Gravy Train

On my way home yesterday I picked up some mushrooms that were on manager’s special (along with 5 pounds of apples.. hey they were 89 cents a pound). Tonight I made dinner. After work – a feat in itself. I am usually way too hungry when I get home to actually cook and end up living on leftovers from my weekend cooking.

My new obsession, Appetite for Reduction, boasted a falafel recipe that was pretty simple to whip up. Unfortunately I forgot to add salt so they were only so-so. Next time I will remember the salt and they will be fantastic!

The real star of the meal was the mushroom gravy. Kyle’s parents bought me The Miso Book for Christmas and I finally got to make a recipe from it tonight.

Who knew gravy could be so delicious? Perfect served over some hot brown rice and falafel!

Kyle almost licked his bowl clean.

Happy Tuesday – and check out AFR and TMB! You won’t regret it!

Happy (week after your) Birthday, Dad!

I promised you pictures of Dad’s birthday dinner and I’m delivering!

Dad loved the enchiladas! I made my homemade enchilada sauce again to accompany the best vegan enchilada recipe I’ve known to date! I always use red sauce instead of the green sauce and sometimes switch up the type of veggies I add to the lentils, but that base recipe is fantastic!

Just ask my mom!

I also tried a new cheeze recipe to go on top of my masterpiece. The recipe was just recently posted on Post Punk Kitchen and can be found here. I had no carrots so I swapped in some frozen corn and a pinch of mustard powder.. let me just tell you that I can eat that stuff with a spoon and nothing else.

Top all that yumminess with avocado slices and some cilantro..

and chow down!

V-8′s Replacement

For years I have wanted my mom to teach me to make enchilada sauce. Unfortunately on the days we’ve planned to make enchiladas, I always seem to get there after the sauce is made! Darn cross-communications!

I took matters into my own hands last week.

I dug out the recipe my mom gave me, swung by the hispanic grocer down the street for the dried chilies I needed and got to work in the kitchen!

Following the recipe and verbal instructions I had committed to memory, I turned out my first batch of enchilada sauce. It was not nearly as difficult as I had always thought. Time consuming, but TOTALLY worth it.

I called my mom to brag about my new skill, practically hopping up and down with excitement!

Is it wrong to want to drink it? Because I do.

You’ll never go canned again.

Enchilada Sauce
7 dried guajillo chilies
1 dried ancho chili
Water
1 ½ tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove
1 tablespoon chickpea flour
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

Wash chilies thoroughly. Place in a large saucepan and cover generously with water (I used about 5 or so cups). Cover and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let stand 45 minutes or until softened.

Drain chilies, reserving soaking liquid. Pull off stems, slit chilies open and rinse off seeds. Place chilies and 1-2 cups soaking liquid into a blender and puree. Turn into a sieve and rub through sieve into a bowl to eliminate bits of peel. Rinse blender with an additional 1 cup of soaking liquid and pour over remaining pulp in sieve.

Heat oil and garlic in a medium saucepan over low heat. When the oil is fragrant with garlic, remove the garlic clove. Stir in the flour until the mixture is smooth. Cook about 1 minute. Add pureed chile mixture and remaining ingredients, including the reserved garlic clove. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook until slightly thickened. Before storing, remove garlic clove (I ate mine..)

I used the sauce to make enchiladas filled with black bean, baby portabellas, onion and cumin topped with savory almond butter.

My tortillas disintegrated a bit from moisture so I’m still working on getting that right. Hopefully there will be an enchilada post once I figure that out. Meanwhile, I sure don’t think Kyle’s minding eating the “mistakes”.

I don’t mind either.

Neat-o Cool!

I want to start off this post by saying that tonight I had the best “neat”loaf I’ve ever had. Technically it’s also the first I’ve ever had, but it will not be the last! The best meatloaf prize still goes to Kyle’s mom. =)

SOS Adzuki Cakes

One of the really nifty blogs I follow, Diet, Dessert and Dogs, hosts a challenge every month called the SOS Challenge. This month’s ingredient is none other than my favorite bean: the adzuki! Well of course I had to participate!

I went over and over recipes in my head. I still have a few back there I’ll create at a later date. This recipe was perfect since I had everything on hand!

Who else loves the combination of matcha and adzuki? It’s a pretty common combo in asian sweets and boy do I LOVE asian sweets. Every time I go to H-Mart I can’t help but buy another red bean cake. I’ve even got a black sesame version in the freezer. Mmm..
This recipe is a combination of a vegan marble cake and one of those chewy asian rice delights. The only thing I would do differently is to mash up the beans a little before adding them to the batter.

If you want more of a typical cake texture, you can use regular flour instead of the rice flour. Me? I love the unique chewiness. Chewy.. nom nom nom.

Check out Diet, Dessert and Dogs, she’s got some awesome recipes out there!

Adzuki Matcha Cakes
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
2 tablespoons glutinous rice flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/2 tablespoons oil (I used olive oil but coconut oil would be yummy)
1/3 cup (scant) brown rice syrup
1/2 cup plus 1 teaspoon unsweetened almond milk
1 teaspoon matcha powder
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
3/4 cup cooked adzuki beans, slightly mashed

Preheat oven to 350.

In a medium bowl, combine flours and baking soda. In a separate bowl whisk together oil, milk and brown rice syrup. Pour wet mixture into dry and stir to combine. Divide the batter in half, adding matcha and ginger to one part and adzuki beans to the other part.

Lightly grease a mini muffin tin. Spoon batter into tins, alternating matcha and bean flavors. Bake 15-25 minutes or until the cakes start to pull away from the sides of the tin. Cool 5 minutes in the tin and the rest of the way on a cooling rack.

This recipe made 12 mini muffins for me. There was a little batter left over, so I spooned it into a little dish and microwaved it for a quick treat. That seems to happen a lot. =)

Soup has me sold!

When it’s this cold out (yes it is snowing.. again..) all I can think about is soup. And chili. Oh man.. why didn’t I make chili?? Later this week perhaps.

I’ve been eating a lot of pasta lately, so I wanted to eat something that was a little less heavy tonight. I am in LOVE with red peppers so I chopped some of those up and just randomly threw some other veggies in the crock-pot this afternoon before heading to work. Half days are great for crock-pot soup since I know I’ll be home and ready to eat in 4 1/2 hours instead of 9.

I don’t like much salt in my food, so I added it in the form of the yummy toppings I threw on after the fact. This time I used some of the leftover ricotta tofu and kale pesto from last night. You could top this with whatever you like, avocado is always a great option!

Red Pepper and Rice Soup
1/4 cup beans, soaked overnight (I used flageolet beans)
1/4 cup brown or black rice, rinsed
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons corn kernels
2 cups water (you could also use veggie stock here)
1/8 teaspoon chipotle powder

Throw all ingredients in your tiny (and in my case, borrowed) crock-pot, give it a quick stir, cover and set the heat to low. Cook for 4 1/2-5 hours or until beans are done to your liking. Add desired toppings!

This is how the crumble.. crumbles..

A flash in my mind’s eye while leaving work last night. Why couldn’t I make a savory crumble? I’d never made a regular crumble but that shouldn’t stop me.

So you know what?

I made one.

Oh yeah.

And it was delicious!

I think I’ll end up making another one at some point. I’ll change it up a bit and use different veggies. The possibilities are endless!

Poblano Corn Crumble
1 onion, sliced
1 large poblano pepper, chopped
1/2 cup tightly packed chopped collard leaves
1 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup black beans, cooked
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons non dairy milk
1/8 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large skillet over medium heat, heat olive oil and saute onions until they start to turn clear. Add in poblano pepper and salt and cook for about 5 minutes. Toss in the garlic, corn, collards and black beans, reduce heat to low, cover and cook 5-10 minutes, stirring twice. While that’s cooking, whisk together nutritional yeast and milk. Turn heat off and stir in milk mixture. Spread the veggies in a pie plate, set aside and mix up the crumble topping.

In a large bowl, mix together the following:
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/4 cup buckwheat flour
2 tablespoons cornmeal
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon maple syrup (I opted for a locally made honey mustard blend since I’m ok with eating honey)
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Mash a fork around in there until everything is good and wet. Sprinkle the crumble topping evenly on top of the veggies. Bake 35 – 40 minutes and serve hot.

Annivalentinese New Year Celebration

Happy (day after) Valentine’s Day, all! Kyle and I aren’t big Valentine’s Day people so we combined our half year anniversary, Valentine’s day and Chinese New Year into one big celebration!

Kyle hasn’t had much experience with Greek inspired cuisine, so that was his cuisine choice. I planned the menu, sent him a cute little Evite invitation, bought the ingredients and, come Sunday morning, got my booty to work on creating!

The first course was taken from Angela over at Oh She Glows. I saw her post for Garbanzo Bean Soup and knew it would make the perfect first course for this meal! The only change I made to the recipe was to substitute some sesame oil for some olive oil since I had no tahini in the house. This soup was mega-tasty and I will definitely make it again!

The main course. The big kahuna. This beauty was taken from the Moosewood Restaurant cookbook I checked out from the library last week. I’m not sure how the reposting thing works with cookbooks so I’ll just say: you MUST, MUST find the book and try the recipe! It’s a quinoa pilaf flavored with celery, red pepper, zucchini, basil, mint and lemon rolled up in delicious collard leaves. Oh man.. this was delicious. My favorite dish I’ve made in a while. Kyle raved about it all night!

Of course, a celebration wouldn’t be complete without something sweet to top it off. This dish wasn’t Greek inspired, but I’ve been planning it for almost a month! Themed meal or not, it was making it to the table! I based my recipe on one I found over at Baking Bites. I subbed in 1/3 cup brown rice syrup for sugar and used SO Delicious unsweetened coconut milk. To top off the delicious ice cream, I decided to make some dark raw chocolate. 2 tablespoons dark cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon brown rice syrup and 1 tablespoon coconut milk mixed until uniform, rolled between wax paper and frozen makes a yummy bittersweet addition! It was a little soft for my liking, so next time maybe I’ll use something other than brown rice syrup to sweeten. The flavors, though.. spot on!

Served up in my "vintage" Garfield mugs!

All in all I would say the menu:

Quite a hit!

I hope your celebrations were filled with fun, good food and love!

Adzuki Beans Galore!

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! I’m ringing in this new year watching Benny and Joon.

I decided at the beginning of January that I’m going to start celebrating this nifty holiday but I kinda dropped the ball this year. The holiday came up much quicker than I expected and I had no time to plan a menu. I wanted to make wontons and sticky rice cakes and steamed buns..

Then I remembered the perfect recipe for my situation! While reading The Kind Diet, I remember locking in on a recipe for adzuki beans and kabocha squash. Well I didn’t have some of the ingredients, but I sure as heck have adzuki beans! If you’ve never tried these little gems before I seriously urge you to do so. They are one of my favorite beans ever. Ever! You can find the recipe here on Alicia’s site.

It may not be the prettiest dish I’ve ever served up but it is lip-smacking good! I didn’t have to use any crazy seasonings, just the soy sauce and the fresh veggies! That’s IT! Amazing!

I only made a few changes, substituting the kabocha squash for a combination of:
1 1/2 cups butternut squash
1 cup chopped baby bella mushrooms
2-3 green onions, sliced

and substituting the shoyu for low sodium soy sauce. I served it up next to (what else) some red leaf lettuce to scoop it up with.

Try this recipe. It is so versatile and fresh! While you’re at it, check out Alicia’s awesome book! There are some amazing recipes in there that I’m just itching to try!

Stop and Go Cupcakes

Hidden surprises... mmm

Oh delicious Japanese cuisine. Your sushi is the bomb-diggity, your miso soup is heavenly and your desserts… awesomely odd pairings. Among these delightful pairings we have red bean filled treats. Now some of my favorite red bean filled treats are the daifuku cakes I stock up on at the H Mart. I love every flavor except the green tea flavor, oddly enough. Something about the green tea flavoring being in the glutinous rice cake didn’t quite tickle my taste buds. Never one to completely dismiss flavor pairings, I simply had to try out a solid cake with red bean filling.

Ready to go in the oven...

I took a classic white cake recipe and made it my own by adding some of my beloved mugwort powder! I splooged some of the homemade red bean paste I made, loosely following <a href=”http://www.justhungry.com/2006/06/notsosweet_tsub.html>this recipe</a>, but adding some honey in the final step. You could certainly use store bought paste if you have access to it, though!

These were just the perfect sweetness, dense without being heavy; totally delicious!

Moist and delicious!

I urge you to try them. You know you waaaaaant tooooooooo… you won’t be disappointed.

Red Bean filled Green Tea Cupcakes
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of kosher salt
2 teaspoons mugwort powder
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup turbinado sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons liquid egg whites (or 2 egg whites)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons skim milk
About 8 tablespoons red bean paste (one tablespoon per cupcake)

Preheat oven to 350 and line cupcake tin with paper liners. Combine flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt and mugwort powder, set aside. In a mixer, beat together oil, sugar, extract, milk and egg whites on medium until well combined. Add in flour a bit at a time, beating well after each addition. Ladle about 1/4 cup batter into liners, adding a tablespoon of red bean paste on top, then topping the paste with another 1/4 cup of batter. I didn’t have a problem with the paste sinking to the bottom of the cupcake, though I was worried about it at first. They jumped into the oven and baked for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Makes about 8 cupcakes.

Peanut Butter and Ginger

Category Archives: beans