Beyond Burgers were a success! Very “beefy” in flavor and texture. Cooked up great in a skillet greased with avocado oil. I learned that burger buns often contain eggs, even non-brioche style varieties. I ended up using O’Doughs Multigrain Vegan Sandwich Thins, which worked just fine. Less successful was the Follow Your Heart American Cheese-like slices, which would not melt. We topped our burgers with little gem lettuce, avocado, tomato, red onion, and Veganaise. The menu also featured tater tots with Eli’s ketchup, a side salad, and pickles
This morning we made vegan breakfast burritos. Tofu scramble (extra firm tofu cooked and crumbled with sautéed onions, garlic, turmeric, and a little smoked sea salt), Sweet Earth Benevolent Bacon, tater tots, un-meltable FYH American cheese, avocado, tomato, and Pepper Plant California Style Hot Pepper Sauce wrapped in an Alvarado Bakery Sprouted Burrito Size Tortilla. Served with fresh fruit. A delicious start to the day!
We had an excellent meal out at Cybelle’s Front Porch in S.F., which features a vegan menu. Even though the location is north, I’ll report in the L.A. Vegan thread since it seems to be the central place for vegan dining.
Used thin flour tortillas, added some extra-firm tofu to the mushroom roasting pan when adding the hoisin sauce, went without the mayonnaise (is mayo typical in this? Is that maybe a British thing?), added crunch with some matchstick-ish slices (my knife skills aren’t that great!) carrots and cucumbers.
I liked the hoisin sauce but think maybe I’ll default to the jarred stuff in the future: my sense of taste isn’t developed enough to tell the difference.
Leftovers with some leftover rice for breakfast. Think would also be good in a omelette.
By the way, Meera Sodha’s “The New Vegan” column is a great source of recipes and inspiration:
I’m thinking to make a version of this later in the week:
I was going to make my favorite curried peanut cauliflower salad, and do have two heads (er, of cauliflower - that really scanned weird) in the fridge - maybe soup and the salad.
Make sure the cauliflower is well-drained, else you end up with watery yuck in the bottom of the bowl. Go heavy on the spicing in the dressing, as the cauliflower is rather neutral - as you whisk everything together it will look curdled and then suddenly emulsify and be shiny. Do NOT keep whisking, else it’ll break and be a pain to fix (have to add in more mayo, then balance the flavors again).
With the roasted cauliflower recipe, what type of olives do you recommend?
For olives, we particularly like Mezzetta’s Castelvetrano olives. It’s already pretty briny with the capers so it’s nice to have something a little buttery and meaty. Rather than dicing them we usually smash them and give it a rough chop to have a nice variety of size and bite. It certainly doesn’t have to be Mezzetta (or Castelvetrano) but those are readily available and we also like them in puttanesca for the same reason.
We’ve tried a few other brands and haven’t loved them but we’re always open for more olive suggestions.
The first 20 recipes are all vegan - and most look doable! (Serious Eats recipes sometimes intimidate me, with the number of steps and specific ingredients.)
Here’s a vegan strawberry muffin recipe from the LA Times.
It’s basically a depression era, “crazy cake” using vinegar, baking soda, brown sugar, vegetable oil and flour, etc. No eggs or dairy.
What brings it into the 21st century is using coconut oil instead of your standard veggie oil. I had some coconut sugar in my pantry so I used it in place of white sugar, but still included brown sugar according to the recipe (the molasses in the brown sugar gives the muffins a nice brown bake). The recipe also calls for macadamia or almond milk.
I’ve tried it twice - first with fresh strawberries and strawberry jam and most recently a blackberry version using fresh blackberries and jarred blackberry preserves I was trying to use up (note: if your preserves are gelatinous from pectin, be sure to cut up into small chunks with a spoon before mixing into batter).
I had a craving for coconut rice pudding so I made this.
1-1/2 cups jasmine rice
1 tsp. salt
2 cans Chaokoh coconut milk
1/2 cup sugar
Cook rice with salt in your usual way. I used the Instant Pot with 1.57 parts water by weight.
While rice is cooking, put coconut milk and sugar in saucepan and stir to dissolve.
When rice is done, heat coconut milk to just short of boiling, then stir in rice and cook on low, covered, stirring every five minutes or so, until pussing has the right texture. Took maybe half an hour.
I highly recommend this recipe! I brought some into work, and people went CRAZY over it. It’s one of the best things I’ve baked all year (and I’m including non-vegan items, too).
(Photo credit: Mariah Tauger, LA Times)