A relative made the Vegan Multigrain Pancakes (third recipe on the page) for a family gathering: they were really good! (Topping options included sauteed apples, fresh berries, and a homemade marionberry syrup.)
I tend more toward the savory side of pancakes. These recipes appeal to me (I’ve not made them, though):
Seriously, I’d look at rice bran oil for a buttery flavor and Hozon for a parmesan-like umami. I found the rice bran oil they sell at Trader Joe’s a big step down from California Rice Oil Company’s.
https://www.amazon.com/California-Rice-Oil-Company-25-4-Ounce/dp/B001EQ516C
I can’t see nutritional yeast giving a cheese-like flavor. You want something lacto-fermented.
Thanks all!
@hanhgry – the Minimalist Baker recipe was one I had bookmarked. I think the idea of silken tofu sounds promising too.
@ElsieDee – thanks! The recipe looks like a winner (though I’ll have to make the conversions since I don’t have a kitchen scale. Random, but the article was posted exactly two years ago today 
@robert – thank you for adding suggestions. The combination of Hozon and rice bran oil sounds delicious!
I’ll report back about my weekend vegan cooking experiments.
The hozon pastas I had at Momofuku Vegas and Majordomo were among the best vegan dishes I’ve ever had. A kitchen scale is the best $10 you’ll ever spend.
https://peachykeen.momofuku.com/recipe/macaroni-chickpea-black-truffles-majordomo/
I remembered reading this recipe a while back (you’ve probably come across it); I haven’t tried it, but am intrigued by the idea of aquafaba, though I think I’m more inclined to try the Bob’s Red Mill Vegan Egg Substitute:
Veganaise is my hack for all things creamy.
Short answer, I’m curious about creating creamless, potentially vegan creamed spinach. I know there are recipes out there that use cauliflower, cashew cream, etc. but I’m curious about the emulsifying properties of soy specifically.
It’s part of a larger interest with cooked greens I’ve posted about elsewhere in this forum. Regarding emulsification, creamed spinach is an interesting cooked green permutation with creamy, almost pudding like texture and savory elements not unlike saag (at least the Americanized palak versions I’ve run across) and Filipino laing but cream isn’t always a critical element in other cooked green applications so I was curious how the dish could be prepared in other ways.
Ahhh… okay. You’re serious. I’d like to see or hear about the results.
“Creamed” means cream or milk thickened with flour. Most creamed spinach recipes I’ve seen use milk. So cream’s definitely not essential.
Yeah, the scope of my interest in cooked greens is wide and subjective so I’m definitely not stuck on creamed dishes (much less literal cream). If anything it’s more fascinating to see cream textures created in other ways. Hydrocolloids are such a bizarre and confounding (but rewarding) aspect of cooking to delve into.
Also, thanks for that link! However, that liquid kind of leaking out in the Bon Appetit picture is exactly why I was looking more into this- I think that or “weeping” from otherwise fairly homogenous mixtures is kinda gross.
To @TheCookie’s reply, the results are fairly straightforward so far in that it seems to come down to moisture management (borrowing a phrase from Dave Arnold). If you remove a certain amount of liquid from the greens or the tofu and something to bind or emulsify the rest then you seem to have a fairly stable and pudding like result. Now I’m working on the richness aspect of it- alliums and glutamate ingredients seem to be shoe-ins for that dimension so far.
It’s also pretty dynamite in lasagna and if you use no-boil noodle you don’t have to worry as much about emulsification or weeping because the noodles absorb most of that.
I recently made an Indian greens dish sarson ka saag, which is thickened with cornmeal.
If I take carrots at their peak and make a purée and don’t add the tiniest pinch of xanthan gum, it will weep—there will be a little halo of carrot juice. And I just can’t handle that. The carrot deserves better.
Tried those once. That was enough.
That’s funny, Brock is such a proponent of Southern food history I had no idea he goofed around with modernist stuff!
Regarding no boil noodles, Kenji specifically mentioned NOT using them for his spinach lasagna recipe but since one of his reasons was that they absorb water while cooking I was curious if it would pull out enough water to prevent weeping. It certainly did but it definitely has the texture drawbacks all no-boil noodles do and I’d be curious if it can be done with regular noodles considering I’ve been accounting for so many other aspects of the moisture already.
This was the first vegan pancake recipe I came across. The aquafaba prompted me to seek out recipes not requiring that ingredient. I’m intrigued though!
We had the hot fudge pudding cake from my 1950 Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book last night and it struck me that you could easily make it vegan by substituting coconut milk (or whatever) for the milk and coconut oil (or whatever) for the butter. It’s best made with first-rate cocoa powder such as Valrhona or ChefShop (successor to Pernigotti). It’s a fun dessert for a dinner party as you can have it all ready to go and add the boiling water and pop it in the oven 45 minutes before you want to serve it.
Good photos here:
If this is the best vegan Alfredo sauce, I’d hate to taste the worst. Made this for my vegan Valentine last night and it was disgusting 
Looked like bile, textured like caulk, and tasted putrid. He didn’t think it was as vile as I did, thankfully. Never again.
All was made right with a trip to Coolhaus for a sweet treat to cleanse the palate 
hahahhahhahah OMG. I kinda see where they are coming from, so it’s kind of like a vegan soubise sauce It’s not a bad idea really but I would soak or blanch the cashews (prefer almonds myself) and make a vegan cream separately then cook the onion garlic bring everything together in the pot. Hit it with a little nutmeg and the nutritional yeast to taste -blend strain.
who am i kidding i would def finish this with fat! finish with some coconut oil -think you need that fat to make it taste ‘right’
that’s brave of you to try a new recipe for Valentines day!
here’s a serious eats post on soubise in case you were wondering what that is
Thanks for linking the article on soubise and how you might have proceeded with vegan the recipe. I bet a little nutmeg would have added interest. I did add some oil (olive oil) and more lemon juice, but the sauce was beyond saving. I should have done nutritional yeast to taste. I started with the minimum suggested in the recipe (2 Tb) and it was too much. As someone who enjoys the funk of Marmite/Vegemite, the yeasty flavor in this sauce was overkill.
How could anyone imagine that making a smoothie of alliums boiled in vegetable broth, raw cashews, and nutritional yeast and pouring that over pasta would give you anything remotely similar to fettuccine all’Alfredo?
I think the biggest challenge for creating a vegan version is that flavor of the original dish is delicate and subtle, just fat, salt, and umami, and the commonly available vegan sources of concentrated umami—tomatoes, dried shiitake, soy sauce, kombu, Marmite—have very assertive flavors. Shio koji might be worth experimenting with.