Viva Vegan

At the end of yesterday's post I indicated we'd purchased a new cookbook after hearing Madhur Jaffrey speak on her book tour. Did we buy an Indian cookbook? Nope. We bought Viva Vegan by Terry Hope Romero.



I've been eyeing this book for a while — ever since tester recipes started appearing on blogs, long before the book was published. The evening after acquiring the cookbook, my husband prepared two dishes from the book, and they were both fantastic, so I have high hopes for some tasty meals ahead.



He made Portobello Feijoada which is a rich and savory black bean and portobello stew, with his own personal addition of roasted red peppers. He served this, as recommended by Terry, with Savory Orange Rice Brazilian Style, and steamed kale. It was a stunning meal. When my husband cooks something, and it comes out as great as this, I know we've found a terrific cookbook. (My photo sucks, I know, but the food was fabulous!) I can't wait to try another recipe.

Want to know what we did with the leftovers? Come back tomorrow!


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Weeds and feeds

©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

I was really meaning to create a good recipe for a post today but I've been gardening to exhaustion, and we ended up eating leftovers of a not so great dinner. I would like to be planting and refining new garden spaces, but what I'm doing is WEEDING. I'm sure I've mentioned our invasive-vine woes before, but really, it's so depressing. Every time I think progress has been made, new shoots of these hideous stucco-wreckers start emerging from the ground. There are thick roots deep under the ground and no matter how I dig at them, they won't budge. Sometimes I manage to withdraw a large section of root and spray myself with a pound of dirt in the process. Last year we paid professionals to remove them and they rototilled the perimeter of the house, and removed a startling quantity of roots, but many large roots are still there. I've got a bunch of plants ready to go into beds but we still have a lot of pre-planting work to do. Actually, I think my husband is still out there digging.

Since this is a cooking blog and not a gardening blog, I won't bore you with pictures of evil, inedible weeds. I'm posting some of the stuff we've cooked and eaten lately. We had some fantastic marinated tempeh that was made from a recipe from "Lorna Sass' Complete Vegetarian Kitchen." Also, a delicious coleslaw that came from "Vegan Deli" by Joanne Stepaniak. These two dishes were served with linguine with green pea pesto. (We won't be making the pesto again because it tasted too much like . . . green peas, but that's my personal taste preference.)


©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

My son made his excellent black bean burgers and potato salad. We had sweet potato fries with a simple tofu and broccoli stir fry and we made a great stir fry with mushrooms, kale and rice noodles. (The fries were roasted with lots of rosemary which added a fantastic flavor.


©Andrea's easy vegan cooking


©Andrea's easy vegan cooking


©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

I baked a 100% white whole wheat no-knead bread with toasted black sesame seeds.


©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

One night, too tired to cook, we got salads from a nearby Middle Eastern restaurant, called Lulu's. They have a deli service at the back of the restaurant and we purchased tabouli and fattoush.


©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

I would love to pass along the marinated tempeh recipe but I don't have permission to do that so I'll just say what was in it and a offer bit of prep info. For Marinated Pan-fried Tempeh, a package of tempeh is cubed and marinated for several hours in lemon juice, apple juice, tamari, dry mustard, fresh grated ginger and minced garlic. It's then fried in a small amount of oil until browned. Everything we make from the Lorna Sass cookbook turns out great, and I highly recommend it as a basic vegan cookbook.

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If you are a fan of Silk soymilk and Whitewave tofu and tempeh (owned by food giant Dean Foods), you might want to read this disturbing report from Organic Consumers Association and Cornucopia Institute. Most Silk products are no longer organic and the soybeans used for production are now mostly from China, not North America. Dean Foods is also heavily into inhumane factory farming. Thanks to LK Sisters for blogging about this.

©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

The day I became a vegetarian / Black bean and tomato stuffed sweet potato

©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

We were listening to a re-broadcast of an interview by public radio host Joy Cardine with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of "The Face on Your Plate," "When Elephants Weep," and "The Pig Who Sang to the Moon." The host said she was a vegetarian, and proceeded to relate a brief story of the moment she knew she could no longer eat meat. It got me thinking of the moments we remember in life — usually traumatic national events that we can never forget. But what about the other, more personal life-changing events we experience, like deciding to become vegetarian, for example. Do people remember "the day they decided not to eat meat anymore?" Well, I do.

I was in my 20s and had been going through dietary changes for a while. First I decided to eat healthier. I'd been reading about diet and health and the dangers of the "Standard American Diet" and decided to make a clean sweep of all the unhealthy food in my (and by default, my husband's) diet. I went through the pantry and bagged up all the white stuff — you know, white flour, white pasta, white sugar — all of it. Being a frugal person by nature, I was filled with anxiety about what to do with all this stuff. I didn't want to contribute to another's ill health, but I hated just throwing it away. So, I hauled it across the street to my friend Suzanne's apartment, explained that I wanted to improve my diet and not eat this stuff anymore because I believed it to be unhealthy, and asked if she wanted it. After all, everyone has their own ideas about what's healthy, and can make up their own minds. I told her what I knew. She looked at me intently for a moment, and then said, "SURE!" Then, with great enthusiasm, she started unpacking the bags. I assuaged my guilt by thinking that she would just go out and buy this same stuff anyway.

Eating healthy was going well, and I began to think about a vegetarian diet. We'd been attending meditation retreats where there were lots of vegetarians, and I'd been doing more reading and thinking about food issues. Then we went on a camping trip to Canada, and one evening we attended the nature program at the campground where we were staying. A film was shown about the plight of prairie dogs. One of the struggles facing this little animal was its misfortune to be living on cattle ranches, where the prairie dog tunnels cause injuries to the cattle who step into the holes. There were graphic shots of ranchers blasting the prairie dogs with their rifles; no gory detail was spared, and it was horrible. You can probably see where this is going. Anyway, I just couldn't get those images out of my mind.

We were in the supermarket checkout line after our return home, and I was staring at a package of stew meat in our cart. I picked it up. "Do we really want this?" I asked my husband? "Probably not," was his reply, and I took it back to the meat counter. And that was it —the day I decided to be a vegetarian. And do I remember the day I became vegan? Of course, but that's another story for another day.

My first attempts at cooking vegetarian food were pretty grim. The very first dish, chuck full of brewers yeast, got ditched. But it's a lot easier to be vegetarian now, and even vegan, than it used to be. There are countless amazing cookbooks and blogs with recipes and ideas. I recently reviewed Peta's Vegan College Cookbook, and although it wasn't generally suited to my style of cooking, there were a few recipe gems that I really enjoyed cooking and eating. This recipe was inspired by one of them. If you use canned beans and tomatoes, you can throw it together with almost no effort. Or, if you prefer, you can cook dried beans and roast your own tomatoes. I like to make the bean and tomato mixture pretty spicy because I love the contrast between the spicy beans and the sweet potato, but you can just leave out the chilies or jalapeños if you don't care for spicy food.


©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Black bean and tomato stuffed sweet potatoes

• 4 medium sweet potatoes, scrubbed
• 1 15-oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained (or 1-1/2 cups cooked black beans)
  
• 1 15-oz.can diced tomatoes with green chilies, (or a can of tomatoes plus 3 tablespoons of diced green chilies from a can, or 1-2 finely chopped fresh jalapeños)
  
• 1/2 cup sliced green onions, white and green parts
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley or cilantro (opt.)
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt (if needed)
  
• fresh ground pepper, lots
  
• 1 small avocado (or vegan sour cream)
  
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

1. Slice a very small piece from the end of each potato. (Or, you can prick them all over with a fork.) Bake at 425˚F for about 40 minutes or until nice and soft all the way through. You can bake them right on the oven rack. I like to use the toaster oven for this unless I'm using the big oven to make other stuff, too. When they are ready, place them on a plate to cool slightly while you finish up the filling.
   
2. Cook the the onion, garlic and oregano (and jalapeños, if using fresh) in the oil for one minute. Add the beans, tomatoes, canned chilies (if using), salt and pepper. Heat gently until hot. Stir in the parsley or cilantro. Taste for seasoning.
3. Open the avocado and scoop out the pulp. Mash and mix with lemon juice, a tiny pinch of salt and fresh ground pepper.
4. Split the potatoes lengthwise and gently push the ends towards each other to create a pocket.
5. Fill the pockets with the bean mixture and top with avocado or vegan sour cream.

©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Black bean salad

One of the reasons I started writing this blog was as a way to pass recipes and family anecdotes to my three kids. Especially at holidays, they would ask me how to make certain dishes that we always had when they lived at home. So I started posting recipes and stories for them. Then, of course, I just kept going with whatever recipe I was interested in at the moment, and little bits of my life. Initially I tried to keep the commentary focused on food, but that's not always the case. Now, the recipe thing seems to have come full circle, and my kids are starting to send recipes to me! Recently I received a recipe for black bean salad from my oldest son. He said he made it twice in one week at the request of his wife because she liked it so much.

Today, my youngest son, a college student who is home for the summer, was complaining that there was nothing in the house to eat. This was not 100% true from my perspective - I found things to eat - but from his perspective the cupboard was bare. Hmmm. I needed a banana for another recipe. I was thinking it would be very handy for him to walk down to Trader Joe's for black beans and a banana, make the salad for his early dinner before he had to leave for work, and have enough salad left for our dinner. And a blog post, too. "So," I said. "Look at this black bean salad recipe your brother sent. We have all the ingredients except for the beans. Why don't you go get the beans and make it. Oh, and could you also please get a ripe banana?" So he did.

Black bean salad

2 cans of black beans, rinsed and drained well

2 carrots, diced or shredded

1/2 red onion, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, squeezed through press, or minced

1 cup of frozen sweet corn, thawed

1 avocado, chopped

2 teaspoons of whole cumin seeds, toasted for 5-7 minutes in skillet

1 cup of chopped fresh herbs (eg. basil, parsley, chives, cilantro)

1 tomato, chopped (From the garden! Yay)

olive oil, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes

juice of 2 limes or lemons

Mix everything to make a salad. Makes about six servings. (We used basil for the fresh herbs.)

Chipotle black bean burgers / oven sweet potato fries

We just had a family cooking session. Our son makes great black bean burgers, and we invited him for dinner hoping he would make them. He came for dinner and ended up making the main dish — his excellent-tasting black bean burgers. I was the chopper and transcriber, running back and forth between the cutting board and the notepad trying to chop things one minute and write down the ingredients he was adding to the bowl in the next. My husband manned the oven and also made green beans. Our son does some extra stuff I don't do when I make burgers - I'm lazier than he is. He sautés the onions and garlic before adding them to the mix and I add them raw. He usually adds chopped mushrooms but we didn't have any. He added extra hot sauce and I don't. He always cooks the burgers on the stove and I often bake them. Are his better? Maybe.

Spicy Chipotle Black Bean Burgers
1 can black beans
1/2 cup frozen corn
2 cups dry bread crumbs (stale sourdough is the best) or about 6 slices crumbled up whole wheat bread)
1 very large onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 large stalk celery, chopped fine
1/2 to 1 cup chopped mushrooms (optional. see note)
1/4 teaspoon paprika
3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced (These come in a small can. Save the rest of the can for another use.)

Put the beans, crumbs, corn, chipotle and bread crumbs in a large bowl. Sauté the onions, celery and garlic for a few minutes in a small amount of oil. Add the paprika and mix. Add the sauté mix to the beans and mush up well with your hands until you have a cohesive mixture. If it's too soft, add more crumbs. Form into patties and cook on a non-stick griddle in a very small amount of oil until browned and firm. Serve on whole grain buns with lettuce and toppings of your choice.

To go with the burgers I cut some sweet potatoes for oven sweet potato fries. Cut them into 1/2 thick fingers and mix them with 2 to 3 finely minced cloves of garlic. (about 1 tablespoon) Spread them in a single layer on an oiled baking sheet, spray them with olive oil (or toss with a tablespoon of oil before spreading on the sheet). Bake in a pre-heated 475˚ oven for about 40 minutes or until soft but slightly crisp. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

note: These burgers had a slight tendency to break apart but they tasted great. I had some leftover cooked buckwheat that we substituted for half of the crumbs and maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe they weren't mushed up enough. Also, last time we had these there was about 1 cup of chopped mushrooms in the sautéed mix and they added good flavor and texture. I would definitly recommend adding them.