For the love of Seitan

I don’t know about you all, but over the holidays I indulged. I indulged in wine, beer, mai tais and rum. I also indulged in bread, fried things, vegan processed “meats” and sugar. All of which means that I gained a few pounds. Did you know that being vegan doesnt’ necessarily translate to being thin? There’s tons of unhealthy vegan foods out there. Don’t believe me? Look up the ingredients of Nutter Butters.

Carbs aren’t by nature “bad for you”. They’re an energy source. Like my in-laws, some people can consume vast amounts of rice, bread, and potatoes at the dinner table because they have this amazing metabolism, or they work out so much that they actually use these wonderful grains and sugars for energy. I don’t. I come from bread-basket Ukrainian peasant stock. The kind that didn’t die during the famines because their bodies held onto fat so much better than all those skinny dead kids. Plus, I don’t work out like Lance Armstrong, because I have a day job. So while carbs in and of themselves aren’t bad for you, they are weight-gain triggers for people like me that spend most of their day sitting in front of a computer and not walking around in the fields.

Anyway. Seeing as how The Eating Season is done, it’s time to cut the carbs (my primary weight gaining device), reduce the sugars (my other weight gaining device) and lay off the booze. Tonight I whipped up a nice big “Eggplasagna”…with no cheese, no dairy, no pasta, no gluten, and very low carb. Fortunately, it’s all flavor, sausage-y and onion-y and full of yum. Just try to keep your portions under control…just because it’s low carb doesn’t mean it’s low calorie.

This recipe is divvied up into segments, with the last being the steps of layering that I used. Photo to come.

Part 1: The “ricotta”

Ingredients

1 brick of firm tofu, pressed between dishtowels to absorb excess water, and crumbled into a bowl

2 heads of garlic, tops cut off and roasted in olive oil at 400 until soft and caramel-colored on the edges

1 tbsp each of dried basil, dried oregano and dried thyme

1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Juice from one lemon

Method

Combine all in a food processer (or in a bowl, using two forks). Set aside.

 

Part 2: The “pasta”

Ingredients

1/2 a large eggplant, sliced thin (1/8″ thick at the most, but try for 1/16″)

sea salt

Method

Sprinkle sea salt on eggplant to “sweat it”. Lay it flat or at an angle in a shallow dish. Just before you start The Layering, drain off the “sweat” that has formed. Don’t rinse the eggplant!!!

 

Part 3: The “sausage”

Ingredients

1 packet of tempeh (I like flax tempeh, but it really doesn’t matter what kind you choose. Just make sure it’s at least 8 oz).

2 tsp each of dried basil, dried fennel seed, dried thyme

a pinch of cayenne pepper

a dash of brown sugar

3 tbsp soy sauce (or tamari, if you need this to be gluten-free safe for Celiac’s diseased eaters)

juice from one lemon

2 tbsp olive oil

a dash of liquid smoke

Method

Crumble the tempeh in a sauce pan. Fill with water until it covers the tempeh. Heat until boiling, then let it boil fo 12 minutes. Drain the water, then add the rest of the ingredients and head on medium – high. Stir frequently until the mixture is slightly browned. Set aside.

Part 4: The onions

Ingredients

2 large red onions, cut in half then sliced into thin half-moons

olive oil

a dash of brown sugar

Method

Heat the onions in olive oil (enough so that they get coated with the oil, doesn’t have to be a lot) until they start a quiet bubbling. Turn down the heat to low and let them cook until they get to a reddish brown mushy color / texture. Set aside.

 

Part 4: The “others”

Ingredients

1 cup sliced firm crimini or button mushrooms

a handful of spinach leaves, destemmed

1 jar of tomato sauce (I love the Mezzetta Napa Valley Bistro tomato sauces)

Part 5: The Layering

Ordered from Bottom layer to Top layer. Start with:

1/3 of the tomato sauce

one layer of sliced eggplant

a layer of spinach leaves, raw

a layer of mushroom slices, raw

1/2 the “ricotta” crumbles

1/3 of the tomato sauce

the remaining sliced eggplant

tempeh sausage (all of it)

carmelized red onions (all of them)

the remaining “ricotta” crumbles

the remaining tomato sauce
Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes with aluminum foil covering your pan. Take off the foil, sprinkle on some Daiya Mozzerella shredded “cheese” if you like, and bake until it’s melted.

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No, vegans, you do not have to give up pizza. Your more socially conscious / healthy / kinder choice doesn’t include dairy but it does include pizza so good that you’ll be snacking along, only to find in the morning that you did, in fact, eat an entire pizza all by yourself. And you’re not ashamed. Because it was so good you’d do it again just to prove a point.

Jon and I make quite a lot of varieties of vegan pizza; so much in fact that we’ve toyed with the idea of opening a vegan gourmet pizza parlor named “Vizza”, where only the best wine would be paired with gourmet pizza strips, and we wouldn’t even need to advertise it as vegan because we’d be so pretentious and smug about the restaurant identity design and ingredients that hipsters would line up outside our door for blocks on end.

Anyway. This is one of many vegan pizza recipes I plan to post, the vegan take on a Hawaiian pizza (we’re headed to Hawaii in a week or so, so my brain is kind of focused on that right now).  Note: we usually use yeast in the dough, but forgot to add it this time. It turned out great anyway, so don’t worry if your brain is mush at the end of the day and you totally space on that. Just smile and act like it was all part of your Master Plan and no one will know.

Ingredients:

Grapeseed or Safflower oil as needed

Homemade bread dough (we use the recipe from our bread machine, and mix it in it)

1 can chopped tomatoes

1 small can tomato paste

a handful of pineapple chunks

1/3 package of Yves Vegan Canadian Bacon, cut into 1/2″ squares

2 handfuls of maitake mushrooms, chopped

2 small (or one large) red onions, peeled and sliced into half-moon strips

Olive oil as needed

a large pinch of fresh, chopped cilantro (feel free to omit if you think it tastes like soap)

shredded daiya mozzerella cheese OR shredded “Sheese” mozzerella cheese

 

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 350. Oil your pizza stone (I don’t know how to make pizza without one of these. They’re a great investment. Get one.) with a high-heat oil like grapeseed oil or safflower oil. NOT olive oil, as it will burn in the oven and ruin the taste of your pizza.

2. Carmelize the red onions by cooking them in a sauce pan with olive oil. Start off on medium heat, then lower the heat to medium / low and let them cook until they turn a yummy brown slightly-crispety color. Set aside.

3. Saute the mushrooms and Yves Canadian Bacon in that same pan until the bacon is browned a bit and the mushrooms get soft. Set aside.

4. In a medium bowl, mix together the tomatoes and tomato paste.

5. Roll out your dough onto a pizza stone. I like square pizzas, but I’m weird that way. Spread with a spoon the tomato sauce mixture onto the dough. Make sure to only spread it thinly – too much sauce and the dough will get super soggy. Sprinkle on top the mushrooms, onions and canadian bacon. Grate the cheese (or sprinkle it if it’s already grated) on the pizza. The trick with vegan cheese is don’t use too much. You should be able to see the toppings a bit. Top with a few pineapple chunks – again, not too many or it’ll make the center of the pizza soggy. Top with a bit of cilantro, if you like that.

6. Bake the pizza for around 15 – 25 minutes. You’ll have to watch it and pay attention – when the edges of the dough are no longer soft and it has a slight brown texture (or if the cheese is starting to brown), take it out. Let it cool for a few minutes and eat it. But not the whole thing. I’ve made that mistake too many times…and probably will again.

 

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Last night I might have had a few too many drinks. OK, I know I had a few too many drinks. This was made clear to me when I woke up this morning with a rockin’ headache and a bit of a hangover. Enter hot and sour soup, my salty-soury-rehydrating hangover cure.

I’m going to add a few things in here that I didn’t put in the soup this time because next time I make this I definitely will put them in. I think this soup will be just the thing to say tsai chien (goodbye) to this wretched hangover, and hopefully I’ll make better choices in the future. But I doubt it.

Ingredients:

8 cups of water or vegetable broth (I used vegan chicken stock)

3/4 cup tamari

3 tbsp soy sauce

1/4 cup ponzu sauce

1/2 cup white vinegar

1/3 cup rice wine vinegar

1 tsp ground white peppercorns

1 small yellow onion, diced

peanut oil

3 tbsp sesame oil

1 fist-sized amount of yuba, sliced into ribbons

1/2 block of extra firm tofu, cubed or sliced into thick ribbons

1 tbsp chili oil

2 tsp chili paste

fresh japanese ramen noodles

1 cup chopped green onions

1 small can sliced water chestnuts, drained and rinsed

1 12-oz can of chinese mushrooms, drained and rinsed OR 1-2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms

2 cups of seitan, ripped into chunks

 

Method:

1. Saute the onion in peanut oil until browned. Add to a soup pot.

2. Add to the soup pot: water / broth, soy sauce, tamari, ponzu sauce, vinegar, rice wine vinegar, peppercorns, sesame oil, chili oil, chili paste and green onions. Stir well and bring to a boil. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed, then add noodles.

3. Add tofu, yuba, water chestnuts, mushrooms, and seitan. Turn the heat down to low so the soup can simmer. Simmer for 30 minutes (or more if you like), dive in and make better choices next time around in regards to drinking habits.

 

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(photo courtesy of Jess Judge – thanks Jess!)

For many Americans, Superbowl Sunday (and other football-ey type of social gatherings) is a tradition of food. Namely, chicken wings. For my Dad, it’s about blue cheese and sour cream dip for rippled potato chips. It’s a staple, and it just wouldn’t feel like the Superbowl without it. Going vegan has strained me in these types of situations. On the one hand, I really want to enjoy the fun social aspect as much as anyone, but on the other hand (and I freely admit this) I miss the traditions I’ve grown up with.

So once again, I took the bull by the horns and whipped up some vegan-friendly appetisers that not only have quelled my cravings for That Which I Choose Not To Eat Anymore, but as of a few weekends ago won the admiration and respect of some of my most meat-happy friends. They gobbled these up faster than I could say “Wait, that’s not meat!”. I quickly had a photo snapped before the entire dish was gone, so you’ll have to forgive the fact that it’s not as styled as I’d prefer. Next time I’m bringing out the camera before I present the meal.

I recommend these hot “wings”, or “Wings of Satan Seitan”, or if you’re more vulgar than that, “Satan’s Seitan’s Balls” for all those social food gatherings where you find yourself questioning your commitment to animal kindness, or if you’re just in the mood for spicy protein and blue cheese. And, it’s meat-eater tested and approved, so you can’t go wrong there. Unless you encounter my Catholic mother who is mortified that I’d cook with something that is a homophone for the Devil Himself.

Hail Seitan, y’all. And his tasty balls.

Ingredients (“Wings”):

One batch of homemade seitan (I think it comes out to about 6 cups worth or something. We use “Vegan With a Vengeance“‘s seitan recipe)

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup soy milk / almond milk (plain, unsweetened)

3 tbsp spicy brown mustard

1 + 1/2 tsp garlic powder

4 + 1 tbsp nutritional yeast

2 tbsp + 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper, freshly ground

1 tsp paprika

3 tsp baking powder

Peanut oil (about 1/2 – 3/4 cup)

Hot sauce (I recommend Louisiana-style hot sauces like Red Rooster. I do NOT recommend Tapatio or, heaven forbid, Tabasco. Blech.)

 

Ingredients (Blue “cheese” dressing):

6-8 oz plain soy yogurt. No substitutions.

1 cup veganaisse (other brands are OK to substitute)

1-2 tsp garlic powder (omit if you substituted Wildwood Aoili for veganaisse)

1/2 tsp agave nectar

1/4 tsp salt

8 oz blue “Sheese“, grated. This is not substitutable; there is no other brand I’ve tried that works like this one does.

 

Method:

1. Mix your blue “cheese” ingredients together in a bowl. Cover with tin foil (did you know this is recyclable, unlike plastic wrap? Now you do) and refrigerate for 1 – 2  hours. This allows the seasonings / flavors to meld together well.

2. Mix your “wet mix” together in a medium-sized bowl: water, non-dairy milk, mustard, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 2 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast. Set aside.

3. Mix your “dry mix” together in another medium-sized bowl: 1 1/4 cups flour, salt, pepper, 1 tsp garlic powder, 4 tbsp nutritional yeast, paprika, baking powder.

4. Cut the seitan into wing-sized chunks. Or, rip them into ping-pong ball-sized lumps. Whatever suits your fancy.

5. Pour peanut oil into your cast-iron skillet (Did you know you can get more iron out of your food by cooking with a cast-iron skillet? Which is a vital mineral that many vegans don’t have enough of? Now you do) about 1/4 inch deep. Heat on high.

6. Coat each piece of seitan in the wet mix, then roll in the dry mix and add to the frying pan. Fry those puppies until lightly browned on each side, then let them cool on a folded cloth or paper towel.

7. Preheat your oven to 300. Place the cooled seitan wings into a large baking dish and smother in hot sauce. Toss gently so that the hot sauce coats the seitan evenly.

8. Bake those bad boys for 5 – 10 minutes. If they’re ball-sized, put a toothpick in each one and serve along side the blue “cheese” dressing. Get one quick before they’re served, or you may never get the chance to taste them.

 

 

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Last year was a bad year for tomatoes here in Northern California. Cold temps and lots of wind kept them from doing well, so I was thrilled when early this spring we got a a ton of rain. Followed by the sunniest summer I’ve seen here in a while. What does that mean to your normal not-weather-obsessed person?

Heirloom tomatoes. For $1.25 a pound.

 

We picked up our first haul today from the Alemany Farmer’s Market and tonight I’m making minestrone. With heirloom tomatoes. My kitchen smells so amazing right now, I decided to pass some kitchen waiting time by posting the recipe. It tastes fine with normal tomatoes, but then you can’t call it Heirloominestrone, and where’s the fun in that?

Ingredients:

6 tbsp olive oil
2 red onions, chopped
6 cloves garlic, sliced as thin as you can
6 scallions, chopped fine
2 zucchini or cousa, chopped
cooking sherry
5 large heirloom tomatoes, chopped (I prefer Yellowgold, light green, orange and yellow/red-colored because they give the soup a warm orangey color instead of red)
8 cups water boiled, then 1/2 cup vegan chicken broth whisked in
1 8oz can tomato paste
2 cups cooked cranberry (berlotti) beans (ironically I have the heirloom variety of these too)
2 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
2 tbsp dried basil
2 bay leaves
Pepper ground to taste

Method:

1. Heat the olive oil in a large stainless steel soup pot. Saute on medium heat the red onions until just softened, then add 1/3 cup cooking sherry. Add garlic slices and reduce down until just starting to brown.
2. Add scallions and zucchini, saute until the zucchini are soft.
3. Add tomatoes, stir and add 1/3 cup sherry. Stir well, cook on medium heat until the tomatoes soften.
4. Whisk the tomato paste into the vegan broth. Add to the soup pot, along with the herbs. Cook for 15 minutes, add beans. Cook another 15 minutes.

I served this with toasted olive bread and earth balance. A perfect summer dinner. I’ll post the photo later.

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I usually post recipes here that either take a bit of time (but are worth it!) or are a bit more on the fancy-pants side. However. Sometimes, you just don’t have time for that kind of cooking. Sometimes, you drive an hour-long commute, work a very long day, go to a 1 1/2 hour vinyasa yoga practice during which the yoga instructor tells you repeatedly that You Can Do This despite your tears of frustration in not being able to balance your entire body prone on your elbows while breathing in a slow, relaxed manner, and drive another hour to get back home.

For those times (and others like them), you just need something fast and you need it to be delicious such as to make up for that hour and a half of balancing-induced frustration.

Enter the Fastest Dinner in the West: Stir-fried seitan with pasta sauce.

It’s fast. It’s delicious. It’s low-carb, high-protein, and can kill your ravenous hunger in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. It could be gluten-free if you use tempeh instead of seitan. Which means it might be the most Perfect Meal Ever. I apologize that I don’t have a photo. There was no time to take one, as I had scarfed up the meal in about 30 seconds. Here it is:

Ingredients:
One package of seitan strips (you can get these at Whole Foods)
One jar of your favorite pasta sauce (mine is this porcini mushroom pasta sauce from Napa Valley. It’s drool-icious.)
a bit of extra virgin olive oil

Method:
1. Saute the seitan strips in olive oil on medium heat until they get a little browned / crispety.

2. Add just enough sauce to coat the seitan strips. Mix well.

3. Place in a bowl, make a fist with your right hand and point out your thumb and first finger, making the shape of a gun. Blow on the barrel of your gun, kid. You’ve just made the Fastest Dinner in the West.

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What? I haven’t posted this entire year yet? What the hell is wrong with me?

I’m so sorry. *makes the puppy-dog eyes*

I’ll make it up to you, right here and now. With my dad’s beef short ribs recipe, vegan-style.

My dad has a habit of sending me mouth-watering recipes, but conveniently forgets every time that I’m vegan and I don’t put veal bones in my soup stock (for example). He sent me this recipe for beef short ribs the other day. It sounded so good (and I miss BBQ ribs so much) that I decided to *gasp* change my dad’s patented recipe.

That’s right. Here you go. It’s time-consuming but really easy to prepare, and so worth your time. Enjoy.

Ingredients:
“Ribs”
2 lbs tempeh (doesn’t matter what kind), quartered to make “ribs”
salt and ground pepper
2 carrots, chopped
3 celery ribs, chopped
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, sliced (not too thin though. maybe 1/8″ thick)
4 sprigs fresh thyme (I used english thyme, if you’re picky about that sort of thing)
2 dried bay leaves
2 tbsp ground toasted coriander seeds (toast first, grind next, measure last)
1 bottle red wine (Dad recommends merlot, I didn’t have it so I put in cheap Pinot Noir because I live in California and can get cheap Pinot Noir)
3 cups vegan chicken stock (we get this at Rainbow Grocery in bulk; use regular vegetable stock if you can’t find it where you are)

BBQ sauce
1 cup ketchup (I used Annie’s organic)
1 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup yellow mustard (I used Heinz, but French’s would do as well. Just don’t use powdered mustard!)
4 tbsp light brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground toasted coriander seeds
1 1/2 tsp ground black peppercorns
1/2 tsp garlic powder (Dad’s called for onion powder, but I didn’t have that so I improvised with excellent results)
3 tsp ground cayenne pepper (if you like your BBQ sauce spicy – omit if you don’t)

Corn (for side dish)
1 ear of corn, husked, per person
1 wedge of lemon per person
1/4 cup or so 50/50 salt and ground pepper mix

Method:
1. Boil tempeh in water for 15 minutes. This makes it accept the marinade seasonings better. Trust me. Remove tempeh from water, place on a plate and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Brown the tempeh in olive oil on medium-high heat in a skillet, both sides. This might take about 10 minutes for each side. Place in an enameled casserole dish.
2. Saute carrots, celery, onion and garlic in the same skillet over medium-high heat. You might need to add more olive oil. Saute until soft and a little browned, about 20 minutes. Make sure to mix it well to get all the tempeh “drippings”.
3. Add thyme, bay leaves, ground coriander and wine. Bring to a boil, then ladle the entire marinade over your tempeh “ribs”. Cover the casserole pan and refrigerate overnight. Or an hour. I originally intended to marinate the tempeh overnight but I just can’t wait that long today.
4. Pour marinade and tempeh into a large saute pan. Remove the tempeh and place it back into the casserole dishes. Add vegan chicken stock to the saute pan and bring the whole thing to a boil.
5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
6. Pour the marinade / stock mixture over the tempeh and cover the casserole dish. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. Uncover the casserole dish and braise for 15 minutes or so.
7. Make your BBQ sauce: combine all ingredients together in a pot. Boil on the stove for 20 minutes. Cover until the tempeh is done.
8. Remove the casserole dish from the oven, discard everything but the tempeh (which you’ll keep in the casserole dish).
9. Put the oven to Broil.
10. Smother the tempeh with BBQ sauce. Broil that bad boy for about 10 minutes.

For the corn, it’s really simple (and really delicious):
Grill the ears of corn until they are browned all over. You want to get them really carmel-colored. Put them on a plate. Dip a wedge of lemon in the salt / pepper mixture and smear it all over the corn. You’ll probably have to dip it a few times. Use a fresh wedge for each ear. That’s it.

The brussels sprouts are even easier. Trim off 1/16″ off the bottom, peel off any leaves that are brown. Coat with olive oil, grill till browned.

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My grandmother’s mother was a professional baker. She made my parent’s wedding cake, and her recipes have been used in our family cooking as long as I can remember. Every Christmas, my grandmother would bake a huge batch of cookies; sugar cookies with frosting, peanut butter cookies, chocolate drop cookies, and gingersnaps. I hated them as a kid. The gingersnaps, I mean. My dad LOVED them, which meant every year she made a full batch of them just for him. She had two recipes: soft and crispy. I don’t know if she got them from her mother, but in any case they’ve been baked in our family as long as I can recall. Every year. My grandmother is no longer with us, but her recipes are. And this year, I thought I’d send out a special Thank You Christmas card to all the design firms and people who have recommended me, interviewed me, hired me, or even just looked at my work. In the card I included a homemade cookie, because I’m of a firm belief that nothing says thank you like homemade cookies. Well, the response has been great, and I’ve already had requests for the recipe. By the way, I must have been nuts as a child. These cookies are delicious, bursting with holiday spices and cooled with delicious vanilla icing. So without further ado, here we go. Thanks, Grandma!

Ingredients: Cookies
1 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup molasses (Her recipe calls for “green label”. The molasses I had at home happened to have a green label on it, so I suppose it was correct)
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1.5 tbsp egg replacer whisked with 2 tbsp water until light, thick and frothy – should be almost as stiff as cappucino foam. She used an egg, but we’re vegan here.
4 cups cake flour, sifted
1 tsp salt (I used sea salt, as that’s all I have in the house)
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Ingredients: Icing
3 tbsp egg replacer whisked with 4 tbsp water until light, thick and frothy – like cappucino foam. You may need a small hand blender for this but a small whisk works fine.
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 + cups confectioner’s sugar, sifted

Method:
1. Combine shortening, molasses and brown sugar into a sauce pan. Heat on low – medium until boiling, boil for 2 minutes. Don’t bring it up to medium or high, or the brown sugar will burn and make an icky taste. Remove from heat, cool to lukewarm or room temperature. Add beaten egg replacer and mix thoroughly. Set aside.
2. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice and pepper. Add to molasses mix and blend well – it should be pretty thick.
3. Line an 8 x 8 glass baking dish with waxed paper, then press the dough into the dish, packing it in tightly. Cover and refrigerate for 4 hours or more.
4. Preheat oven to 350.
5. Divide the dough into 8 sections. Place a large sheet of waxed paper on a smooth, flat surface. Take out one section, place on the wax paper, then cover with another sheet of wax paper. Put the remaining dough in the fridge – you want it to be as cold as possible to roll out evenly and cut out cleanly. Roll out with a rolling pin until the dough is very thin, about 1/8 or 1/16 of an inch thick. Grab your favorite cookie cutter (I like to use a small 3″ tartlet tin upside-down to get pretty scalloped edges) and press it into the dough. Before lifting the cutter, trim away the excess. Remove the cookie and place it on a sheet of parchment paper on top of a baking sheet (this way you don’t have to grease the baking sheet – your clean up is minimal and your baking sheet never gets that baked-in grease grossness). Repeat cutting until there is no more room to press the cutter into. Wad up the scraps into a ball, then place it back in the fridge with the other dough sections. Repeat with the other 7 sections, THEN do the same with the dough scraps. The dough scraps get warmed up from rolling and trimming, and refrigerating them allows them to get firm and workable again.
6. Once your baking sheet is filled, bake the cookies at 350 for 10-15 minutes. It’s best to watch them every 5 minutes or so, then after 10 minutes watch them every minute to make sure the edges aren’t burning. When they’ve darkened a little (but aren’t burned), take them out and place the cookies on a cooling rack. Let them cool completely while you bake more batches. Be sure to replace the baking parchment every time you bake a batch.
7. Once the cookies are cool, make the icing. Beat the egg replacer mixture with the lemon juice and vanilla extract. Almond extract is also delicious; use 1/2 tsp. Slowly add in the sifted confectioner’s sugar until combined and smooth. Add more confectioner’s sugar if it needs to be thicker, more water if it needs to be thinner. You’re looking for a consistency kind of like a thick gravy. Too liquidy and the icing won’t set up correctly – too thick and you won’t be able to pipe it out of a frosting bag. I made it a bit too thick at first, then added water until it reached a good consistency that was workable. Scoop it into a frosting bag with the metal (or plastic) piping tip already in place. Squeeze out the air and curl it up from the open end to the tip, much like you would with a tube of toothpaste. Ice the cookies in the decoration you like – I started with snowflake patterns but got bored and went to writing cute messages to my husband.
8. Let the icing set on the cookies overnight. You can eat them right away, but if you’re looking for hard icing, it’ll need the evening to set up correctly. Enjoy!

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Why haven’t I posted this before? This was one of the first vegan recipes I made on my own. If I had a spice scale, from 1 to 10, with 1 being a bland potato and 10 being a habanero pepper, I’d put this recipe at a 3 or 4. It’s got some heat, but not in a way that overwhelms the flavors. You can get HP sauce at any British import market or Cost Plus; it’s a delicious brown sauce that is also fantastic as a french fry dip. But I digress. I served this with blue corn jalapeno bread, the recipe for which I’ll post soon. This recipe makes a lot of chili; have some friends over to enjoy it, or have some plastic or glass storage containers on hand to freeze the remainder.

Ingredients:
3 jalapenos
2 anaheim chiles
2 poblano chiles
1-2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 medium and 1 small onion, sliced into 1/4″ half moons, then sliced perpendicularly in half
5-7 cloves of garlic, crushed
4 Tbsp chili powder
2 Tbsp ground cumin
1 Tbsp ground thyme
1/2 cup water
2 packages Yves Ground, broken up
4 cups of water
2 cans tomato paste
2 cans diced tomatoes, still in juices
1 can cannellini beans (white kidney beans), drained and rinsed
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can white navy beans, drained and rinsed
4 Tbsp HP sauce
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 Tbsp Tapatio hot sauce (NOT Tabasco! Cholula is an adequate substitute)

1. Preheat oven (or toaster oven) to broil. Place jalapenos, anaheim chiles and poblano chiles on a baking sheet and roast in the oven until blistered and about 60-70% black. Remove from oven, place in a durable plastic bag (a freezer bag works great), roll up and set aside for 10 – 15 minutes. Remove from bag and peel the skin off, then dice the chiles and set aside.

2. In a large soup pot, saute the onion in olive oil on high until browned and almost crispy. Turn the heat down to med – low, add garlic and mix well. Add the spices and mix well. Saute for 30 seconds or so, until fragrant. Pour in 1/2 cup of water and scrape up the bits that are stuck to the bottom. Add Yves Ground, mix well. Cook on medium for about 10 minutes.

3. In a large bowl, add tomato paste to 4 cups of water. Whisk together until it’s a tomato sauce. Pour into the soup pot. Add diced tomatoes, beans and chiles. Heat on medium for 10 minutes. Add HP sauce, agave nectar and Tapatio. Turn heat up until chili is boiling, then bring heat down to low and simmer for 1-2 hours.

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My sister-in-law told me, on my recent visit to her home, that I was silly for buying tortillas when I could make them easily from scratch, costing a fraction of the price. And my husband wanted enchiladas a few days ago, so I decided to give it a whirl. But, there was no recipe I could find quickly for my favorite tortilla – corn AND flour. There’s recipes for corn tortillas and flour tortillas but none that mixed the two. So I made one up based on the flour tortilla recipes I saw, and it turned out delicious. I’m never, ever buying tortillas again. This recipe makes about 12 tortillas, and I highly recommend using a small cast-iron skillet so that the heat is nice and even.

Ingredients:
1 cup of blue corn flour (Other corn flours will work fine. Blue corn has more protein than yellow corn, which is important for vegans)
1 cup of all-purpose unbleached white flour
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
hot water, about 3/4 cup as needed

Method:
1. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Add vegetable shortening in little chunks, then mix with your hands until it resembles a coarse meal. Gradually add the hot water until the dough is a springy, smooth texture. Knead on a flat surface for a couple of minutes, then divide the dough into 12 parts, rolling each piece in your hands until you have little walnut-sized balls of dough. Cover with a dish cloth and let them sit for 30 minutes.

2. Heat your cast-iron skillet until it’s quite hot. Put just a dab of vegetable oil in the pan; just enough to make sure the pan isn’t dry, about 1 or 2 teaspoons.

3. Roll out one dough ball on a flat surface with a rolling pin until it’s a very thin flat disk. It will get thicker when you cook the tortillas, so make it as thin as you can while maintaining the integrity of the dough. Take the thin tortilla and place it in the heated skillet. Cook it for about 30 – 45 seconds on both sides. It should have “grill marks” but be soft and bendable, not crispy. Set it on a plate and place a sheet of parchment paper on top. Repeat with the other 11 dough balls, one at a time.

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