To Live and Eat in L.A. – A Vegan Food Photo Blog

Vegan Cholent, a Jewish style stew, another treat from the Veganomicon cookbook.

It’s made with potatoes (I subbed half of them with sweet potatoes), french lentils, carrots, TVP, kidney beans, green peas and flavored with caraway and tarragon. Doesn’t look all that pretty in the picture but it’s a fragrant, delicious and hearty favorite of mine.

I skipped Thanksgiving this year. Not only was I sick with a bad cold, but more so, I have a hard time participating in a holiday that revolves around worshipping the consumption of a tortured, dead bird. The farther away I get from that heinous tradition, the less I am able to tolerate “celebrating” it with friends & family (instead of eating one, I become a foster parent to Eliza the turkey at Animal Place). That said, I have always loved all the other delicious foods that are part and parcel of the Thanksgiving package. I’d spent the entire month of November drooling over all the amazing veganized recipes that were showing up online, eventually I got the idea to have a vegan Thanksgiving-themed potluck because I really wanted to try my hand at some of these recipes, plus I wanted my friends to cook and feed me as well :) Thus, my vegan post-Thanksgiving dinner party was born.

We gathered at my place a week after the real Thanksgiving. There’s nothing quite as awesome as having a few of your most bitchin friends show up at your door bearing armloads full of homecooked food. I myself had been in the kitchen for the previous two days, I ended up breaking all kinds of personal records having cooked more food than I’ve ever cooked in my life… and I didn’t mess any of it up! Here’s a peek at just some of what we got to indulge in…

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Tis the season and I’ve got pumpkins on the brain. My mom had asked me to make her a vegan pumpkin cheesecake, but while I was browsing through my cookbooks for a good recipe I came across another pumpkin based treat that grabbed my attention instead and wouldn’t let go. Luckily I just so happened to have all the ingredients on hand to make the Pumpkin Crumb Cake with Pecan Streusel from The Veganomicon (don’t worry mom, you’ll get your cheesecake eventually).

I made it and it was awesome. This is a big deal for two reasons:

1.) It’s the first dessert item I’ve made from The Veganomicon, I’d previously only tried making savory dishes, and
2.) This is the first cake I’ve ever made in my life.

It’s true. Insert collective shocked gasp here. You already know this whole cooking-for-real thing is pretty new for me still… there’s just never been an occasion ever which required me to make a cake. In my world cakes are things you buy or which other people who are far better at baking make for you… making one from scratch is all new territory as far as I’m concerned. Sure, I think I may have participated once or twice in some cake action that began as a powdered mix poured from a box, but a real cake, made with real ingredients from start to finish? Nope, first time!

You can imagine I was absolutely stoked that not only was this cake super easy to make, but it’s also exceptionally delicious. Cake success!

I had a tiny freak out when I realized that I didn’t have the full amount of oil the recipe calls for, but I made a last minute executive decision and substituted the amount I didn’t have with the same amount of apple sauce. This seems to have been the right thing to do because this cake was so freakin’ fantastic that I wouldn’t change a thing about it. The texture is very soft and crumbly, perhaps slightly more fall-apartish than it should have been due to the applesauce/oil switcheroo, but that’s it’s only minor flaw. If anything that made it even more tasty because the cake came out exquisitely moist. Everything about this cake was fantastic, from the full-bodied flavor of the pumpkin which really comes through, to the crunchy, sweet and sugary pecan streusel that it’s topped with… SO DAMN GOOD!

The cake is made in a 9 x 13 baking pan, which is pretty big, and it’s just me here… so, um yeah, I’ve eaten nothing but pumpkin cake for the past three days: breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night snacks included. It just gets better and better too the more it sits around. By the second day it had firmed up somewhat and it started reminding me a bit of the tasty honey cakes my grandmother used to make.

If you own The Veganomicon I implore you to give this cake a try (and if you don’t own it I implore you to buy it!). It’s a perfect treat for Halloween in this cool weather we’re enjoying in Los Angeles right now, and I’ll also suggest that it would be an excellent treat to make and share for Thanksgiving or any other sorts of gatherings you might have coming up… one cake will feed at least 16 people. Or just me if you leave me alone with it for a few days.

Happy Halloween everyone… have a spooky and delicious weekend!

I mentioned a few posts back that I’m getting really into baking. I realize that making your own food and having it turn out delicious isn’t something new for most of you, but for me it’s a whole new adventure. I’m still at the beginners level of keeping things really simple, having learned the hard way that even really simple recipes are very easy to mess up… at least they are in my kitchen.

The other night I was craving cornbread (this is not unusual) and I realized that I probably had most of the ingredients for the tasty treat on hand. I looked around online for a proper vegan cornbread recipe then consulted my all-too-often neglected shelf of cookbooks. It was then that I remembered that not only is there a great skillet cornbread recipe in The Veganomicon, but that I had also recently acquired my first cast iron skillet which I hadn’t even used yet. I had no excuse not to make cornbread.

Turns out the recipe really is super simple, as long as you can follow basic instructions you can get this thing right. I’ve looked around all over and can’t find the recipe online so I’m not going to be the one to bust anyone’s copyright and post it here, so hopefully you’ve already got the book or you will use my Amazon.com link to go & buy a copy right now. It’s a book that every vegan should own, whether you’re a seasoned chef or a newbie like me.

The recipe has a standard version as well as a Jalapeno-Onion variation and a Double-Corn version… of course I went with double-corn because you can never have too much corn as far as I’m concerned. The bread came out great, you have no idea how exciting it is for me to cook something and have it come out of the oven looking and tasting like it’s supposed to… wow, what a feeling!
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I was having a sudden fit of NEEDING something delicious and as close to immediate as possible. A quick survey of foodstuffs on hand didn’t offer much hope, but I realized that with what slim pickins I did have, cornbread was an option. I was able to scrape together all the ingredients for making the skillet cornbread recipe from The Veganomicon… only I don’t have a cast iron skillet so I used a normal pan. Also I didn’t have all-purpose flour so I used spelt instead. Oh, and I also added in an extra drizzle of agave nectar to the batter for good luck.

It was freakin’ delicious and I had to tell someone. That someone is you.

I may have just found my new favorite recipe, the Tamarind Lentils from the Veganomicon cookbook. Oh mama, were these good! I love this delicious vegan recipe not only for it’s inherent deliciousness, but also because it was super easy to make, and from start to finish I prepped, cooked and ate my food all in less than one hour. The recipe is pretty foolproof.

Described in the book as “savory, tangy, and sweet… Indian-inspired lentils”, that’s exactly how they taste. The flavor is full and exotic, the tartness of the tamarind cut nicely with sweetness coming from agave nectar, garam masala and tomato paste. You also get a nice spicy kick now and again from cayenne and ginger.

I did make some of my own modifications because I’m the sort that just can’t leave well enough alone. The recipe calls for onion which I wasn’t going to subject myself to, so instead I used fennel. Yes, I realize that fennel tastes nothing like an onion, however it does look kind of similar when cooked… and what the heck, I love fennel. Whatever change this gave to the flavor of the dish did nothing but enhance it’s greatness. The recipe also calls for 3 tablespoons of coconut or peanut oil, neither of which I had on hand, so I used canola instead and cut it down to 1 tablespoon. Really, 3 seems excessive, don’t you think? I needed to cook the lentils a little bit longer than the recipe suggested in order to get them tender, so I just added a bit more water and let them simmer until they softened up.

The recipe suggests having this with basmati rice but at the time I was making it I was already very hungry and wasn’t about to mess with making rice or the like. Instead I made a Jamie Oliver inspired (and veganized) raw-slaw of red & purple carrots, yellow beets and red cabbage* with miso-seseame dressing.

If you don’t already own a copy of the Veganomicon then you’ll want to get one now for your uncensored, all-access pass to the tamarind lentils recipe. If I were to tell you that your life will never be complete until you’ve made and eaten this dish, than I would only be slightly exaggerating.

*Why is it called red cabbage when we can all clearly see that it’s purple?

Tonight I made the cholent recipe from Veganomicon. It came out really good, though it didn’t really remind me of real cholent the way my mama and her mama used to make it, but it does make for a delicious and hearty stew all the same.

I made a few changes to the recipe. I used red lentils instead of French lentils because that’s what I had on hand. I used peas instead of lima beans, not because I don’t like them but because I couldn’t find them already cooked (I wanted to make this now and not wait for beans to soak… the recipe said peas could be substituted), and I used ready made seitan instead of TVP chunks. They specify in the recipe that it must be TVP chunks and not the flakes, however TVP chunks are impossible to get just about anywhere unless I wanted to bother mail-ordering some (or try harder), which I didn’t. The seitan made a fine substitute and allowed me to make the entire recipe using all organic ingredients.

I really liked the flavor that came through from the caraway seeds. Next time I make this I’ll use more garlic, leave out the lentils and instead use barley which is more traditional. I’ll also acquire lima beans as it’s not really cholent without them. Overall, a great recipe as is, regardless of whatever you call it. There’s lots of interesting info on cholent to be found in the Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholent

Le Chaim!

So of course I was eager to make something with the purple cauliflower from the farmers market. I mean hello, it’s purple! Simple is what I do best, so very simply I roasted the cauliflower along with butternut squash in a light coating of olive oil, agave nectar, coriander, ginger powder and red pepper flakes. It came out very tasty, with the butternut squash perfectly caramelized at the edges.

To go with this dish I also tried my hand once again at the infamous Veganomicon Chickpea Cutlets. This time around I was much more successful (you can read about my not so successful first try, here). What did I do differently this time around?

As suggested by Your Vegan Mom, I made sure to use the exact measurements of liquids so as to not mess up all the mysterious wheat gluten magic action. Since I didn’t want to use as much soy sauce as the recipe calls for (2 tablespoons), I instead used 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of Bragg’s and substituted the last 1/2 with water. Also, this time I fried them instead of baked.

The texture and consistency was much better. They are quite good! I had to use a lot more oil in order to fry them up nicely than I’d normally like to use when I cook (my fault for not using non-stick pans), so next time I’ll try baking them again but will make sure to use enough liquid, perhaps even a bit extra to compensate.

Before I forget, here’s a few more things I recently cooked up…

Yummy salad of red cabbage, fuji apple, garbanzo beans, lime juice, flax oil and ‘Bragg Healthy Organic Vinaigrette’.

Quinoa cooked with kale, garlic, coriander, cumin and turmeric.

Kamut pasta with a sauce made from walnuts, red bell pepper, garlic, lemon juice, flax oil, sambal, agave nectar and a dash of black pepper. Wow, this came out way better than I could have hoped for as I was inventing it on the fly. The picture doesn’t make it look very appetizing (that’s Nooch sprinkled on top btw), but you’ll have to take my word for just how good it tasted. Would I lie to you?