Fifty Shades of Elf

Well, this has been a really fun week in the Elfin Kitchen...found some lovely new cookie recipes to try and both of them turned out quite nicely. We made a ‘family sized batch of The Gentle Chef’s Shredded Chikun and at least two batches of his Bacun (see the blog post of 5.10.15 titled Gone With the Elf for a blow by blow account of how to make the Bacun). There were NO epic fails this week, for which The Elf was truly grateful. We’ll recap the stuffs we made with some pictures after our EXPERT RECIPE OF THE WEEK is shared.

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This week we’d selected the Thai Black Pepper and Garlic Tofu from Susan Voisin’s awesome site FatFree Vega

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2012/05/thai-black-pepper-and-garlic-tofu.html 

We totally enjoyed this dish and high recommend it if you are a fan of Thai food. As usual, we made it spicy. As we practice our kinky cookery, we are trying to become more organized with preparation activities. So, we’re off and cookin’!

Here are the ingredients for the recipe with the exception of the tofu. It had been squished by an iron skillet to get the excess water out, cubed and placed in a plastic bag with the easy to fix marinade. You’ll see a picture of the tofu shortly

 And here’s the tofu that had been pressed and cubed. We let ours marinate a pretty good while since we are lovers of intense flavors—for example, when Susan’s recipe calls for a range of Sriracha sauce, we go the maximum and then wind up adding even more! There are two pictures here, one of the tofu ready for the oven and a close-up of a couple of the cubes to give you an idea of how the peppery marinade looked.

As the tofu was baking, we began cooking the veggies. We opted for broccoli florets rather than the kale along with the onions, mushrooms, bell pepper and asparagus. We sautéed the onions and added the remaining vegetables in our little wok pan.

 

And the final dish looked like this. We served it over brown rice but our picture of the plated dish was awful…all blurry and cloudy (so we guess that was our epic fail of the week). You can get an idea of just how delicious this was just by the wok view!

 The recipe selection for this coming week (OMG--IT’S JUNE ALREADY!!) was really a no-brainer for us! When Susan posted it as a featured recipe, we were ON IT! It’s the Seitan Saltado Peruvian Stir Fry with Potatoes. Just the sight of the word Peruvian in the recipe was enough to titillate our taste buds.

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2015/05/seitan-saltado-peruvian-stir-fry-with-potatoes.html 

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The cookies we tried this week were so much fun! You know, we love to bake sweet stuffs (we are indeed all about FIFTY SHADES OF TASTES AND FLAVORS) and share them with folks. Well, we had run the table, in our mind, on variations of oatmeal cookies to take to the fine folks at the Animal Rescue Fund of MS (ARF/MS) and wanted to offer them something a bit different. So, here are the two recipes we found. First we made Vegan Lemon Sugar Cookies. One of the comments at the end of the recipe speaks to the amount of oil that is in the original recipe...3/4 cup of canola oil. The reviewer suggested that ½ cup of oil (we used coconut oil instead of canola) and ¼ cup of unsweetened applesauce would work well and reduce the amount of oil. We did that and it worked beautifully. In fact, next time, we may go ½ and ½ oil and applesauce to reduce it even further. In any event, these were quite lovely and luscious IF you are into lemony stuffs!

 http://www.food.com/recipe/vegan-lemon-cookies-438624

And while we thoroughly enjoyed the Lemon cookies, we were totally captivated by this next recipe! When we saw them during a search for something new and different, we knew we had to try them. They are called Grandma’s Cornflake Cookies. As we were making them, we kept thinking…uh-oh, this isn’t going to work. The dough was really soft and we felt like it just wouldn’t hold together and would most likely spread out all over the pan. What a delicious surprise!! We could hardly wait for the first batch to cool off enough to try one! Holy Yumminess!! Try them—you’ll like them!

 http://mjr.earthbalancenatural.com/recipe/grandmas-corn-flake-cookies/

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A couple of other offerings from the week. One night, we had just a plain ole Southern dinner of sautéed cabbage, black-eyed peas and vegan cornsticks. We just LOVED it and especially the cornsticks. We thought we’d made enough to share with some friends but lo and behold, we ate them all over the next day or so. No recipes or links, just good old chopped up cabbage sautéed in a bit of peanut oil (or you could use grape seed) with some liquid smoke flavoring. We also infused our oil with some of the Bacun ends that were cubed. The black-eyed peas were also seasoned with some chopped onion, liquid smoke and Bacun ends. The cornbread recipe is just a veganized version of regular buttermilk cornbread (using cashew milk and lemon juice for the buttermilk). If you look closely at the picture, you can see the flax meal from the flax egg substitute.

And finally, we decided to try our hand at making our own vegan version of Nutella. We had the hazelnuts and all the other ingredients, so we thought ‘what the hell, let’s go for it’. The Minimalist Baker had a recipe posted for their version of Nutella but we opted for a different recipe. It turned out well but we may try the Minimalist Baker version next. We also used the Cuisinart processor instead of the VitaMix to process the spread to the point where we felt comfortable putting it in the VitaMix (I’m still phobic about that machine). The VitaMix did blend it some smoother but we are not sure it was worth all the transfer effort. So it’s not perfectly smooth from the food processor…it was damn good to eat. Big Solid likes a ‘newtella’ and banana sandwich.

 http://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-food/how-to-make-vegan-nutella-spread/

And FINALLY, we have DISCOVERED smoked sea salt! It’s one of the ingredients in the Bacun recipe that really really adds a great flavor to the end result. Now, we use it on just about everything. In fact, we just bought a salt grinder specifically for it. One of the brands we saw at Fresh Market was WAY EXPENSIVE and we passed on it; however, this one was more reasonable. It’s in crystals so the grinder is important to get the most bang for your buck. In fact, we just ground a bit on a fresh cucumber/tomato sandwich for lunch. The Elf’s taste buds were thrilled.

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And you know WHAT!! This little blog is now a YEAR OLD!! We began it last May. WOW for The Elf! And so we begin our second year with the month of June...this is the month when farmer’s markets in the south begin to overflow with fresh vegetables and fruit. So get out there, enjoy Nature's bounty and do something really good for your body, mind and spirit. Ain’t NUTHIN’ in the world better than a fresh summer tomato. So, til next week, breathe deep, eat plants, laugh a lot and love life.

Dances with Elves

It seems like we had just pushed the ‘publish’ button on the blog site when lo and behold, it’s time to do it again. The Elfin kitchen has been busy doin’ lots of fun stuffs this week while KEEPIN’ to her pledge of ONE grocery trip a month (notwithstanding those items we cannot find at our local Kroger). Some things have been yummy and some things have been mediocre and ONE thing was a damn near disaster (salvaged on a wing and a prayer and some brown sugar). First things first, though…our EXPERT (and that would be Susan Voisin’s awesome site of FatFree Vegan Kitchen) recipes for this past week were fun and good.

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As we have been doing lately, we prepared two FFVK recipes this week—trying to keep things on the lighter side. Our fist recipe was Roasted Asparagus Salad with Chickpeas and Potatoes

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2013/03/roasted-asparagus-salad-with-chickpeas-and-potatoes.html 

with the added bonus of the Fat Free Balsamic Raisin Dressing which is embedded in the following recipe

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2012/03/spicy-apple-walnut-salad-with-fat-free-balsamic-raisin-dressing.html 

This was a warm salad made ever so yummy by the dressing. Too bad we’d already used up our crop of asparagus from the garden/yard but asparagus are plentiful right now and we found some nice smaller and tenderer ones.  We roasted the asparagus, small wedges of onion and a large clove of elephant garlic (the original recipe calls for 2 to 3 cloves of regular garlic, but we had this on hand, so gave it a go)

 added the chickpeas and potatoes

 made up the dressing (and I’m here to tell you that stuff is AWESOME!) Actually, that clove of roasted elephant garlic is mashed up and whisked into the dressing for a little extra sumthin’ sumthin’

 and mixed it all up (more at room temperature than actually warm)

Next up was the TLT sandwich (Tempeh, Lettuce and Tomato)

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/08/tlt-sandwiches.html 

We marinated thinly sliced tempeh (your own choice and there are some really good ones out there now)

 picked some lettuce from The Garden of the Elf and made up a really nice sandwich on whole wheat bread.

We enjoyed both of these recipes and would more likely go with the salad again than the TLT…and that’s primarily because we LOVE the Bacun (see the post of 5/10). However, since the Bacun is not gluten free and tempeh is, this recipe makes a very worthy sandwich.

Our EXPERT selection for the coming week is Thai Black Pepper and Garlic Tofu

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2012/05/thai-black-pepper-and-garlic-tofu.html 

We love Thai food and will look forward to this recipe!

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Other kinky cookery this week consisted of a FABULOUS looking recipe from The Minimalist Baker

http://minimalistbaker.com/1-bowl-nutella-banana-bread-vegan-gf/ 

So we thought we’d give it a go for the great staff and tireless workers at the Animal Rescue Fund of Mississippi. While the recipe says it’s a one bowl bread, there are a LOT of ingredients that go into that one bowl. In the Elf’s elf-fort do get über-organized, we got all of our ingredients out, measured in little plastic shot glasses (for the smaller amounts) before diving into the actual preparation. WELL, as the stirring and whisking and adding of the ingredients all commenced, we felt damn near Martha Stewart-ish UNTIL we reached for the little cup thingie that had the baking powder and salt. We picked up the container of sea salt (it’s a small white ¼ cup container) and dumped it in the batter INSTEAD of the actual ingredients. OMG!! Was The Elf ever upset…said a number of words that were not Elf-worthy and then proceeded to figure out what to do. Fortunately, we had not stirred any of this catastrophe, so we decided to try to remove the EXCESS salt. Also fortunately, the salt container was not FULL. Slowly and meticulously, we scooped as much of the excess salt out as we could and plunged forward. When the batter was mixed, we tasted it and OF COURSE, you could taste the salt…so we whipped out some additional brown sugar and added enough to have a decent tasting batter. Then we held our breath until the bread came out of the oven, cooled and was sliced. Now we aren’t sure what the ‘real’ bread is supposed to taste like but this was pretty darn good. We sure were glad and we hope the folks at ARF enjoyed it as well. Holy cow—what a feeling when The Elf realized what had happened!!

Since that FFVK Balsamic-Raisin Dressing was such a hit, we decided to steam a couple of really nice artichokes one night and paired the artichokes and Balsamic-Raisin Dressing with the Za’atar Roasted Chickpea salad for a light evening meal. We found a substantial supply of the Za’atar at the Mediterranean Grocery locally.

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This week, we also received a long-anticipated cook-book!! Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen! We had pre-ordered it months ago and are delighted to finally get it. There will be some awesome aromas headed toward our olfactory places.

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  Saturday night, we went to the Strawberry Cafe here in downtown Madison MS. They have a lovely spinach and walnut stuffed portabello entree that is vegan (other options such as goat cheese and/or chicken are available). It was delicious. So NICE to have restaurants now including vegan entrees!! Thanks Strawberry people!!

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Lastly, we always enjoy our little backyard garden and this year is no exception. We don’t have a large variety of stuff growing but do have two kinds of zucchini, some tomatoes (heirlooms), lettuce, white radishes, cilantro, basil and okra. There is just something really fun about picking food you grew yourowns-elf!

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And finally on this Memorial Day weekend, we include a picture of Mail Order Annie as she celebrates graduations of the Class of 2015 AND the sacrifices of the thousands who made it possible for graduations to occur.

 Y’all have a safe and meaningful weekend and remember to breathe deep, laugh a lot, eat plants and love life.

~~The Elf~~

My Fair Elfy

The Elf has a good, interesting, fun, entertaining, anxious (sometimes), busy, and did we say FUN week. That’s why Monday turned into the following Sunday like THE NEXT DAY!

And last week’s post was so long, we’ve decided to give y’all a break this week and offer the KISS version of The Elf in the Kitchen.

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Our EXPERT (that bein’ SUSAN VOISIN of FAT FREE VEGAN KITCHEN) recipes this week were 

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2006/03/pav-bhaji-spicy-mixed-vegetables-on.html 

and

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2012/11/lentil-soup-with-coriander-and-cumin.html 

 and as usual we were not disappointed.

The more interesting dish of the two was the Pav Bhaji or Spicy Mixed Vegetables on Buns. The Elf will use any excuse to visit Patel’s Grocery in Ridgeland MS. In fact, we have been talking to Mr. Patel hisownself to see if we might feature his Indian Grocery in an upcoming blog post. He has graciously consented so we are lining that up. Just to wander down the spice aisles is a blast.

In any event, we needed to get the primary spice for this dish…the Pav Bhaji Masala

We then spent a while chopping, dicing and preparing the ingredients for the dish itself. It was then The Elf decided that she needed a sous chef to do all the knife work. However we did get it done in advance of the actual kinky cookery phase of this effort. We REALLY REALLY like to do that so we don’t discover at the last minute we are missing an ingredient IN SPITE of our (mostly) diligent efforts to shop for everything we need for our EXPERT recipe(s).

So, here you go…all the ingredients (except we forgot to put the diced onion in this picture as it sat in its baggie on the opposite counter). Keep in mind that the recipe calls for these veggies to be diced or chopped (except the peas…it’s kinda hard to dice those) – so you’ll see carrots, green bell pepper, tomato, green beans, potatoes, cauliflower, and cabbage. Just pretend that you see a baggie of diced onion. Those two larger green chiles played a very important role in the flavoring/spiciness of this dish and were halved instead of diced.

We cooked the vegetables (except for the bell pepper, onion and tomatoes) in a small amount of water until they were soft and then used a potato masher thingie to mash them up a bit…not to smithereens but a nice texture with the vegetables still identifiable. Next we sautéed the onions until they began to slightly brown and added the minced ginger and garlic. We actually jumped the gun with adding the turmeric, so that’s why the picture of the onions has a yellow cast. Oops on The Elf! This cooked for a little longer to allow those flavors to develop before adding the bell peppers. Following that, we added the Pav Bhaji masala, red chili powder (remind me to tell you about THAT one!), turmeric (had we been on pointe with our turmeric) and salt. Last vegetable added were the diced tomatoes.

Lastly, we added our mashed vegetable medley, some water and let that simmer for a bit at a low temperature. The last ingredient was a small bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice to perk up things and bring out the flavor. We adjusted the salt seasoning slightly since we are salt conscious in this household. Actually, we have gone nuts over a smoked salt that adds wonderful flavor to a dish and can be used very sparingly. We had toasted some whole wheat potato buns on which to serve the vegetable mash-up. You’ll see a final plated picture shortly.

Next up was the Lentil Soup with Coriander and Cumin…no big deal here other than it’s a delicious soup, easy to make and set up our EXPERT evening quite nicely. Here’s a shot of it simmering with the carrots and spinach. The soup is quite nice and when we make it again, we may up the coriander/cumin slightly. Also, you’ll see further below how we added additional spice to it.

 Also, we’d mentioned that red chili powder..well, we bought some at Patel’s Grocery and got the EXTRA HOT!

And we are here to tell you that this stuff will blow the top of your mouth completely UP if you are not careful. The recipe calls for a teaspoon of red chili powder BUT we (very thankfully) chose to just use a half-teaspoon and increase it if we needed to. We didn’t need to…in fact, we could have probably used 1/4^th teaspoon and been just as happy. It was a wee bit on the spicy side, even for us. Here’s the final plated meal.

One thing you need to know about both of these recipes is that (aside from being very very good), you get an abundance of food. We knew we’d have lunch for a few days from these two recipes. THEN The Elf got a notion on Monday to combine some of the lentil soup with an equal portion of the Pav Bhaji mixture and HOLY MOLY, was that ever good!! Toned down the heat of the Pav Bhaji and added extra spice to the soup.

OK, for our next elf-fort at the EXPERT’S recipes, we have selected the following two recipes

Roasted Asparagus Salad with Chickpeas and Potatoes (we’ll also use the FFVK Balsamic Raisin Dressing for that salad. We are including that link as well even though the recipe is for a different salad. The recipe for the Balsamic Raisin Dressing is embedded)

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2013/03/roasted-asparagus-salad-with-chickpeas-and-potatoes.html 

And

TLT Sandwiches (Tempeh, Lettuce and Tomato). We have lots of fresh lettuce in the garden that we need to eat before it gets too hot and the lettuce bolts, so this was an ideal companion to the salad.

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/08/tlt-sandwiches.html

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Another recipe we tried this past week that was swoon worthy was Roasted Cauliflower and Lentil Tacos with Creamy Chipotle Sauce. OUTSTANDINGLY good! And it’s pretty darn easy. First, you roast some cauliflower that you’ve whittled down to bite sized portions

Then you cook up some spicy lentils seasoned with cumin, chili powder, sautéed onions, garlic and tomato paste

Whip up some chipotle sauce with began mayo, chipotle hot sauce (or adobo sauce) and some lime juice

Run out to the garden and pick some cilantro

And serve it all up in a warm soft taco. We did not get a good picture of our finished product but the link will send you straight to Cookie+Kate’s site where the recipe originated. This is a terrific site as well. There you will see this yummy vegan version of tacos! You can also find it on The Elf in the Kitchen’s Facebook page.

http://cookieandkate.com/2015/roasted-cauliflower-and-lentil-tacos/

Our ARF (Animal Rescue Fund) cookies of the week were variations on the traditional oatmeal cookie (veganizing the recipe on the back of the box) including Coconut, Pecan, Raisin and Cherry Craisin and Chocolate Chip. These never last long.

And, remember the little foster Poodle dog we mentioned last week--Charlie? Well, he has found his forever home. Here. With. Us. Warts and all, we decided to keep the little guy and work with him on his issues. Just couldn’t stand the thought of him being shifted to yet another home. His foster days are over. He seems to be settling in with his little (emphasis on LITTLE) sister, MiniPearl

 And that, my friends, is the way it rolls at the Elf’s house. See you next week.

Til then, y’all, breathe deep, eat plants and love life.