gringa getting better at pupusas
One more time, with feeling! I love pupuasas so much I was determined to keep on trying the dough. I went to Emporium Latino in Kensington Market last night and asked the nice woman which flour I should use, and she said "instant corn masa mix."
While I was there I got pupusas with curtido, done the right way:
Went home and tried myself again. I definitely had dud flour before, because this stuff came together much better! I made a concave ball of dough and put refried beans in the hole:
Then smushed the dough around to cover the beans:
Flattened the ball and fried the patty:
Let it cool and put it in my lunch box with some sour supreme, vegan cheeze and salsa. Much better!
Labels: pupusas, refried beans
Pupusa Time
What a great word, i think i'll call my next pet Pupusa! I too failed with the corn flour, Carla. I'm a bit relieved that someone else did too because i thought i was experiencing bad corn flour or something. It did feel neat to play with, and i wondered if i could make grits with it. In the end, i just used 1/2 cup of corn flour to 1 1/2 cups of unbleached flour with 1 cup water. I also didn't really like the recipe that we had because the writer was never clear on just how much water to add, even after someone asked her to help them out.
I have not perfected rolling things into rounds, and i've been working on this for years now. But the filling part was yummy. I added different fillings for the 3 i made: one with refried black beans (RBB) and olives, one with the RBB, onions, and cheese, and one with RBB and cilantro. The cabbage salad was great too - i just bought pre-made cole slaw mix that came with the added touches of red cabbage and carrots, and the dressing was superb.
My avocado was not ripe enough but i had a great salsa and a party for one - J was out of town when i made this. I will try this again when he's around and we have ready-for-guacamole-avocadoes!
Labels: corn flour, pupusas
gringa fails at pupusas
2nd night to attempt
pupusas, and still not what I want them to turn out like. The corn flour feels like sand and it's fun to play with, like being at the beach! but I couldn't get it to look or taste like a good dough. I looked at other recipes, and they all only called for corn flour and water for the dough, so it must be possible. I tried mixing wheat flour in with corn flour, still not great. I filled them with refried beans. The
curtido turned out fine.
If you had more success, pretty please LMK. In the meantime I'm going back to Emporio Latino for pro pupusa goodness!
Labels: cole slaw, curtido, guacamole, pupusas, refried beans
pupusas!
Do we feel like making
pupusas this week? I've never made them myself, but I've watched the women in Kensington Market make them often enough, it doesn't look too complicated. There's one odd ingredient,
corn flour, but hopefully it's not too hard for everyone to find. The places I order pupusas always serve them with a side of "cole slaw" called
curtido. What do you think?
Labels: cole slaw, curtido, pupusas
Yum Yum Tempeh Patties
I made these for dinner tonight and it was all worth the wait. These patties were fantastic! I loved the combination of the herbs and Braggs, as well as the texture of the tempeh. I typically use
Henry's Tempeh (old family friend of my partner's) and for this recipe, i used his basil option.
I should have read the instructions better because between steaming, mixing, refridgerating, and frying, it all took a bit too long, and i like to eat dinner before Ugly Betty is on. At first i was like, 'what, STEAM tempeh - that's sacriligious' but then it all made sense when i needed to mash it up. I also don't have fennel in the house, but i used tarragon as a substitute. It may have been a bit too salty and i could have let the patty saturate better (they were a bit too fragile) but i loved these and will definitely make them again.
We had a side of sweet potato fries (baked) and a green leafy salad to go with it. Yum. Good thing i followed the recipe and made 10 (ten!!) patties - i'll be eating tempeh patties all weekend and already made a scrumptious sandwich for tomorrow's lunch. If you don't need so many, just half the recipe and and use 1 block of tempeh.
I am unsure why they're called 'sausages' and not just patties...i can't help but picture Oktoberfest sausages when i refer to this recipe - and i know that's wrong on so many levels!
Labels: patties, tempeh sausage
Breakfast for dinner
I had this block of tempeh in the freezer for a couple of months, and I was glad to have a recipe to use it up! I used an italian herb mix for all the green herbs in the recipe, and white flour instead of whole wheat. Also, inspired by Carla's post, a few shakes of liquid smoke.
soy red pepper tempeh
mixy mushiness
patties - I added some diced onion instead of onion powder. Somehow I missed the part of letting them refrigerate for an hour. No matter - they still worked!
We ate them with some tofu scramble. Mmm... breakfast for dinner!
I liked these a lot. They reminded me of Gimme Lean sausages, which I heard is not going to be sold in Canada anymore. I may just have to stock up on tempeh!
Labels: breakfast for dinner, tempeh, tempeh sausage
heart-shaped multi-ethnic sausages
Hi gang! I made the
Italian Tempeh Sausages recipe, with a few modifications. I steamed some tempeh:
Crumbled it and added some of the spices the recipe called for. I didn't have all of them to make the "Italian" flavour strong enough, so I sprinkled some liqiud hickory smoke:
Packed the mixture into my heart-shaped moulds. Baked them a bit, then pan fried them:
Put 2 patties in my lunch box with some mashed potatoes-peas-pesto:
Labels: comfort food, tempeh, tempeh sausage
Italian Tempeh Sausage
Italian tempeh sausage anyone?
There is a recipe in
Vegan with a Vengeance which I hear is great, and I found
this one on the internet. The recipes sound so versatile and can be made for breakfast or for dinner, with gravy, another saucy topping or without. I'm not as well versed in tempeh as others seem to be, and I've been wanting to try this for a while so I thought I'd throw it in as this week's suggestion!
Labels: tempeh sausage
cookies for breakfast!
I finally got to the breakfast snack...I made
Chickpea Coco-Oat Cookies. SO GOOD! I absolutely love the taste of coconut, and I love the smell of toasting shredded coconut. The cookies are moist and tasty and wholesome, just perfect with a cuppa tea. I used maple syrup instead of molasses.
Last weekend someone who has a
Herbivore subscription showed me the reference to this blog in the online edition. I knew it was going to be in, they emailed me about it awhile ago. They quoted the pb cookie recipe
Brenda veganized awhile ago. I think all of us should break out our credit cards and
subscribe, because they're putting the f.u. in tofu. They're doing more online updates and fewer print editions for now.
Labels: baking, breakfast, cookies, Herbivore mag
Good Morning!
I've been away from this blog for awhile, resisting google and its attempt to dominate the world, but I just had to transfer to the new blogger in order to access my own blog (!!!) so there it is. But it turns out you've all been making the sunny corn muffins, and I just ate those for breakfast! So twas meant to be . . .
I've been making these for a while now (in fact, I'm the Michelle who left a comment in August 2004!), and I think I've gotten over my desire for them to be more savory (though I still always decrease the sugar). This time I was missing a bunch of ingredients, namely, soymilk, soy yogurt, and flour! I used mostly barley flour and brown rice flour, applesauce, and now I'm forgetting what else, and while they were a little dense tasting and did not rise, I still liked them!
Breakfast Baking Galore!
This week, we had a baking date for the breakfast themed cookalong. We made two things: the
corn muffins that Carla suggested as well as Choco-Banana Loaf.
We made the loaf first because we wanted it for dessert that nice. Our neighbours told us that she loves it when we're cooking because the smells are so yummy, and this night was extra special. And, J said he loves the smell and baking banana bread the best.
We followed a recipe from
The Everyday Vegan, it was a Maple Banana Bread, but we added the much-needed chocolate chips, walnuts, and cinnamon in. Heavenly - soft and moist, flavourful, and perfect when warm with some Earth Balance on it!
Then, we made the corn muffins. Here, we added some dried cranberries for colour and a nice zap of something else. The finished muffins tasted even more delich than the dough i sampled, which wasn't too bad (but what a weird texture with uncooked cornmeal!). I liked adding the cranberries because they broke up the flavour, and they added some lovely colour. The muffins didn't rise too much and were dense, but we freezed some for another time when we're too sluggish to eat a good breakfast.
Labels: baking, breakfast, vegan muffins
Chewy Granola Bars
I made Chewy Granola Bars on Monday night, but haven't gotten around to posting until now. I used
this link that Carla posted but, as usual, made some adjustments:
1 cup
agave syrup2/3 cup smooth
almond butter2 2/3 cups rolled oats
1 cup
unbleached white flour1 t cinnamon
1/2 t cloves
1/2 t nutmeg
1/3 cup wheat germ
2 cups mix-ins:
raw almonds, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, walnut halves and pepitas
we have a great bulk store up the street. Whenever I go there I always get a Vege Hut vegetable patty and eat it on the way home. It's my ritual :)
Baked for about 15 minutes.
In hindsight, adding ground flax would have been a great idea! I don't have a shot of the cut bars, but they did turn out a bit crumbly even after adding some water to the mix. I'll definitely play with this recipe - it's way cheaper, healthier and tastier than those store bought ones! Next time I won't be afraid to add more agave syrup or nut butter.
They are wonderful with good, strong coffee!
Labels: breakfast, granola bar
Sunshine, lollypops, and muffins
I decided to make the "sunny" corn muffins, as they seemed pretty easy, and I always think that I'd like to be eating vegan muffins with my coffee at work.
I also decided that I'd like to add blueberries to the recipe. While I was getting my ingredients ready, I looked in the PPK cookbook to see if it had the recipe (so I didn't need to keep going back into my room to look at the internet) and saw that the version in the book actually had blueberries in it. It also reduced the sugar a bit; instead of the 1/2 cup plus two T spoons, it just called for 1/3 of a cup.
After I finished folding the wet and the dry ingredients together, I dug out my camera to find that it wouldn't turn on. I guessed that the batteries were dead, so I charged them a bit while the muffins baked. I only have pics of the finished product (and not great ones; small muffins don't get great focus), but they did taste pretty good. I'm looking forward to enjoying one with a coffee tomorrow morning.
Labels: muffins
breakfast on the go! (daylight savings rescue)
Daylight Savings is this weekend...eeeeep!! How do you feel about doing a "breakfast on the go" theme for this week? Muffins or bars or cookies to grab on a sleepy morning after the clocks go back...
I've made
Sunny Corn Muffins a few times, they're nice. How about these
breakfast cookies, which look so good and moist in
this blog!? Or
Chewy Granola Breakfast Bars?! We've done multi-recipe cookalongs before and it's been fun to see variety! What do you think?
ETA: or any other recipe you want to try on the "breakfast on the go theme"
Labels: bars, breakfast, cookies, muffins, stuff that freezes
cute little dumplings!!
Happy International Women's Day!
Terribly late! I've literally been subsisting on crackers, cereal and chocolate soy milk. Finally I took time out to bundle and fry some delicious dumplings.
Here are the wrappers I got in Chinatown:
I sauteed cabbage, basil, carrots and green onions:
I like the scooping, stuffing and pinching process. Then I friend them up. Ooops, I didn't use enough oil so some got stuck and broken. Still tasted good though!
Gobbled with basic tamari dipping sauce.
Other good things I've filled dumplings with: veggie ground round, glass noodles, sweet potato, sesame seeds.
Does it seem that most cultures have a dish that is rolled up carb with tasty filling? Pierogies, calzones, ravioli, spring rolls...
Friday Night Dumplings
I made these are Friday night but am only getting around to posting now. I think dumplings make a great quick dinner/empty out your veggie drawer kind of meal. I made them using store-bought wonton wrappers, and added my own filling. Inside was:
- scrambled hard tofu
- carrots
- asian eggplant
- olive and sesame oils
- 5-spice mix
- chili powder, salt and pepper
- fresh garlic, cilantro and ginger
We fried them, of course, but it was a big too oily. Between the fry mix and frying the dumplings, at some points, when we bit into the dumpling, oily juice oozed out. Good thing we steamed some fresh bok choy to go with it!
Also, i'm grateful for the tip to mix water with some cornstarch because it was hard to seal the wrappers well enough to stay closed. I just folded them in half, but i would have loved to play with the shapes more.
I think that i'll make these again, with some minor changes, but i'm very happy to have finally made my very own dumplings aka pot stickers!
Labels: vegan dumplings
Better late than never dumplings
I was really busy, like I'm sure everybody else. Anyway, for the filling, I used green onions, silken tofu, ginger, carrot, chili peppers, mushrooms, and chili sauce. It looks gross, but was pretty tasty.
I made the wrapping using the recipe, except that when I actually did the cooking of the dumplings, I boiled them first, because I'm pretty sure that dumplings get boiled.
Next time, I would suck it up and actually find wrappers in the store. I had a much harder time stuffing them than I did the pierogies from a while back, even though the concept is pretty similar. They tasted pretty good (I had no sauce to dip them in though), but looked ugly as sin.
While I was there I got pupusas with curtido, done the right way:
Then smushed the dough around to cover the beans:
Flattened the ball and fried the patty:
Let it cool and put it in my lunch box with some sour supreme, vegan cheeze and salsa. Much better!
