Vegan for a Week

This week we decided to give our Menu Board a theme.  VEGAN!!!!

Menu Board for week of March 15th

A vegan diet, if you are not familiar, omits all animal products and byproducts from their diets.  This includes dairy (cheese, milk, cream, yogurt etc.), eggs and often honey (which is an insect animal byproduct).  Often times veganism extends to consumerism where vegans will eschew leather products, furs, feathers, beeswax, film and other products including cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.  This week I am going to just stick to food.

Selection of Vegan Cookbooks

I was always familiar with the term veganism, but couldn’t really admit that I had cooked anything vegan intentionally.  It wasn’t until I learned I had a food allergy to dairy and eggs that I thought I might want to learn more about substitutions for those things I could no longer have.   I started by heading to our local Chapters so I could check out my favourite, the cookbook section.  I felt a little overwhelmed by ingredients in some cookbooks that seemed so foreign and felt resigned to eating a lot of boxed pasta and never going for brunch again.  A lovely sales clerk came over and suggested a few cookbooks for me to try.  I haven’t looked back since.

We have a vegan meal here or there in our diet, but I can’t say that we have ever dedicated an entire week to eating vegan.   I am excited to see how my body will respond to really truly not eating the things I am not supposed to (I cheat, a little too much) and also not eating meat.  If you also want to undertake eating vegan there are lots of options out there.  You can try a cookbook like I did, you can read blogs (like Oh She Glows!), you can even check out Dieticians of Canada who provide a food guide for vegans.

Today I thought I would share with you a simple recipe that I have adapted to make it vegan, to show you how easy substitutions can be – French Onion Soup. I have included the non-vegan ingredients in brackets so you an see how the substitutions are made)

Vegan French Onion Soup

Ingredients

• 4 tbsp olive oil or vegan margarine (this is typically butter)

  

  Vegan French Onion Soup

• 4 whole Large (or 6 Medium) Yellow Onions, Halved Root To Tip, And Sliced Thin
• 1 cup (generous) Dry White Wine
• 8 cups Veggie Broth (this is typically 4 cups beef and 4 cups chicken broth)
• 2 cloves Minced Garlic
• Worcestershire Sauce (you would need to find a vegan version as Worcestershire often included anchovies in its ingredients)
• Several Thick Slices Of French Bread Or Baguette
• 5 ounces, weight (to 7 Ounces) Vegan Cheese, Grated, I use Daiya Smoked Gouda (this is typically grated gruyere)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
• Heat olive oil in a heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add onions and cook, covered, for 20 minutes. Place soup pot into the oven with the lid slightly ajar to ensure the onions will brown. Allow onions to cook in the oven for 1 hour, stirring at least once during the cooking process so onions won’t stick and burn.
• Remove pot from oven and place back on stovetop over medium heat. Stir, scraping off all the brown, flavorful bits. Turn off heat and pour in wine. Turn heat back to medium. Cook wine for five minutes, allowing it to reduce. Add broths, Worcestershire Sauce and minced garlic and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 30 to 45 minutes.
• Brush one side of the bread slices with olive oil and broil over low heat, allowing bread to brown and become crispy.
• When soup is ready, ladle into bowl or ramekin. Place crispy bread on top, and then sprinkle generously with grated cheese. Broil in oven until cheese is melted and bubbly.
• Serve immediately.

Fish and Glass

Noodle bowls always give me an opportunity to practice my knife skills. Chop till you drop.  Nothing quite like trying to julienne carrots.  Cooking for me is always tasty, but not always super technical.

Today’s featured recipe is a Vietnamese Vermicelli Noodle Bowl.  Yum!  It has lots of bright colours and flavours that are so indicative of Vietnamese food.  This bowl is kind of like a deconstructive rice paper roll.  You can use any protein, shrimp, chicken, tofu, but tonight I used ground pork.

Noodle Bowl Sauce

One of the key ingredients to vietnamese food and this recipe in particular is Fish Sauce.  Okay so don’t freak out, it does smell but it is delicious. Fish sauce is a fermented sauce made from fish and salt. Good fish sauces are fermented for 1 year to 18 months. It’s what gives thai and vietnamese food its distinct flavours. You can buy fish sauce from specialty food stores, but I am able to get mine at No Frills.

The other key ingredient is the noodles. You can use a rice vermicelli, but in this recipe I use a cellophane noodle or glass noodle.  This is made from a starch, often mung bean or potato starch.  Glass noodles are clear when cooked and rice noodles are white.  I like the glass noodles in this dish, but you could easily use rice noodles or even soba noodles.  Again you can find these noodles at your local grocery store.

 Vietname Glass Noodle Salad

Noodle Bowl

Dressing
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 cup chopped cilantro
1 thai bird chili chopped (or more if you want it spicy!)
1 tablespoon honey or agave
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon kosher salt

Salad
2 carrots, julienned
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
1/2 cup finely shredded napa cabbage or romaine lettuce
1/4 cup chopped dry roasted nuts
1 lb ground pork
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp minced ginger
3 green onions chopped
 
Directions

1. Whisk together honey, fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, salt, cilantro and chili in small bowl. Set the sauce aside.
2. Heat vegetable oil a small skillet over medium heat. Add ground pork; cook and stir and softened and lightly caramelized, about 8 minutes.  Add garlic and ginger.  Cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes.   Add peanuts.
3. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add glass noodles and cook until softened, 6 minutes. Drain noodles and rinse with cold water, stirring to separate the noodles.
4. Assemble the vermicelli bowl by placing the cooked noodles in one half of each serving bowl and the lettuce on one half and the ground pork on the other. Top each bowl with, carrots, mint, green onion, cilantro, and more peanuts.  Pour sauce over the top and toss thoroughly to coat before eating.

Salad Days

I have not been as diligent with writing as I have been with cooking.  I will attempt to remedy that this week.  I have been craving salad a lot lately. Perhaps it is the desire for it to be warm, for spring, for grilled meats. But at this time of year I also still crave hearty meals. So this week’s theme – hearty salads.



Menu Board for week of March 8th

According to food historians the Babylonians and Romans first ate greens with the dressings of vinegar and oil almost 2000 years ago.  Salads certainly have changed and evolved in those past 2000 years. This week I have two salads on my menu.  One Vietnamese and one more tex-mex.  This weekend I pre-made the below dressing to make a weeknight dinner faster.

Cilantro Lime Dressing 

Ingredients

– 1 cup loosely packed cilantro, stems removed and roughly chopped

– 1/2 avocado (or 1/2 cup plain coconut or Greek yogurt)

– 2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice (about 1/2 lime), more to taste

– 1-2 cloves of garlic

– 1/4 cup of olive oil

– 1 1/2 tsp. white wine vinegar

– 1/8 tsp. salt

Directions

Puree all ingredients in a blender or food processor until smooth.

Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.

Happy eating this week!

Spring Beers and Dreams

I am sure that any of you reading this living in a cold climate like me are hoping for signs of winter to be over.

GLB Karma Citra IPA

I found it today in the form of a seasonal brew from Great Lakes Brewery.  I always love a seasonal beer, especially in the fall when they are all pumpkin flavoured.  Going to Great Lakes Brewery on our way home from Costco has become a bit of a tradition, which makes the madness of Costco on a weekend a little more bearable and it was so exciting to find this little gem on our visit this weekend.

This brew is very citrusy with lots of grapefruit and tropical fruit flavours.  This just makes me think of spring and lemonade and sitting outside in the summer drinking a nice crisp beer.  I can almost image summer now, so long as I don’t look out the window.

To go with my citrusy beer I decided to roast a chicken, but rather than roast it whole I butterflied it so it will cook faster and I can get more flavour on the skin (and tonights flavour of choice was Piri Piri Sauce).

Butterflying a chicken is relatively easy.  I recommend using scissors, preferably the kind that comes apart so you can make sure to get all the raw chicken off them before using them for something else.  You can butterfly a whole chicken in 3 easy steps.

Ready for the oven!

Step 1 – Using a pair of kitchen shears, cut the chicken down one side of the backbone and through the ribs.

Step 2 – Make an identical cut on the opposite side to remove the backbone completely; discard (or reserve it for stock since you now never throw anything out after reading Stock Options! ).

Step 3 – Place the bird cut-side down (skin-side up) and flatten it with the heel of your hand; use both hands if you need to apply extra pressure.  I usually lean onto the board until I feel the ribs snap.

Whole roast chicken usually takes 50-60 minutes to cook with 15 minutes to rest.  By comparison a butterflied chicken is considerably faster with an average of 30-35 minutes cooking.  You can enjoy a roast chicken without having to wait until Sunday to cook it.

Menu Board for the Week of March 1st

This week’s menu board seems to be heavy on rice and noodles.  I guess even though I am wishing spring was here, cold weather cooking is still driving my menu planning.  I am looking forward to summer grills and salads, but I still love a curry or a pasta bake on a cold winters night.  Nothing keeps me warm like a full belly.  Moxie agrees!

Can I have some?

This is what I see a lot of the time when I am cooking.  A little face staring up at me hoping to get a taste of what I am cooking.  Maybe a little piece of chicken or two “accidentally” dropped on the floor when I was cutting it.  I mean how do you resist that face.

Rolling Sausage

This week’s feature recipe is perhaps my favourite thing in Jamie Oliver’s Comfort Food Cookbook.  I have made this particular recipe more than half a dozen times since receiving the cookbook back in November.  I have made variations on the recipe of course, I rarely make the same thing exactly the same.  The recipe also calls for making your own dough, but this is a weeknight dinner so I use store bought puff pastry.

Meat!

I feel like most of us have had sausage rolls at a party as an appetizer, but this is really meant to be a meal.  Sausage rolls seems to have made their first appearance at the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in London’s Crystal Palace in 1851.  I feel like they have been around longer, but nothing that provides proof prior to the Exhibition.

Plated and tasty!

My edited Jamie Oliver Giant Sausage Roll Recipe

Ingredients
4 slices of smoked bacon
2 onions
1/2 bunch sage
1 lb ground pork (extra lean to avoid greasiness)
3/4 cup of breadcrumbs
1 oz parmesan cheese
1 tsp Worcestershire
nutmeg
almond milk or egg wash
Puff Pastry

Directions

• Blitz the bacon in a food processor until finely chopped.
• Add the onions and sage to the food processor and pulse until combined.
• Pour it out into a frying pan and cook on medium heat until cooked through, around 15 minutes.  Remove from heat and let cool.
• Once cool add bacon and onion to a bowl with the ground pork.  Add the remaining ingredients.  Mix together with your hands
• Preheat oven to 375.  Roll out puff pastry on a flour dusted surface to about 10×16 inches.
• Place the meat just off centre on the pastry shaping it into an even log.
• Fold the pastry over the meat and seal the edges with a fork.
• Brush top of pastry with milk (or egg).
• Bake in oven for about 40 minutes or until browned and cooked through.

Enjoy your sausage roll with a dollop of mustard and a nice crisp side salad.

Don’t go Bacon my heart!

I have not posted in awhile.  I was away in Dallas this week (excellent Tex-Mex!) but I am back on my routine and have been busy in the kitchen this weekend.

This weekend marked a special day, my wonderful mother turned 60.  I hosted a brunch for her which included potato hash, smoked salmon and chive crema, french style baked eggs with toast points, oven baked bacon and fruit.

My brunch plate

If you have never oven baked bacon I suggest you try it.  It changed my life, no joke.  I loooooove bacon.  All things bacon.  I know not a terribly original sentiment, many people love bacon.  I hated making it at home because it always made such an incredible mess and I usually got burned by bacon spit.  Why bacon, why do you have to spit on me, don’t you know I love you?  It became my mission to find a painless way to make bacon.

Baking bacon is easy, and the clean-up is a synch.  We get our bacon from a butcher, but if in a pinch I will buy the President Choice Old Fashion Style Naturally Smoked Extra Thick Cut Bacon. A long name, but good bacon!  The key to perfect bacon without the spit, is starting with a cold oven.  Plus when you are done, you just need to remove the foil, and if you have done it well you have completely clean trays.  I often do not do it well and have to clean trays, but at least I am not cleaning grease spit off my walls.

Directions
– Line rimmed baking sheets with aluminum foil, then lay the bacon strips flat, making sure pieces do not overlap.
– Place trays in the oven. Turn oven on to 425 degrees. Let the bacon come to temperature with the oven.
– Bake until crisp and browned, 12 to 15 minutes, or desired doneness, rotating the sheets once. – – Transfer strips to a paper towel to drain.

In addition to my mother’s birthday it was Valentines’s Day.  My partner and I don’t really do Valentine’s Day.  We don’t go out, we don’t buy gifts, we don’t do all the “love” things that we really should be doing every single day.  We only have one tradition.  Every year for Valentine’s Day I make Chicken and Eggplant Parmigiana.  It’s his favourite and really he would ask me to make it everyday if I was willing.

Bacon love!

I have been making this Parm dish for so long that I don’t even have a recipe.  Alex Guarnaschelli’s Eggplant Parm Recipe from the Food Network is probably the closest to mine so you can check it out.

Finally the last piece of the busy weekend is Family Day today.  I got an extra day to do whatever, which with this cold basically meant whatever in my house because it is too cold for anything else.  So of course I warmed the house with the heat of the oven and did some serious meal prep for this week’s Menu Board.

Menu Board for Week of Feb 15th

Any requests for a featured recipe from this week’s menu board, please leave it in the comments.

Piccata means I like you.

If you have read my About section you know that Chicken Piccata is the first dish I ever made my husband.  On our first date I told him I loved to cook.  He said he couldn’t wait to taste something I made.  I immediately shot him down and said “Oh, I only let people I like eat my food”.  It took about 8 dates before I made him dinner, just wanted to be sure I liked him ;).

Pounding Chicken

On the inevitable night I got stranded at work when a colleague called in sick.  He offered to go and pick up the groceries for me since I was hadn’t had a chance to do it.  I was super impressed and gave him a list of the things I needed.  I will never forget when he got to my house and I was unpacking the bags only to discover his interpretation of “chicken stock” was to buy a package of chicken boullion powder.  Since it was already getting late, I made do.  It is still a running joke in our house.  I never ask him to pick up Chicken Stock, I now just make it as you may have read back in another post – Stock Options.

Ingredient Prep

While in my world. Piccata means I like you, what it actually is, is a method of preparing food: meat is sliced, coated, sautéed and served in a sauce.  In this case the meat is chicken (though you could use fish or pork), coated in flour, and the sauce consists of butter, lemon, and capers.  And what a trifecta that is!  This sauce is one of my all-time favourites, which is perhaps why I tired to impress my husband with it.  The creaminess of the butter (and there is lots of it), with the sourness of the lemons and the saltness of the capers are such a perfect balance that the pasta and chicken are really secondary ingredients.

Mmmm sauce!

The recipe I used is from the Food Network’s Giada De Laurentiis.  The ingredients are simple and you probably have most of them in your fridge or pantry.  I halved the recipe since it is just the two of us, though I am always tempted to overindulge on this dish.

Chicken Piccata served with Spaghettini

Chicken Piccata –  Giada De Laurentiis.

Ingredients
2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts, butterflied and then cut in half
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
All-purpose flour, for dredging
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup brined capers, rinsed
1/3 cup fresh parsley, chopped

Directions

• Season chicken with salt and pepper. Dredge chicken in flour and shake off excess.
• In a large skillet over medium high heat, melt 2 tablespoons of butter with 3 tablespoons olive oil. When butter and oil start to sizzle, add 2 pieces of chicken and cook for 3 minutes. When chicken is browned, flip and cook other side for 3 minutes. Remove and transfer to plate. Melt 2 more tablespoons butter and add another 2 tablespoons olive oil. When butter and oil start to sizzle, add the other 2 pieces of chicken and brown both sides in same manner. Remove pan from heat and add chicken to the plate.
• Into the pan add the lemon juice, stock and capers. Return to stove and bring to boil, scraping up brown bits from the pan for extra flavor. Check for seasoning. Return all the chicken to the pan and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove chicken to platter. Add remaining 2 tablespoons butter to sauce and whisk vigorously. Pour sauce over chicken and garnish with parsley.

Super Bowl, Super Nachos

I feel like I should be honest. I don’t really like football, but I watch the Super Bowl every year. No not just for the halftime show, though I am excited about Katy Perry. I watch the game every year because that is what my dad and I used to do when I was growing up. But I also watch it as an excuse to make Super Bowl food. You know what I am talking about, chicken wings, nachos, ribs, chilli you name it. I love an occasion and even more I love occasion food. Anytime I get to make food fitting an occasion I am in!

So when I asked what we wanted to eat this year, chilli and nachos were requested. I thought I would just merge the two. But not just any chilli. No no no, this is the Super Bowl, I have to make it super.

Tonight’s Chilli Recipe

So I turned to one of my fav cookbooks right now, the Jamie Oliver Comfort Food cookbook and his Winter Nights Chilli Recipe.  I did, however, adapt it slightly since I was putting it on Nachos.  I omitted the Butternut Squash, and substituted the dried porcini (cause I could not find it!) with some fresh King Oyster mushrooms.

Caramelizing Onions

It is a long process to make this chilli, more than 6 hours.  So after rushing to the grocery store in the morning (I was enjoying my bed way too much) I started at about 12:45 to make dinner for tonight at 7:00.  That being said, once you have put it in the oven, you don’t have to do anything for 6 hours.

Putting it in the Oven!

So I “set it and forget it”, and went to work on a presentation I am working on for a conference I am presenting at next week.  After 6 hours the beef just falls apart so it makes it super easy to shred.  All the juices from the beef and the bacon make it a very rich and decadent chilli.  Well done Jamie!

Post Oven Chilli

You can access the recipe here on Jamie Oliver’s website.

But then once the chilli was done, I had to turn it into Nachos!  The trick to nachos that are not soggy is to layer and double broil. Layer half the chips, cheese and salsa.  Put in the over under the broiler at 500 until they start to brown.  Layer on the second layer with remaining chips, cheese and salsa.  Under the broiler again.  Then top with chilli, chopped cilantro, avocado and and fresh chillies (optional).  And Voila.  Super Bowl super chilli!  Go Seahawks!

Voila!

Oh and here’s this week’s Menu Board, in case you thought I forgot.

Menu Board for week of Feb 1st

Stock Options

The Menu Board this week is short one as I have some dinners out planned with great friends.

Menu Board Week of Jan 25th

I also had a very busy day in the kitchen today. On any given Sunday I spend about 4 hours in the kitchen. This week had me busy making my lunch for the week (roast turkey 5 grain salad), cashew cream, homemade pasta…which turned into the sausage and lasagna pictured below, and chicken stock.

Butternut Squash and Sausage Lasagna

Every other weekend or so I make chicken stock. I don’t think I have ever bought stock unless it was an emergency and my prep ingredients were low. It started when I was living by myself and trying to save money, now I continue my stock methods because why the hell not! Chicken stock to me is a kitchen sink kind of recipe so I don’t actually have a recipe for it. When I am prepping meals I cut the ends of carrots, onions, celery etc. instead of tossing them I toss them in a freezer bag and in the freezer they go. When I buy chicken breasts, I buy them bone in and cut the breast of the bones and the bones go in the freezer. Sometimes there is leeks, mushrooms, celeriac…whatever veg scraps I make.

Stock in the making

Usually once a bag is full of bones, veg etc I toss it in the stock pot with bay leaves, other herbs I might have drying, peppercorns, celery seed and then fill it with water enough to cover. Bring it all to a boil and reduce to simmer until the stock is concentrated. Voila. Versatile and virtually free chicken stock.

Oh She Glows with love…

Oh She Glows by Angela Liddon is one of the most used cookbooks in my kitchen. Due to my intolerances to eggs and milk I often cook vegan so as not to be seduced by, well….cheese.  Liddon’s book provides me with many practical recipes to avoid dairy including the cashew cheese featured in today’s recipe.  I will not hide my love of Angela Liddon (also an Ontarian!).  Her website (www.ohsheglows.com) and instagram have long been in my Saturday morning grocery prep reading circulation long before she came out with her cookbook. She is currently working on her second cookbook and I applied to be a recipe tester.  Fingers crossed everyone!

Moxie also loves Oh She Glows

Thought I have tried many recipes I had not yet tried the Broccoli and Cashew Cheese-Quinoa Burrito.  I know, I know how can Cashews be or taste anything like cheese?  I have tried many recipes and this one is up there as one of the best.  The way to make something that is not cheese, taste like cheese is the addition of Nutritional Yeast.  Never heard of it?  Neither had I until I was told dairy was off limits, now it is a staple in my kitchen.  It’s a yeast that grows in molasses and then is washed and dried with heat to deactivate it.  As you can guess from it’s name it is dense with nutrients including B-vitamins, folic acid, zinc, and protein. It’s low in fat, and has no added sugars or preservatives. You often buy it in flakes or powders.  I put it on popcorn.  Give it a try, you might surprise yourself.

This recipe compliments the broccoli and quinoa nicely (think of broccoli covered in that orange “cheese” cause from when you were a kid).  However next time I would make more as I personally would have liked the burrito to be on the saucier side.  I also added some of my Mexican red sauce, to give it some extra spice.

Ingredients prep

Cashew Cheese Sauce (from The Oh She Glows Cookbook, by Angela Liddon)

Ingredients
3/4 cup raw cashews
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup unsweetened, unflavoured almond milk
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp white whine vinegar
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp salt

Directions
– Place the cashews in a bowl and add enough water to cover.  Soak the cashews for at least 3 to 4 hours (I soaked mine overnight) preferably longer if you have time.  Drain and rinse cashews.
– In a food processor or blender combine all the ingredients and process until smooth.  It will be thick.
– The cheese sauce is later added to the cooked veg and quinoa for the burrito.

Today I am eating the leftover filling without the wrap and it is still as delicious!

Burrito Yumminess