Sunday, May 29, 2011

Asparagus and Mushroom Frittata

Last week I found myself in the predicament of a group brunch with nothing to eat! Temptation can be hard when surrounded with bacon, buttery scones, and scrambled eggs. The solution? Make something so good, there's no need to stray. I only had eyes for this frittata, let me tell you. Also, this stores well if made in a pie tin, so you can make it the day before and heat it up when you want. Fabulous.

This is a slightly adjusted recipe from Isa Chandra's Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook (Asparagus and Sun-dried Tomato Frittata).


Ingredients
1 pound extra firm tofu (no need to press, just squeeze over the sink)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 cup onion, diced
Stalks of asparagus (I used about 5, Isa Chandra suggests 3), discard tough ends and cut into bite-sized pieces
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, finely chopped
Mushrooms as desired (I used about 12 mushrooms, cut into thirds. Isa Chandra's recipe does not include mushrooms)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon ground tumeric
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup basil leaves (I used dried, Isa Chandra suggests fresh, cut up)

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Squeeze the tofu through your fingers into a bowl until it resembles ricotta cheese, and then mix in the mustard, soy sauce, and nutritional yeast. Set aside.
In a pan or skillet, saute the onions in olive oil until slightly browned, and then add the tomatoes and mushrooms. After about three minutes, add the asparagus, garlic, and turmeric, saute for another minute. Add the lemon juice and let the mixture simmer until the asparagus looks done and tender. Turn off the heat.


Once slightly cooled, mix the skillet mixture into the bowl with the tofu. Fold in basil.


Transfer the mixture into a pie tin and place in the oven for 20 minutes. Switch to the broiler, and let the top brown about 2 minutes. Careful not to let it burn!

Let it cool about 10 minutes, and then it's ready to eat, or store for later. 

Never fear brunch again!

Kate



Friday, May 27, 2011

I'm baaaack! With moody soup!

This blogger has been quite the busy lady the past couple of weeks, but I'm returning with lots of food-spirations, just for you. It's almost dead week around here, which means deadlines are rapidly approaching, but my favorite procrastination techniques always involve food, so I have many a recipe to share with you over the next couple of days. I have photos loaded from as far back as three weeks ago. Oops.

I meant to have this soup post weeks and weeks ago, but completely forgot about it until I stumbled upon my photos. Which I have to admit, I think these are my best moody-food pictures.
Kate, amateur food photographer, specializing in moody soup.
I think it has a little ring!

I managed to have two different bowls of homemade soup in one week, so I thought they were worth sharing. The first one was a sweet potato soup I improvised with my dear friend Kelsey (who loves when I cook for her! A fan! Hooray!). The second is a cauliflower basil soup. While I can't remember or find recipes for these soups, I promise that soups are very easy if you have a blender and some hearty vegetables! I usually start by roasting up whatever vegetable I want as the main ingredient with some oil and seasonings. Put the veggies in a blender with some veggie or mushroom stock and blend! Be creative, and then take your own thought-provoking soup pictures.



My friends and I have many inside jokes including soup. We're weird. 
But everyone loves soup. 
SOUP,
Kate

Friday, May 13, 2011

Breakfast for Dinner: Johnnycakes


Unfortunately, I was informed by tales of me and the husband (check her out, she's hilarious) that blogger crashed yesterday. Which would explain why my post on johnnycakes suddenly was no more! 
Honestly, I'm crazy busy at the moment and don't have time to completely redo the post, but I will tell you Isa Chandra's amazing johnnycakes can be found here, with the only adjustment I made being to use vanilla almond milk instead of regular. On the side, I just fried up some potatoes and some veggie protein sausage and voila, a breakfast for dinner that makes a girl feel a little baaad, in a good way of course. Breaking the laws of breakfast is what I do best.

Until next time,
Kate



Wednesday, May 11, 2011

CUT THE TOFU, TURN THE PLATE


My best friend Amy sent me this video and I could not stop laughing. It's a little hard to sit through the heavy metal, at least for me, but the instructions are just hilarious and his utensils are beyond awesome.

Proof that the vegan lifestyle is way hardcore.

XX,
Kate

Monday, May 9, 2011

Vegan Cheesecake?

We'll start this post with a little title correction...


I learned a very important lesson this past weekend. When taking a recipe off the internet, read the review and comments first. :)

I've been looking at vegan cheesecake recipes for the few days prior of making this beauty, and they all had very different ingredients. I chose this one because the ingredients were the most simple and I already had a majority of them. However, if I would have read the comments, I'd know that it tended to be runny. One of the comments suggested added some cornstarch to thicken it up.

In a last minute effort to save this cheesecake, I added a small tub of vegan cream cheese that I had in the fridge because surprisingly it didn't have any sort of cream cheese at all (a lot of the other recipes did).

I've never made a cheesecake before, vegan or not, so I had my roommate taste it for accuracy. While he said it didn't taste like cheesecake, it was delicious and could easily pass as a custard. Well shoot folks, look at that; the custard pie was born!

Graham Cracker Crust (I got this recipe from my off-brand graham cracker box)
Ingredients 
-10 graham crackers
-1/2 cup canola oil
-1/2 cup pure maple syrup
-greased pie tin

Simply add the crackers, oil, and syrup into a food processor until the graham crackers are a fine texture. Press the crackers into a greased pie tin and then cover with desired filling! This crust has a maple flavor, so account for that in complement with the filling. Also, wearing a glove (or my ghetto version, wrapping your hands in plastic wrap) helps to keep the crust from sticking to your fingers.

Custard Pie Filling (adapted from the recipe linked above)
Ingredients
1 pound soft tofu, drained
1/2 cup nondairy milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 small tub of Tofutti Cream Cheese

Again, mix the ingredients in a food processor or blender, and then pour into the crust. Bake in the oven at 350 for 35 minutes (or longer, if you feel it's needed). Let it cool and then leave in the fridge overnight. I added strawberries to the top, but experimentation with other fruit is encouraged!

Cheers all,
Kate