2 medium-sized white or yellow onion, diced
• olive oil

1 zucchini, sliced into thin disks (optional)

Filling

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.

Sauce (optional)

If’ you’re going the store-bought-sauce-in-a-jar route, this recipe is insanely simple. Skip to Lasagna

Note: You’ll want to do this step first, if you’re going the homemade sauce route–it needs to simmer.

Sautee the garlic in olive oil in a large pan (or pot) over medium heat. When it begins to brown, toss in the tomatoes and stir well. At your convenience and/or leisure, add in the oregano, basil, salt, and pepper. Let this simmer on medium heat, uncovered, for at least 30 minutes, until it’s more of a sauce than a liquid. Use your judgment. Modern physics offers no conceptual framework for understanding the phase transition from liquid to sauce.

Mushrooms (optional)

Sautee the onions and mushrooms in olive oil  in a medium-sized pan over medium heat until the mushrooms are tender. That’s it.

Lasagna

Preheat oven to 375. In a 9 x 12 pan, spread enough sauce to thoroughly cover the bottom of the pan. Add in a layer of 4 noodles (I usually end up with 3 full, and a fourth broken into large pieces to fill the remaining space). Spread a layer of half the filling on top of the noodles. If you’re using it, spread a layer of zucchini over the filling. Cover with another layer of noodles. Now spread the rest of the filling on top of them. Spread another layer if zucchini, if using. Spread the mushrooms in top of that, if using. Now put one more layer of noodles down. Cover thoroughly with sauce.

Cover the pan with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil 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. Top with more sauce and vegan parmesan, if handy.

Serves: Bill Murray as Garfield.

The first step to failure is making up the name for something that already has a name, probably. If I weren’t too lazy, I’d know what the name for an Indian curry made from chick peas and zucchini is called. But instead, I just used the words for each: chana and toree. Hey, it works for Aloo Gobi, right?

Actually, this wasn’t a failure, per se, but it wasn’t as savory as lots of other curries I’ve made. The zucchini made it kind of “watery” tasting. It did, however, make it a very attractive dish. So if you’re in the mood for a really mellow curry, this could be just the guy for you. But I wasn’t, so it wasn’t. Thus, it was not a success.

Allow me to impart a nugget of wisdom wrested from the gaping maw of failure: It’s okay to give some of your zucchini away. Now, I’m not admitting defeat; I’m not saying that a sufficiently crafty person couldn’t make an average of 2.75 zucchini-based meals per week. But from a utilitarian perspective, you would maximize overall happiness by giving some of your zucchini away and focusing on making meals with zucchini that you really like, not just adding zucchini to every recipe you know, willy-nilly.

And anyway, it’s not like we’re talking about kale here. Adding zucchini to everything doesn’t really confer any great health advantage.

But.

The pretty picture above has piqued your interest nonetheless. So here you go:

Chana Toree

• 1 large zucchini or 1/2 of a REALLY large zucchini, diced*
• 2 cups cooked chick peas, rinsed and drained
• 2 large tomatoes, diced finely
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 large cloves of garlic, minced
• 1.5 tbsp curry powder
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp coriander
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 cup veggie stock
• salt, to taste

In a large-ish pot over medium heat, sautee the onions and garlic in oil until they are soft and starting to brown. Toss in the zucchini, mixing well. Add in all of the spices, taking care to coat everything. Cook for about 5 minutes, then add in the tomatoes, chick peas, and veggie stock. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and let simmer for about 2 hours. Serve over rice, couscous, or quinoa.

* Cut the zucchini into about 2″ lengths. Cut those in half lengthwise, then cut the halves in half, then again. In other, simpler, words, cut the slices into eighths lengthwise. Now cut those slices widthwise into about 1/8 – 1/4″ little triangles. While this does nothing for the actual taste of the dish, it does look attractive, which in turn may trick folks into thinking it’s more delicious than it actually is. Presentation is often a subterfuge.

We made this with homemade naan, which was awesome.

Here is how it looks in a blue pot, which also lends to the transference of attractiveness to deliciousness:

Complementary colors are also a culinary subterfuge