Good Vinegar and Good Conversation

I have a little problem with oils and vinegars.  Much like spices, I love them a little too much and tend to buy any that look new or interesting.  Imagine my delight upon entering Vinaigrette, a shop that has dozens of super high quality olive oils and vinegars on tap.  Yep.  That means you get to taste any and all of them (I did).

These were my favorites of the bunch: Fig and Balsamico di Modena vinegars and Rosemary and Garlic infused olive oils.  It was a tough decision, let me tell you!  There's something really special about being able to hear the story of each of the farms and families that produce these oils and vinegars.  Each one was unique in flavor and history and I really wanted to take them all home with me.  Plus, where else can you go to talk about oil and vinegar for 40 minutes?  No where.

I drank tasted plenty of oil and vinegar on Friday, but Saturday morning I wanted to put this balsamico to good use with my breakfast, so polenta seemed in order.

This is soft polenta with oil-packed, home-dried, home-grown cherry tomatoes and oil-cured black olives topped with fresh basil and lots of black pepper.  And drizzled with balsamico, of course.  It was insane, really.  I could get used to this kind of breakfast.

Gallery of meals

Shameful! No blog post in a week!

Here are my excuses, in no particular order:

• My stepsons are back in school, with all that entails.
• I taught 3 canning classes last week
• I haven't done much cooking really

So here's a few of the things I have eaten in the last week or two... I'll blog about salsa canning tomorrow!

Blackberries and borage flowers from the garden. The blackberries have been fat this year!

Tonight: polenta cakes with a quick ratatouille and baked tofu on top. Gotta use up that basil!

Tomato "au jous". I'm calling it that because I dipped my sandwich in it and it was freakin' amazing. Fake ham sandwich with lots of Veganaise on baguette, soaked in tomato/basil/garlic juices.

Baked seitan in the style of SusanV's "ribz" and smothered in a thrown together barbecue sauce. Served over a finely chopped garden kale salad with cherry tomatoes and homemade ranch. Hell yes.

Apple, kale, parsley, mint, ginger, lemon juice. Yum! So green and refreshing!

Green Tamales

Tonight's meal was brought to you by the sweltering summer heat and an oven turned up to 400F.

I'm currently trying to avoid buying anything at the store, as I've already surpassed our grocery budget for the month. So everything in this meal was already in our garden, pantry, or fridge. Feel free to substitute things that are in YOUR house when you make this.

I was going to just make some collards, some beans, and some polenta...but decided to put it all together inside the collard leaves for a tamale-like dish. I love how it turned out!


Green Tamales (serves 6)

12 collard leaves

Filling
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 mild chile, finely chopped
2 cups polenta
4 cups water
1 tsp. salt

1 cup cooked kidney beans (I pressure cooked some)

Sauce
1 red pepper, seeds removed
2 medium tomatoes
1/2 sweet onion
1 tsp. smoked paprika
1/2 tsp. salt

Start by preheating the oven to 400F. To prepare the filling, heat 2 Tbsp. olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and mild chile, stirring as it cooks to prevent any burning. When the garlic is fragrant but not browned, add the polenta, water, and salt. Stir to completely combine. Continue stirring until you have a thick, pudding-like polenta- about 10 minutes should do it. Stir in the cooked kidney beans and remove from heat. Taste the mixture (careful- it's really hot!) and adjust salt to your liking.

Fill a wide, shallow skillet about 1/2 way up with water and heat until simmering. Then wash 12 collard leaves and remove the largest part of the stem- about 1/3-1/2 of the way up the leaf.

Then drop the leaves in the shallow pan of simmering water for, oh, maybe a minute. The leaves should still be bright green. Now it's time to assemble your rolls.

Place about 1/2 cup of filling closer to the stem end of the collard leaf.

Fold in the two lateral sides of the leaf.
The fold up the stem end and continue rolling up and over the filling. Roll them tightly for a nice looking finished dish.
Pack the rolls into a lightly greased 8x11 baking dish. Then prepare your sauce.
Puree red pepper, tomatoes, onion, smoked paprika, and salt in a food processor or blender until smooth. Spoon over the collard tamales and bake, uncovered, for about 20-25 minutes.
We had ours with some tasty sweet corn smothered in Miso-"Butter".
Here's an inside shot:
As you can see- the polenta firms up nicely to mimic a tamale. Except with these tamales you can eat the wrapper!

Take my word for it

I've cooked up a storm this week, but have nothing much to show for it. You'll just have to take my word for it. I made a Peanut Butter Cheesecake for some friends, but forgot to take a picture. Then I made a tofu quiche for an event and again forgot to take a picture. I was even going to take pictures of some yummy road trip food yesterday again forgot.

Now, I know I could tell you all about these foods without pictures, like how the peanut butter cheesecake batter was so rich that I felt sick after licking a fair amount of batter from the inside of my food processor (Don't worry, guys, this was after your cheesecake was safely in the oven).

And I could tell you about how I got home at 11pm last night after a long day at a Wisconsin Bluegrass festival and still needed to make a quiche for an event at 9am this morning. I almost didn't make it, but then decided I just couldn't pass up an opportunity to make quiche. The crust of a quiche is really my favorite part, so I had to make it from scratch. I filled the crust with sundried tomatoes, (local) broccoli, onions, garlic, and (local) mushrooms. The quiche itself was the tofu, soy cheese, turmeric base from The Garden of Vegan.

But describing food is not nearly as much fun as looking at it (or eating it, for that matter).

So finally tonight I took a picture my dinner!
I love polenta because it cooks up relatively quickly and can be seasoned with anything your heart desires. This polenta has sage and thyme from the garden along with salt and pepper. That's it. The green bean, tofu, mushroom mixture was the best part.

Lately everything I've been making has been seasoned with maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, tamari, and a touch of sesame oil. So guess what the sauce on this is...?

The tofu was marinated in this new favorite sauce and chopped up kinda little. I heated some olive oil in a cast iron skillet and fried up the little tofu pieces, then added the green beans from the backyard. Next I threw in 2 thinly sliced cippolini onions (local), sliced creminis (local), and a pasillo chili from the garden. As soon as the mushroom started to wilt, I poured in the sauce and took it off the heat, scraping up the bits from the bottom of the pan into the sauce.

This meal came together really quickly and I'm hoping it will taste even better in my lunch tomorrow. I was really surprised how much the sage from the polenta really stood out, even with the assertive balsamic vinegar & maple flavors. Yum!

100 Posts and some Dal Balls

So I missed celebrating my 100th blog post. This is the 102nd. So I'll celebrate that instead. Yay! 102 Posts! Who'da thought I'd end up sticking with this?

Sorry my last post was such a complaining-fest. And thanks for all the great comments- It's good to know I'm not along in this big world!

Today's featured dish is a bit odd...Perhaps because it was Mike's idea? Nevertheless, it was a great idea and once tweaked a bit, will be fantabulous. He cooked red lentils and polenta separately and then mixed them together with "chicken" broth powder and sage and some quinoa flakes to make little balls (dal balls). Then he baked them on a parchment lined baking sheet for about 30 minutes at 400 degrees. They ended up crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. We served them over rice with gravy on top. They were a great texture, but a little short on flavor.



The next night I cut the leftover (very solid) dal/polenta mixture into triangles and breaded them with a nutritional yeast, garlic, crushed rice crisp cereal mixture and greased a baking sheet up real good before baking them. These reminded me of fried cheese or fried chicken or something. Again, the flavor was not very strong, but the texture was awesome. We had these with beans and rice and coleslaw. I recommend wrapping it all up in a corn tortilla with some homemade salsa!

Tonight I tried to duplicate one of my favorite soups from the Seward Co-op. While I do all my grocery shopping at my co-op, I always check out the Seward when I venture over the great divide to Minneapolis. When I was in grad school at St. Kate's campus nearby, I had this knack for randomly going to the Seward on days when they were serving their Vegan Cashew Mushroom Soup. Like every time. It's pretty much the most rich, creamy, amazingly delicious mushroom soup you've ever had. In case you live nearby, they're serving it this Friday!

Anyways, since I hold this soup on a golden, diamond-studded pedestal, my version did not live up to its namesake. But it's still really good! I think the trick is to use an insane amount of cashews in a fancy Vita-Mix blender. Unfortunately, I don't have a blender like this and was too lazy to even try my food processor. So I used cashew butter because it was on sale last month.



Cream of Cashew and Mushroom Soup
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 yellow onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 lb. white button mushrooms, cut into chunky slices
1 portabello mushroom, cut into bite-sized slices
4 cups of almond milk (or other non-dairy milk), unsweetened
1/2 cup raw cashew butter
ground black pepper and salt to taste

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and saute until lightly browned. Add thyme and mushroom and continue to cook for a couple of minutes, stirring frequently. Then add most of the almond milk, reserving about 3/4 cup. In a little bowl or jar, mix cashew butter with the reserved milk until smooth. I used a little whisk and it worked nicely. Then add to the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for about 30 minutes until soup has thickened a bit. Serve with more black pepper and some extra cashews on top!

Note: I know Rachel Ray and everyone else says that you shouldn't wash mushrooms or they'll absorb water and get tough. Yeah, yeah, just wipe them with a damp towel. I completely disregard these instructions anyways, but you certainly can for this because you're putting them in SOUP. That's liquid anyways, so a little water won't hurt anything and at least they won't have dirt on them.

For anyone that lives in the Twin Cities: I'm teaching a class on cooking leafy greens at Mississippi Market on Sunday March 16th and a class on using neti pots for relieving sinus congestion on March 19. Plus, in May we've got a couple more vegan cooking classes. Check out the website for details.

Kitties, Doggie, and Pizza

There's nothing better than snuggling with a couple of kitties and a dog when you're tired, have a cold, and have cramps. Here are all of my animals snuggled up together. As you can see, Hannah Dog likes to protect the kitties from the camera. My favorite pic is the one in the top left where Trouble Kitten has climbed on top of Billie Cat.
A few nights ago I miraculously pulled together dinner in about 30 minutes (I never do that). It was a really creamy polenta topped with an olive-broccoli-tomato sauce and baked cheesy tofu.
Mike made a great pizza last night. The peppers were spicy! He even made homemade cheese. Go Mike!