MISO TAHINI SAUCE (cheezy substitute)

This is so easy and delicious. It also tastes very cheezy.

Miso tahini sauce

Ingredients

2 + 1/3 cups water, separated
1/4 cup miso
1/2 cup tahini
2 Tbs lemon juice (or white wine, or both)
1/4 C cornstarch
salt and pepper to taste
porcini powder (optional)

Method:
1. Combine 2 two cups of water, miso, tahini and lemon juice in a saucepan
2. Heat on high
3. In a little cup or bowl, mix cornstarch and water.
4. When mixture is boiling, add cornstarch while whisking. I find that recipes often underestimate the amount of cornstarch needed. I use a lot of cornstarch generally when cornstarch is required.
5. Whisk and heat until it's very thick.

6. Flavour to taste. You can add basically anything you want. I put porcini powder, but also chili flakes would be good, or truffle oil, or basil. Go wild! 

I put it in a bowl with some other things (grilled zucchini, market mushrooms, spinach, mashed potatoes). The sauce is really the best part of what's happening here.

SUNDAY MORNING FRENCH TOAST

French toast. Because it's Sunday. I have some of the Vegg that I brought from America. They're practically giving it away over there. You can buy it online here, but it's expensive.  I used the french toast recipe from the Newman Improved blog available here, but I didn't make it gluten free.  Instead I used some ciabatta bread that had been sitting around the kitchen so it was a little stale. French stale bread is the best for FT, IMO, but this was a close second. I didn't use a blender, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake. I think next time I'll also use a little Alpro soy cream for half the soy milk, or something. Overall it turned out pretty darn well.

There were strawberries at the farmers market this week, and I has some market raspberries in my freezer, so I made a basic fruit sauce to go on top. Recipe follows.

Fruit Sauce

Ingredients:

1 pint strawberries
1 cup frozen raspberries
2 tablespoon sugar
1 heaping tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons water

Method:

1. Wash and cut up the strawberries.
2. Put them in a saucepan, add raspberries, heat on medium.
3. Add the sugar.
4. Cook for a while at a simmer. Maybe 15 minutes, stirring frequently. Add a little water if it seems too thick. I like it pretty thick so I don't even worry about it.
5. Mix the cornstarch and water.
6. Add to the saucepan. It should thicken almost immediately.
7. Remove from heat. Done!

COLOURFUL CARROT SALAD ROLLS

Ingredients:

4 Carrots of different colours, grated

1 package marinated tofu (the bags of marinated tofu at the farmers market are perfect)

1 cup mixed greens

1 avocado

spring onions
rice paper

Dipping Sauce

1 C cilantro, stems removed

1/2 nuts, or 1/4 C nut butter 

2 T soy sauce

1 T vinegar

1 T ginger

1 tsp sugar (or to taste)

1 tsp chili flakes (or to taste)

1/3 C water

Method:

1. Prepare the vegetables and tofu.

2. Make the dipping sauce by putting everything in a food processor and blending it like crazy

Making the salad rolls:

3. I normally use a baking pan for the rice paper. They called it a jelly roll sheet in home ec, I think, because it's mostly flat with small edges. Anything with any sides will work. I boil some water in a kettle, I pour some into the pan, and then add a piece of rice paper, and I probably only leave it for ten seconds so it's not totally soft and you can still make out the markings on the paper.  I normally hold it in two places at the top and shake it just a little to get off extra water.

4. Transfer the rice sheet onto a cutting board or plate. Place veggies in kind of line, parallel to you, slightly closer to you than the center. Then flip over the edge closer to you, tuck in the sides, and keep rolling. The trick is to get the rice paper the right amount of cooked. If it's taring too easily you probably left it in the water too long, but if it doesn't have any stretch, you might have left it in too little. I'm sure Bittman has a different take on the nuances of salad rolling, and my only knowledge of this is from experience, so I could have the chemistry all off.

5. Repeat 3 and 4 as much as necessary. If a tear emerges in a roll, I just roll another sheet around it.

6. Put dipping sauce in a little bowl with salad rolls beside it. Done!

I also once made them with radicchio leaves on the outside for extra colour:

And I made the sauce extra spicy by adding, er, chili sauce maybe? Sriracha? I can't remember. They were good, but at the time I thought they looked really perverse. I tried to select the most family friendly photos for the blog here.

CHICKPEA-CARROT CREPES WITH WATERCRESS SAUCE

I love the bags of multicoloured carrots from Ettrick Gardens at the Saturday farmer's market. Grated into chickpea crepes, they add colour and texture and balance out any bitterness from the flour. I also used tofu and watercress from the market in the meal. I would totally just eat the crepes by themselves, with my hands, hovering over the frying pan (and by "I would" I obviously mean "I have and normally do"). I was feeling a bit more ambitious today. The meal has four parts, assembled together, and each could be altered to suit. I like to make a lot of batter mostly because I like to have a large error margin for crepe botch-ups, and also because its easy to use the batter the next day. I'm going to use extra batter to make chickpea fries tomorrow. This recipe will make enough crepes for 5-6 servings, probably. I have no idea what a serving really is, but I think this would make about 6 crepes (and maybe one or two "mistakes").

Ingredients

Crepes:
2 cups chickpea flour
2 cups finely grated carrots of various colors.
2 cups of water
1/2 T salt (or more, if you want)
2 T oil

Tofu-Cashew Ricotta:
1 container of firm tofu, or 1 bag from the farmer's market
3/4 to 1 cup cashews, soaked for 1/2 hour (but if you don't soak them, it's NBD)
juice from 1 lemon (you can also include pulp if you feel like digging it out)
1 heaping tsp miso
salt and pepper to taste
Water if necessary



Lentils:
1-2 onions, diced (the more the better, IMO)
1 cup lentils
2 T butter or oil

Sauce:
2 T vegan butter
2 T flour
3 cloves garlic
1 C water
1 C unsweetened soy milk
2 T nutritional yeast

2 healthy handfuls of watercress

Method

1. Start by making the batter. Combine chickpea flour and water. Whisk until there aren't bumps. It should be pretty thin. Add the grated carrot, oil, and salt. Mix. Set aside.

2. Make the lentils. I like my onions to cook for as long as possible. On low heat, melt the butter or add the oil to a frying pan. I put 2 tablespoons in the recipe, but realistically we all know more is always better. So put as much vegan fat as you feel comfortable with in a frying pan. Add the onions, and just let them cook for a long time. I'd start making other things in the meantime, just going back to stir them occasionally. Make sure the pan is on low, though. Don't burn your onions beyond a desired level.

3. Make the ricotta. Place everything in a food processor and blend until it refuses to blend anymore. If it seems to be too thick, and this is a total judgement call, just add a little water, but not too much. Set aside.

4. Make the watercress sauce. It's just a béchamel. Over medium heat, melt vegan butter in a saucepan. Add the flour. Cook for a couple of minutes. Whisking while you pour, slowly add the water. It should be boiling, and if it's not, wait until it is before adding the milk. Slowly add soy milk. Add nutritional yeast. Whisk while you bring it to a low boil. It should be thick. Remove from heat, and put the sauce in a blender. Add fresh watercress. Blend. Put back into the saucepan, and reduce heat to very low, stirring occasionally. If it's getting too thick or looks like it might burn, just cover and remove from heat.

5. By now, your onions should be awesome. Almost as awesome as if you cooked them for another hour or two, but nobody has that kind of time. Add the lentils. Cook on medium-low.

6. Set oven to warm. On medium-low heat, heat a nonstick or cast iron skillet. Add some oil or cooking spray if it's the type of pan that will need it. The crepes will stick like crazy if there is no counter-sticking strategy employed. Pour some batter in the pan. There will probably be a clump of carrot. I manually disperse the shreds of carrot with my bare hands. I'm sure a fork or something could also be used. Don't worry if the crepe is in a weird shape. It's probably going to be and who cares.  The crepe will change colour a bit as it cooks. It should lose some of its glossiness and almost get a waxy look. I'd wait a couple minutes, even after it looks like it's cooked through. You probably won't burn these, but you will probably try to flip them too soon, if you're impatient like me. When its all cooked and you've held back, flip it over. The first crepe is always a mess for me and it never works out, so don't worry if this happens to you. Cook the giant mess of a crepe and then eat it while hovering over the pan. It's your destiny. Once it's flipped, cook 1 or 2 minutes. Put it on a plate.  Put the plate in the oven. Repeat however many times. When the crepes are done, put some lentils and tofu-cashew ricotta inside, and top with generous amount of watercress sauce. I also tried to throw a little balsamic reduction over it, because I had some handy. It looked nice but it took away the watercress flavour. I would not add balsamic again. It's just too much.

PUMPKIN, WALNUT, AND SAGE LASAGNA (with a side of massaged kale)

This is the third time I've made this. Next time I'm going to double the "Alfredo" sauce. It's really a béchamel sauce with some sage, not that it really matters.

The first time I made this it was Canadian Thanksgiving. I was living in the US with a woman from Spain, and we had decided to make it a big dinner and invite a bunch of people over. It was a success. We also spent American Thanksgiving at a friends, and they had all the usual Thanksgiving fair. A year later, I had moved to a new place but hosted Canadian Thanksgiving again. I invited my Spanish friend,  and she was so confused by the food. I had a seitan roast and stuffing and vegetables. She was like, "where is the lasagna?" Because she thought Canadians ate lasagna for Thanksgiving as a tradition from our forefathers. And now I think of this as my Thanksgiving lasagna. It's all wholesome, cozy fall feelings. 

Massaged kale:

Kale (it's best if they are smaller, younger leaves)
Olive oil or coconut oil, about 1 Tb, but it depends on how much kale you have.
Lemon juice (optional - I used about a tsp of lemon juice)
Salt (I prefer smoked salt)

I also sometimes use toasted sesame oil, a tsp of miso, and a little soy sauce, and then sprinkle it with sesame seeds at the end. That's really the best. The kale at the farmer's market today was perfect for this sort of thing.

Directions:
Wash the kale and break into pieces.   Sprinkle with oil. If you're using a more solid fat, like coconut oil, just break it up into pieces. It will disperse as you massage the kale. Then you really do just massage it pretty vigorously for a while. I find it relaxing, so I'll do it for ages. Just grab handfuls and rub the leaves together. The leaves should change color to be brighter. Sprinkle with salt and let it rest while you make the lasagna.

Lasagna:

The recipe is essentially this one from vegan dad: http://vegandad.blogspot.co.nz/2008/10/roasted-pumpkin-and-walnut-manacotti.html

Instead of manicotti I use lasagna (obvs). I made the pasta fresh using a pasta maker. I like using fresh noodles because they cook nicely with the pumpkin and soak up any extra liquid while it's baking. It also looks nicer as lasagna than manicotti, IMO. To make the filling, I used two medium sized pumpkins I bought at the farmers market. They worked perfectly. I saved the seeds and roasted them afterwards. After I made the béchamel sauce and the filling, I alternated layers of the pasta and pumpkin filling and put the béchamel on top, and then baked it for 45 minutes at 200.

It was really good.

I also roasted the seeds. They were *ok*