I figured Gallo Pinto, a Nicaraguan/ Costa Rican takes on this classic combo would serve me well. And it did. I didn’t cook it quite as long as the recipe indicated, so not sure if it perhaps is less mushy than the traditional should be. I liked it this way though. I think the recipe said this would make 6 servings, I ate about 1/2 of the whole batch in one sitting. Hey, I was hungry.

I’ve had my eye on this recipe out of Viva Vegan for a while. Mostly due to the fact that I had a perfect amount of somewhat stale tortillas sitting in my fridge, left over from the time I made enchiladas, vast amounts of frozen tomatoes from this summer and a shitload of potatoes, thus having most of things on the ingredient list at my disposal. Things that needed to be used, to boot.

This turned out great. I will say that I made the sauce and pine nut crema, roasted the poblanos, as well as boiled the potatoes the night before, which greatly reduced the cooking time. Had I not done that it would have been early evening and I would have been starving by the time lunch was ready. Also, the recipe says 2-3 jalapeño peppers and cautions it can get hot. I used 2, de-seeded and for me, this was not at all spicy. The next time I’ll leave the seeds in at least on of the peppers, and probably use a grand total of 3. I found myself dousing this in hot sauce to up the spice.

Also, while the tortillas were pretty old, they’d lived in my fridge and where thus still kinda moist. I left them out under a kitchen towel over night to dry them out and achieve maximum staleness. I think this was a good thing as they held up well in the casserole, I’ve read that other people had problems with the tortillas disintegrating completely. I may also try making the casserole with beans and/or greens and mushrooms next time.

I paired the casserole with another Viva Vegan recipe. “Classic Cabbage” basically a coleslaw with a lime-cliantro vinaigrette. I made the “Cilantro-Citrus Vinaigrette” according to the directions in the book (I made the lime only variation). Next time I will up the proportion of citrus significantly as it wasn’t quite zesty enough for me. Still, I like to make a recipe according to instructions the first time I make it, to see if I might learn something new.

Have cooked plenty and even taken photos of it, but lately I’ve been remiss with the blogging I’d promised myself to do. Mostly I’ve been too busy just living and cooking and eating and working and all those other things that comprise day-to-day existence. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not quite cut out for this blogging thing. Yet I keep trying. Oh well.

In my quest (which has been ongoing over more than two years) to cook every last recipe in Veganomicon I’m beginning to get to the recipes that come less naturally to me, for one reason or another. Perhaps they have ingredients I don’t have at home often, or stuff I’m less prone to eat/ like.

Anyway. A while back I decided it was time to make the Kabocha-Udon Winter Stew. Seemed to fit the season perfectly, I had some dried shiitakes collecting dust in my spice drawer, and finally freed from the fetters of a bi-weekly CSA haul I was free to shop at will at my local cheap-o Korean greengrocers. This also gave me an excuse to hit Sunrise Mart, a most excellent (and reasonably priced) Japanese grocery store in the East Village. Besides sundry Japanese speciality items, they’re also a great place to pick up tofu at about half the price of any other place I know of. Here’s my loot from there:

As for the stew, it turned out delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I ended up cooking it not once, not twice, but three times over the course of the past month. Keep in mind the recipe makes about 4 servings and I live alone. So that makes it uh… 12 times I’ve eaten Kabocha-Udon Stew in the past month. Ok, moving on…

I tend to get kind of obsessed with certain flavors and eat them like crazy for periods of time. The Kabocha-Udon adventure triggered a Japanese noodle obsession. I’m now running to Sunrise Mart every chance I get and plan to work my way through a few of the recipes in a long-ignored Japanese vegetarian cookbook someone gave me once.

Recipe after the jump.

Green curry with sweet potatoes and green tomatoes:

Ingredients:

4 small green tomatoes

2 medium sweet potatoes

1 leek

1.5 cup cooked chickpeas

1 shallot

1 red hot Italian chili pepper (omit for a milder curry)

1 tbsp green chili paste

1 can light coconut milk

zest from 1/2 lime

1 cup chopped cilantro

1 tbsp mellow white miso

1 tsp grated ginger

1 tbsp sunflower oil

Method:

Wash and slice the leek thinly. Chop the shallot into tiny pieces. Chop the red chili into tiny pieces (if using). Grate the ginger. Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into approx. 1 inch cubes. Seed the tomatoes, chop them into medium chunks

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan, sautée leeks, red chili, ginger and shallots until soft, but not burnt. Add the green curry paste and sautée for another couple of seconds. Add the sweet potatoes and green tomatoes, stir to cover, then add the coconut milk. Add the miso and lime zest. Cook until the sweet potatoes are almost done, add the chickpeas, cook for another 5 minutes, or until sweet potatoes are tender. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro, serve over rice.

You guys, this dish is fucking delicious!

My only gripe with the recipe is that it uses 2 cups of dried black beans. In my world, all beans come in 1 lb Goya bags, which turned out to be more like 2.5 – 3 cups. No biggie, I just added a bit more of everything else to match it, but still, I feel a 1lb recipe would make more sense.

Romero recommends TVP in this stew for a “meaty” texture, but TVP is one of those vegetarian things I’ve never learned to like. I did throw two logs of “red seitan” (also from Viva Vegan) in the stew, since the recipe does suggest that, and I happened to have them in my freezer.

I originally made the seitan to use in a Cuban “ropa vieja” style shredded seitan I made last week (the recipe called for half of it, I froze the rest). I liked it well enough then (and find it to be a great and easy seitan recipe) but I can’t say I feel the seitan added to the Feijoada. Next time I make this (and there will be a next time!) I’ll just use beans and ‘shrooms. I guess I’m just not big on meat substitutes. Why mess with perfection?

To go along with I made butternut squash. Simply cubed, tossed in olive oil, coarse sea salt and a dash of Tabasco, then roasted at 400 F. while the rest was cooking.

There is also Citrus collards with raisins, from Vegan Soul Kitchen—I got collards from the CSA and felt they’d be perfect with this. Romero suggests serving this with orange rice, but I was in the mood for simpler fare, so I cooked my rice plain and added the orange element to the collards instead.

A note on the rice; I was given a bag of “Tilda” Basmati rice by a friend, she told me it is supposed to be the best of its kind. This was my first time using it. I followed the instructions on the package, which were a bit odd, to my mind. They said to bring water to a boil, then put the rice in for 8-10 minutes, then drain. Like cooking pasta, basically. Anyway, I followed the instructions despite my misgivings and it was the most perfectly boiled rice I’ve ever produced.

I had a few more chickpea cutlets to eat, so I stuck that in here. I had some old millet in my pantry, I paired that with some of my fresh tomatoes for Veganomicon “Mexican Millet”, then there was an opened, half-full pack of frozen green beans far back in my freezer that I’d totally forgotten about. Must have come from my winter share last year. Ehh… yeah, I know.
I seared the green beans with garlic and olive oil, inspired by Terry Bryant’s Vegan Soul Kitchen recipe. To round it all out I grated a butternut squash and tossed it in salt, olive oil, lemon juice, a dash of red wine vinegar and a dash of cayenne pepper.

Red lentil cauliflower curry, frozen and thawed from my extensive archive of left-overs, has the starring role on today’s lunch plate. To green it up a bit there’s the last of the CSA mixed greens, along with a bit of spinach sauteed with shallots and nutmeg and some Vegan Soul Kitchen pickled watermelon rinds, all served over brown basmati rice cooked with cardamom.

Eons ago I worked for a couple of years as a waitress in a Pakistani restaurant, where I learned a few tricks. One was throwing a few cardamom pods in basmati rice before cooking. It gives a very subtle cardamom aroma that goes really well with spicy foods such as the cauliflower curry.

And Bryant Terry had me pickling watermelon rinds this summer, with his Vegan Soul Kitchen, which was fun and nifty, but I find it tastes quite like chutney, so I figured I’d crack one of my jars open for this.

Now, back to work!

So I was leafing through that, and Veganomicon, and contemplating what I needed to “get rid of” including a large stack of chickpea cutlets, that’d frankly take me years to get through were I to eat them all as is. Then it came to me:

I would combine the Veganomicon enchilada recipe, which calls for a tomato-based chile sauce, with the basic idea for the Viva Vegan enchilada filling, which calls for potatoes and chickpeas, except I’d replace the chickpeas with sliced up chickpea cutlets. That way I’d free up some of the freezer space currently taken up some of my many bags of frozen tomatoes and the chickpea cutlets,  some of the purple potatoes crowding my veggie bin and I’d put the huge $1 bunch of cilantro currently wilting in my fridge to good use. No need to buy anything, except for tortillas—which are in ready supply at the Mexican grocery on my corner. As an added bonus I’d get to play around with the epazote and Mexican oregano I’d picked up at the supermarket last week.
See, I live in what has got to be one of the most solidly Hispanic neighborhoods in the US, outside of maybe Miami. One of of the great things about Viva Vegan is that it gives me a manual for what to do with all those tempting, but slightly unfamiliar spices and ingredients I see at the stores all the time.

Anyway, I invited two friends over for Sunday brunch and served them the enchiladas, paired with a mixed green salad with a dressing similar to that of the Kaleslaw, only I also blended some spinach and mint leaves into it to make it green and cool, then served with lime-mint water on the side. It turned out pretty fucking tasty, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, this is the haul (pre-sorting and washing):

And because I live alone and am in the habit of freezing the fresh veggies I don’t have the time to eat when I get them from the CSA and cooking large batches and freezing what I don’t eat, this is what my freezer looks like:

Which means I need to work on  putting a dent in what I have and get creative with what I’ve got in the next few weeks. Not that I think that should be very difficult.

Also, some cooking for friends is an order to consume all this. Starting with brunch tomorrow.

The chickpea cutlets are famously from Veganomicon. The green pea and leek puree is from Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen. I made both exactly according to recipe. It was all very tasty, though my tastes required some lime and Tabasco all over this to kick it up a notch. Terry calls these a mashed potato alternative in his book, and I’d say that’s about right. He also says the recipe gives about 4-6 servings, I’d say 3 servings are more like it, but then I’m a total hungry beast so…

And yeah, please excuse the reappearance of yesterday’s kaleslaw, as I said, I wanted to finish off whatever odds and ends were hanging around my fridge.

I’m trying to get in to the habit of proper “mise en place” before cooking a.k.a. lining all your ingredients up first, to eliminate frantic digs through your cabinet to find the cumin while the onions are burning on the stove.