BBQ Tofu Salad

New to being vegetarian? Got a hankering for those delicious BBQ chicken salads you used to get at restaurants? Satisfy your urge with this delicious recipe from my own head, but I'm sure there is a recipe for this somewhere out there in internet-land.

Mixed salad greens

1 can rinsed and drained black beans

1 can rinsed and drained corn kernels

1 diced tomato

1 diced jalepeno

1/2 one purple onion, diced

1/2 cup of mexican shredded cheese (or vegan cheese)

BBQ tofu

BBQ dressing (1/4 cup BBQ sauce to 2 tbsps of vegan mayo)

Drain a pack of extra firm tofu, and marinate in BBQ sauce for 20 minutes.  Place on a cookie sheet in a single layer, and bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes.

Toss the greens, beans, corn, tomato, jalepeno, onion and cheese. Top with the tofu slices. Drizzle with the BBQ sauce mixture. 

We are going to add tortilla strips next time, if we can find some, to sprinkle on top.

Prep time: 30 min (bake the tofu while you chop and mix)

Taste rating: 9 yummmm!

Dishes: minimal 

Vegan Potato Leek Soup

This was perfect for a rainy Sunday afternoon.  The recipe is from The Vegetarian 5- Ingredient Gourmet.  This is my new book, and it's super cool for people who work, but want to eat well and flesh-free.  I substituted vegan butter and soymilk for the butter and milk to make it animal product free as well. I also used vegan vegetable bullion. 

Basically, you chop 3-4 leeks and saute in some vegan butter, using your soup pot.  Leeks are my new friend! You chop off the tops and slice up the white and light green parts.  Be careful, because they are super dirty on the inside, so wash them a few times. 

Peel and dice 6 Yukon Gold potatoes, and throw them in the pot. Add two cubes of vegan vegetable bullion and water to cover the potatoes, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Remove two cups of the potatoes and mash them, then throw them back in the pot and add about a cup of soymilk. Salt, pepper, slurp!

I was surprise at how easy, and tasty this turned out to be.

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes

Taste Rating: 9 from both of us.

Dishes: not a lot!

Vegan Cinnamon Rolls

Well, I have learned many things today. #1 Getting dough to rise can be an adventure.#2 If your dough hasn't done anything in 3 hours, you are probably doing something wrong. #3 Do your own research if you are attempting something new. #4 There is nothing wrong with asking people such as your mother and your chef buddy questions at 10 am.

So I attempted the recipe outlined here. Being that I have never made anything like this from scratch before, I read, reread, and reread the instructions before starting. I had all my ingredients ready to go, and I got started at 7:30 am because I knew there was a lot of wait time involved.  

I mixed the four and "vital wheat gluten" (I'm still not exactly sure what this is but I found some at Whole Foods) in my bowl. I warmed the soy milk and vegan butter. Then I had to make the yeast.I had never done this before, so I went by the instructions on the blog. Mix the yeast with warm water and sugar. Okay. What exactly is warm water? Boiled? Tap? Meh, I thought little of this, got some warm tap water, and mixed it up. Wait until bubbly. Okay. As soon as I saw some bubbles I decided that was good, and mixed it all up. Woo! I was rockin'!

I mixed the dough, and got to kneading. Now that was fun! You can get a sweet workout by kneading dough. I made my ball, and put it in my greased bowl to rise.

I checked it in an hour. Hmm, still a little ball. 

Next hour came, yeah, still in a ball. 

Next hour, I wonder if i did something wrong...

Next hour, I mix new yeast while placing the dough in an oven with an additional bowl of  hot water to get it to rise. APPARENTLY, it needs to sit in a warm place.  Who knew?  My new batch of yeast, by the way, I let sit for 10 minutes, and it was really foamy. Foamy! There is a distinct difference between "foamy" and "bubbly". I think you want foamy for yeasty things.

So, after 4 hours, my dough started to rise.  I finally got to roll it out, spread the cinnamon goodness, and slice it up.  Then, you have to wait 45 minutes for them to rise more.  After this, they cook for 30 minutes.  

Finally, after 7 hours, I had my breakfast. They came out actually good, a little tough, I'm owing to the 4 hours of "rising".  

Prep time: 7 hours? rofl

Cook time: 30 minutes

Taste rating: 8, surprisingly (I was really hungry though)

Dishes: a good amount. Kind of messy.

Spinach Orzo Mint Bake

This is a recipe from my trusty Veggie book. The original recipe is actually for a stuffed pepper, but man, that takes a lot of work.  After struggling with stuffing, then eating the pepper stuffed, I changed the recipe to a bake. Instead of stuffing a funny red pepper, I just chop one up and throw it in with the rest, then pour into a small casserole dish. (Casseroles run in my family, if you can't tell already)

Here's the recipe:

12 ounces orzo (1 bag)

2 tomatoes

1 bag thawed frozen spinach

1 cup chopped scallions

3 ounces feta cheese

2 tablespoon fresh chopped mint

1 tablespoon nonfat sour cream

1 chopped red pepper

1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

Cook the orzo as called for on the bag or box.  By the way, orzo is a type of pasta that looks like 

rice.  If you can't find it at your supermarket, try Henry's type of market.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Rinse orzo and add to a large bowl.  Then add the rest of the ingredients except for the mozzarella.  Stir, then pour into a casserole dish.  Sprinkle the mozzarella on top, then place in oven. BAM!

Bake for 25 minutes. 

Prep time 20 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Taste rating:  9 from both

Dishes: minimal

Black Bean Pizza

We probably make this once a week. It's easy, quick, and super yummy. And since it's a pizza, you can play around with different toppings, cheese, and crusts. This one is in my cookbook, so here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 can drained black beans

1 japanese eggplant, thinly sliced lengthwise

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1/4 ground pepper

1 pre-made pizza crust (Boboli works fine)

3 ounces goat cheese (or feta)

1 large tomato

1/2 cup scallions

2 ounces mozzarella cheese

2 tablespoons grated parmesan

1 tsp. olive oil

Directions:

Preheat the broiler. Coat a cookie sheet with non stick spray. Place the eggplant slices in a single layer on the sheet, and sprinkle with garlic powder and pepper. Broil for 3 minutes each side, or until eggplant is browned and tender.

Set oven to 475 degrees. Place your crust on a pizza pan (get a round cookie sheet-like pizza pan, it's super coolness)

Sprinkle your goat or feta on the crust. Top with eggplant, tomatoes, scallions and beans. Sprinkle with mozzaarella and or Parmesan. Drizzle with oil.

Bake until golden and melty, about 10 minutes.

We have taken to using an organic sourdough crust, which is muy delicioso. Also, don't forget to drizzle with olive oil, that is key to this recipe, I'm not sure why, it just is. :)

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 10-12 minutes

Taste rating: Solid 9s from both of us

Dirty dishes: Just a pizza and cookie sheet really

Tofu chicken nuggets!

This recipe came from compassion over killing as well.  The thing to remember with this one, is that the tofu needs to be frozen before you start.  I dried out the tofu before freezing it, but after I microwaved it to defrost it, it was soaking! So have lots of paper towels or a few soft towels ready.  It only takes about 5 minutes in the microwave.

After the defrosting, dip in water, then dip in the bread crumb mix. Pretty easy! Bake for 30min on a cookie sheet.

While they were baking a sauteed some mushrooms and scallions just for kicks to put on top of the brown rice.  

To make it fun, I heated some pre-made orange chicken sauce and drizzled on top of the cubes. Ba M!

Prep time:  15 min

Cook time: 35 minutes

Taste rating: Em-8  Joey- 6 

Dirty dishes: minimal

Next time, I'll probably use a teriyaki marinade or sauce instead of the orange sauce- it was a bit on the sweet side.

Stuffed Artichokes

This recipe is also from Jonathon's blog.  I learned some things with this one: number one, I need a sharp knife.  I went through three dull knives trying to cut the bottom and tops off of the artichokes.  Number two: Joey likes artichokes.  It's been awhile since I have seen such a reaction.  This was his first artichoke "not on a pizza" and he was highly impressed. 

So basically you cut the ends off and stuff with a bread crumb mixture. Place in a small casserole dish with about a 1/2 inch of hot water (it doesn't have to be "boiling"), and cover with tin foil. BAM! Super goodness.

That's your basic corn and store-bought flavored tofu, all microwavable- perfect for the weekday meal.  We used hummus for the dip instead of vegannaise or regular mayonnaise. 

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 45 minutes

Taste rating: me 8, Joey 9. We are now on the search for the "perfect" artichokes

Dirty dishes: minimal

Messiness: 10!  But fun!  We actually used our dinner table. Don't faint!

Vegan Pumpkin Scones

So, I'm not sure what made me think I could make these.  I was feeling good, feeling "inspired". Oh yeah, just whip up a batch of these to go with my morning tea. 

I found the recipe from Jonathon's blog and it looked so easy on his page.  He's a grad student (okay I'm an ex-grad student) and a computer programmer (okay I'm techy!) so I mistakenly thought if he could do it, so could I!

Everything was going swimmingly: I mixed the dry ingredients, then the wet. It was the combining of the two when things got sticky. Literally! I poured the mixture on my lightly floured surface, and it stuck to my hands. I couldn't get it to even look like a ball. So I ended up putting it back into the bowl and adding gobs of flour until I could work with it.

It turned out okay in the end, but I'm baffled by what I did wrong.  Any thoughts?  Wrong flour? Not enough?  Did I mix it too much? I don't know. I will probably wait awhile until trying this again; but at least I have breakfast for a week, even if it's kind of chewy.

Prep time: 25 minutes (less if you don't get a muck situation)

Cook time: 15 minutes

Taste rating: Em- 6 Joey-2 (he spit it out, but he has never had a scone before)

Dirty dishes: A few, lots of bowls and spoons

Quasi Vegan Spinach Lasagna

We are not vegans. But it's fun to pretend.  My stomach is not particularly friendly with tons of cheese, so I tried this recipe because it replaces all the ricotta with Toffuti non-dairy cream cheese (found at Henry's or Whole Foods).  Basically, it's three layers: sauce, noodles, and spinach mixture.  

For the sauce, use soy taco meat with a jar of your favorite sauce.  The recipe says to saute in a frying pan, but I opted for a regular sauce pan. Okay, I didn't really opt, I was already using my one frying pan for the spinach. But it worked better because red sauce didn't go flying around my teeny kitchen.  Just saute the faux meat until it looks not-frozen-like, then add the sauce. BAM!

For the spinach mixture, saute a bag of your most fav frozen spinach with a tad of olive oil, then remove from heat and add the two containers of fake cream cheese. Okay, this is easier said than done.  This stuff is sticky! Leave it out at room temperature before you start so it softens. It makes a very creamy spread. BAM! BAM!

The layering is: sauce, noodles, spinach spread.  Joey was the noodle master, making sure they didn't stick. If you have help, use it, or call in a favor from your most loved family member to assist in this layering odyssey.  

Non vegan part: we sprinkled heavenly mozzarella on top.  Super BAM!

Prep time: 20 minutes, plus one run to Henry's because I forgot it's TWO tubs of cream cheese. ><

Cook time: 45 minutes (plenty to time to blog it.)

Taste rating: 8

Dirty dishes: A good amount.

**Note:  The recipe says 45 minutes for cooking, I would check it at 30, ours was a tad overcooked, but still yummy.

Orange Tofu Steak

This recipe is from compassion over killing.  It's a really simple way to replace meat in any dinner plate.  Basically, you make a quick marinade of lemon juice, orange juice, maple syrup, vinegar, oil, rosemary, garlic, soy sauce and pepper, and whisk.  This took me about 10 minutes (one minute to locate a whisk).  Use extra firm tofu, and dry it with paper towels.  One site said to lay the tofu on a few paper towels, then put some more paper towels on top, then on top of that lay a cutting board on the tofu so it really absorbs the water.  You can do this while you make the marinade. Slice the tofu horizontally and lay flat in a casserole dish.  My pack made 5 steaks.

Pour the marinade on top, cover, and refrigerate for 8 hours or so.  This time I refrigerated for more like 6, and it still came out pretty dang good.  I grilled mine in a pan, since I don't have a barbeque grill, and it worked fine.  Brush grill with olive oil- the less you use, the more crunchy of a steak you get.  Grill for 5 minutes per side. Done!

Prep time: 10 min

Wait time: 6-8 hours

Cook time: 10 minutes

Taste rating: 7

Dirty dishes: medium

Next time I will use fresh herbs instead, and more garlic than is called for in the recipe.

We tried this again this week.  We used less oil for some crispiness, and more garlic and fresh rosemary.  Also, we cut the tofu block in half, and made big steaks, one for each of us.  The taste was more distinct, but the fat slices were a bit much.  We might try strips next time- kind of like chicken strips- because the steak block is a bit strange. :P

Welcome

I created this blog to keep track of vegetarian recipes that I am trying from the web. Feel free to post your own mean recipes and add your two cents to any aspects of the process.