Vegan Bake Sale for Japan!

This Saturday, April 2nd, my pals and I will be out in front of Bookshop Santa Cruz* from 11 am -3pm, selling a wide array of delicious vegan baked goodies. We'll have sweets and savories, including gluten-free and soy-free options.

100% of our funds will be going to Peace Winds Japan, a non-profit organization based in Japan. PWJ is already on the ground providing immediate relief to the people affected by the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis.

We've got lots of great bakers participating, but as for me, I will be making a tofu-asaragus tart, Chai Spice cupcakes, Lemon Cake Squares, Coconut-Lime cookies, Almond-Anise Biscotti, Double Chocolate Almond Cookies, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Ginger Cookies. YUMS!

Eat Your Travel Memories

A couple weekends ago, our little Santa Cruz vegan crewe got together for a "Make Something From a Country You've Visited" Potluck. It was awesome!

Having recently returned from India, I decided to try my hand at a classic South Indian dish: idli sambar. Idlis are little dumpling-type goodies made of fermented rice and dal, and are classically served with sambar, a thin well-spiced soup full of veggies. I've eaten my fair share of idli, but I had never attempted making them before. I found this recipe video online and pretty much followed it. It's very helpful! You cook some rice, you soak some dal, you mix it all together, & then you you let it stand overnight (or longer) to ferment. It's quite exciting!

Lucky for me, my aunt Sara lived in Tamil Nadu many years ago, and happens to own an idli steamer, which I was able to borrow. She also gave me the top notch tip that she learned while there, which was to use a little bit of cheesecloth between the tray and the batter. Here you can see, the next morning, when my batter was all poured into the tray, and the tray was ready to pop in the pot for steaming.

Presto magic! Here they are, fresh out of the steamer... I was really excited about how nicely they came out - pretty and delicious! It turns out that there was absolutely nowhere in this hippie town to get the right kind of dal for idli. I had brought some home with me, but not quite enough, so I also used some adzuki beans. The adzukis gave the idli a slight pinkish hue, and a slightly sweet flavor - both non-traditional, but also both very nice!

Along with the idli, I made a very nice, thick sambar soup - using one of the South Indian recipe books that I brought home with me from India. Idli and sambar are a traditional South Indian breakfast item... so even though it might seem more lunchy or dinnery to us, it's actually a perfect dish for brunch!

The Coldandsleepy family brought along this wonderful loaf of Bara Brith, a fruit bread from Wales. It was sort of reminiscent of a brioche or pannetone - a not-too-sweet dough full of sweet dried fruits. It was so totally delicious, and it wasn't long before it was also so totally gone.

Fancy Sophia has been to Senegal and she brought this lovely dish called Yassa Niebe. Evidently, this dish is usually made with chicken, but Sophia used black eyed peas instead. It was so delicious! The beans had a wonderful lemony flavor, which was quite a surprise and quite lovely.

Her pal Max, who has been to Martinique, made some amazing Avocado Aperitif - which was pretty much a super-green avocado smoothie with avos, cukes, and lime juice. It was great... everyone had a little juice glass of this beautiful green yumminess (along with coffee or tea and OJ, all the proper brunch beverages!).

Miss Alana brought lots of goodies - including this amazing Skordalia - a garlicky potato dip from Greece. I loved the warning she wrote on the pot luck tag: "Not for the faint of heart!" - ha! It had a lot of garlic, but nowhere near my threshold. I got some serious garlic tolerance, my friends. Serious.

Lucky her, she's also been to Indonesia, thus entitling her to bring some Gado-Gado peanut sauce to the party. I loved this stuff! It was thick and creamy and full of 5-star flavor... and served with crudite and sauteed tempeh squares. Seriously, those tempehs were gone in minutes! Sooo good, and a great potluck idea.

Most importantly, Alana has also been to Austria, so she made this Sachertorte - a chocolate cake with a layer of apricot jam inside. How is it possible that we had an entire vegan potluck with only one dessert??!! It's like some crazy vortex worm-hole of sugary baking madness was activated and sucked most of us into a stupor of savory foods. Thank god that creepy phenomena didn't affect Alana, or we wouldn't have enjoyed this delicious cake after our feast.

Here is our festive brunch spread!

Incidentally, our potluck was also held on Stevie Wonder Day - that is, the anniversary of the day we adopted our wonderful dog Stevie Wonder. Stevie is the most awesomest little sweet pea and she was really happy that we had a party on her special day. She got to enjoy all the company and attention. She loves to hang out in the backyard, but she especially loves it if she's got company. To show her appreciation and joy, she had a long freak-out of crazed squeaking on her favorite squeaky ball.

Not to be undone, Mr. Snuggles (aka Snoopy Snoppy) got up on Max's lap for some scritches and cuddles. I love how Sophia is looking so jealous... ha ha! Actually, Sophia is a Snoopy fan too, but maybe I captured her secret hidden emotions! :)

Lastly, here is a super cute picture of Stevie Wonder getting some lap snugs with Alana. I love this picture because Stevie looks so peaceful, and because you can see her super cute little pig belly. Pig Belly!

Happy Persian New Year!

NoRooz Spread!

Today is the first day of Spring, which means that today is also Persian New Year, also known as NoRooz. Happy New Year! Sale No Mobarak! It's my most very favorite holiday of the whole year. In addition to celebrating with deep cleaning the house, getting rid of unwanted stuff, setting up my haft seen table, and all that good stuff... I especially like to go all out in the kitchen and have a big Persian feast.

This year was a bit of a family affair, which was awesome. Last night my mom and my nephew came over to help out. My mom was delicately cutting off bits of orange peel, while my nephew CW was juicing the oranges. It was a herculean effort - he juiced about 3 cups by hand! Thanks, dude! *flick!*

Then, this morning I was up before the crack of dawn... chopping herbs, starting the soup, and getting busy in the kitchen. I had a pretty ambitious menu planned, but somehow everything stayed stress-free! One major factor in my peaceful morning was that my mom and her two sisters all arrived early to help out. I was so grateful to have their helping hands and companionship in the kitchen!

Ash e reshteh is the classic NoRooz soup - it's sort of like a delicious Persian version of minestrone: onions, garlic, beans, lentils, noodles, herbs galore, spinach, veggie broth, beets, spices... all cooked into a big glorious pot of healthy and delicious soup. It's one of my favorite NoRooz traditions and I always look forward to making it (and eating it!). It does take a little time, but a lot of it is just time while the soup is simmering away and you can be busy surfing the web or doing jumping jacks or whatever you like to do. (recipe here)

This lovely little salad is called the "Persian Pomegranate & Orange Blossom Fruit Dessert," from Silk Road Cooking. Simple and delicious! Oranges, orange juice, orange blossom water, pomegranate kernels, and a few other little goodies... just a wonderful little salad, and an excellent way to fulfill the Mandatory Fruit Salad At Every Brunch Party regulations.

By the way, you will see that I made a lot of great things from Silk Road Cooking by Najmieh Batmanglij this year. This is one of the most beautiful, enticing, inspiring and intellectually stimulating cookbooks I've ever seen. I love it so much. In truth, I have made a few duds from it, and I sometimes wonder if there's an occasional error in some of the recipes, but by and large the successes have far outweighed the duds, and even the duds still just leave me wanting to slightly tweak the recipe this way or that... I highly highly recommend this book for anyone who likes cooking unfamiliar dishes from around the world.

Shirazi salad - not really from any particular recipe - cukes, tomatoes, red onion, olives, parsley - tossed with a little olive oil, vinegar & pomegranate molasses dressing. Delicious!

"Amoli Rice Salad with Barberries & Orange Peel," again from Silk Road Cooking

I just bedazzled my rice! Isn't it lovely? This amazing sweet rice dish was the star of the show this morning - even though I realized, much later in the day, that I had completely forgotten to add the dressing. No worries - it was still full of spectacular flavors! It's got sliced almonds, raisins, barberries, orange peel & shredded carrot cooked with sugar & rice... all mixed together. Absolutely beautiful, and the combo of flavors was just as amazing on the palette. I'll definitely, definitely make this again. Maybe I'll even add the dressing next time, maybe not!

This is a big batch of Khorest Fesenjan, a savory dish with soy curls and onions and walnuts and pomegranate juice. Truth be told, I didn't think this was my best batch of Fesenjan, so I won't share the recipe I used. There's plenty left over (bad sign! ha ha!), so I'll see if I can tweak the leftovers in some desirable manner. :) I do love the combo of the textures in this dish though - the walnuts, the chewy seitan, the saucy sauce... hopefully I can come back another year with a tastier version to share!

KukuSabzi! I know this is a really crummy photo, but since it was one of the yummiest things I made today, I just had to include it. Kuku Sabzi is an omelette full of fresh herbs, chopped walnuts & barberries... and after years of experimenting with various ways to veganize it, I pretty much got it right last year - so I didn't mess with anything this time around! I use the omelette recipe from Vegan Brunch, but add in all the various herbs and such that make it kuku sabzi. Also, as you can see, I cook it up flat like a big frittata, rather than folding it in half. Sooooo good.

And the piece-de-resistance! Sabzi Polow! I followed my own recipe from a failed attempt a few years back... but thanks to a recent lesson from my wonderful Great Aunt Tashie, and a new non-stick pan, I finally achieved the perfect golden crust of rice that is an absolute imperative for Persian Rice. In fact, this crust is so special it even has its own name, tadigh. Everyone wants some of the tadigh, and it's notoriously difficult to get it right for newbie cooks in the world of Persian cuisine (like me!). Sabzi means veggies (or herbs), so this rice dish is a special spring time rice dish layered with copious amounts of finely minced fresh herbs, and is quite lovely. I steamed the rice for about 30 minutes... and I think next year I'll leave it on still a little longer so that even more of the rice has that perfect golden hue.

This is a little video of The Big Moment, in which I attempt to flip my rice out of the pot... not knowing whether it has worked or not. You will see my absolute manic levels of joy when the perfect tahdigh is revealed!

I made most of the desserts yesterday, since they could easily be done the day before. First up I made these delicious and very easy Tut - homemade marzipan with rosewater, rolled in sugar. So easy and soooooo yummy! I used this great recipe from My Persian Kitchen, which is a most excellent (non-vegan) persian culinary blog full of recipes and ideas. These were really really delicious and very easy *but messy!* to make, and I will most definitely make these again in years to come. In fact, I'll have a hard time making myself wait a whole year until I make them again!

Rayy Sweet Gingerbread (Nan-e Qandi) from Silk Road Cooking

These big gingerbread slabs are about 5-6 inches wide, and about a foot long each. According to the recipe they were supposed to be crisp and crunchy, which I was really looking forward to, but instead mine turned out quite cakey. I'm pretty good at following a recipe, so there must be some misprint in there. I might do some tweaking though, because the flavor was very nice and worth a little persistence. I like that they have fresh serrano peppers in the batter!

Of course I also made my annual batch of Sohan As-Ali, a rosewater-saffron-almond brittle, sprinkled with pistachios with absolutely out-of-this-world flavor. First you just get the sweet, but it's almost immediately followed by the subtle aromatics of the rosewater and the very particular taste of saffron. So good. (confession, I am reusing a picture from last year!). This year, I really got the recipe right - perfecting my total veganization of the treat (removal of honey) - and with the help of a candy thermometer I got a perfect crisp snap to the brittles. Mmmm!

"Coconut Lemon Tart with Toasted Almond Crust" from Modern Vegetarian Kitchen

In addition to today's holiday, tomorrow is also my dad's birthday! If there were an official fan club for Fans of Lemon & Lime-Based Desserts, Especially Pies - I think my dad could be president. When I was growing up, we never had dessert at home, but my dad often liked to make this joke after dinner: "And now, there's lemon merengue pie for dessert, right?" - which always got a chuckle out of my mom. So, I made this amazing lemon tart for my Daddy! In keeping with the NoRooz theme, I looked up how to say "Happy Birthday Daddy" in Farsi, and wrote it on top. It turned out pretty well, considering I had no idea what I was writing, and I had to write right-to-left! :)

Here's the three of us together: my awesome dad, his birthday lemon tart, and me!

It was such a great morning, and I feel lucky to have so many beloved people to celebrated my adopted holiday with me. And now, after 4 1/2 hours of cooking this morning, please excuse me while I go heat up some leftovers for dinner! :)

Happy New Year to Everyone!

Deeelicious Dinners

Even though I don't blog everyday, I DO actually eat everyday. More than once. So, now, I've got a nice little backlog of various delicious dinners of late. Now that spring is right around the corner, I am trying to use up various goodies from my pantry and freezer, to make way for all the fresh corn and fresh tomatoes and other glorious goodies that will soon be back.

Classic Black Bean & Veggie Chili from "Appetite for Reduction," Isa's newest book. As you'll see, I've made a few things from this book now, and I really like them. The recipes are great for weeknight dinners where you want something healthy, yummy, and ready in under and hour. This really is a simple little chili recipe, but it's quite tasty, and chock full of veggies, which is perfect for me!

Although it's not pictured, I also made the Chipotle Chili with Sweet Potatoes & Brussels Sprouts from AfR (except I used kabocha squash in place of sweet potatoes), and that one we really, really loved. Probably my new favorite chili recipe of all time. And I was probably too busy eating it to take a picture of it.

Also from Appetite for Reduction, Chickpea Piccata. I loved Isa's suggestion to serve it with mashed cauliflower-potatoes (aka Caulipots) & over arugula. What a fun dinner! It felt so fancy, but it really wasn't all that complicated. Honestly, those caulipots are sooooooo good.

Indonesian Corn Chowder & Grilled Tofu

Last summer, I took a bunch of ears of perfect raw corn and cut off all the kernels and popped them into little ziplock baggies, and then into the freezer. All so that I could put corn in my chili in February, and make a whole pot of Indonesian Corn Chowder (from Healthy Hedonist) in the first week of March. Excellent! Alongside the chowder I made some grilled tofu marinated with Indonesian shallot marinade (adapted from a tempeh recipe in Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian). Both were so delicious, and made a great combo together. So nice to have some summery flavors in the middle of winter!

I guess I've been in a soupy mood. It must be all the nice rainy days we've been having. Here you see a big bowl of classic Minestrone Soup. I sort of base my recipe off of Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen, but I use the recipe for the variation where you boil all your beans and the soup takes hours to make, except that I just use pre-boiled beans out of my freezer. Easy peasy! Plus I got to use up some of my oddly VAST collection of mini pasta shapes in the cupboards. Apparently I cannot resist buying mini pasta shapes, even if I have no planned use for it.

Sambar & Chickpea Curry

Using one of the South Indian cookbooks I brought home from India with me (it's called Southern Spice), I cooked up this tasty little dinner! Honestly, this sambar wasn't my favorite sambar recipe, but obviously, even a mediocre sambar is still mighty delicious. It's not like we didn't eat it all, folks. But that Chickpea Curry was another story. Chock full of coconut and curry leaves that stuff was over the moon delicious. Sooooo good, and definitely something I will make again.

My awesome friend Gabrielle surprised me with a copy of Kansha, the recently published all-vegan Japanese cookbook. It is so beautiful, it's practically just a coffee table book. But luckily, it's a cookbook too. So, post-holidays, home from India... I finally cracked it open with some serious intent to make something. My package of udon noodles called to me from the cupboards, and I settled on Udon Noodle Soup. Isn't it lovely?

Here it is after it's all mixed up together and ready for eating! You can see that this is Mr. Vegan Eats and Treat's bowl, not mine, because of his insitence upon using a fork/spoon, and not chopsticks. I'm just fine with chopsticks, I think they're fun! This soup was great... but unfortunately not my total fave. Mr. VE&T loved it, but he's more a mushroom fan than I am. I've come a long way in healing my once-estranged relationship with mushrooms, but this was still a little heavy on the 'shrooms for my taste. Also, I accidentally overcooked my udon noodles a little, which made me grumpy! Still it was a yummy dinner, and would be probably be heaven for a mushroom lover who knows how to cook udon noodles properly!

Middle Eastern Feastern!

Foul Mudammas, Baba Ghanoush, and Eggplant Caviar & Pita Breads

Last but not least, my masterpiece of weeknight dinners! A multi-dish offering of homemade pita breads, and three different spreads. I made homemade pitas once before... and while they were totally delicious, they did not poof. This time I used the recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food - which suggested preheating the oven and the baking sheet to 500 F for 20 minutes before baking. As you can see, it worked! I got Perfect Pocket Poof. The recipe made a lot (18?), so all the pitas we didn't eat went into the freezer to maintain their freshness. I'll definitely make these again, they were fun and delicious!

Also I used up some good pantry items - a big jar of grilled eggplant chunks and a big can of fava beans to make these delicious dips: Foul Mudammas, Baba Ghanoush, and Eggplant Caviar. As it turned out - they were a perfect trio! The Foul was thick and tangy - with garlic and lemon, the Baba Ghanoush was mild and rich with tahini and smoky grilled eggplant, and the Eggplant Caviar was fresh and light with fresh herbs and grilled eggplant. The best thing to do was to stuff equal amounts of all three spreads into a pita pocket and chow down! Obviously, this was a pretty ambitious meal for a weeknight... I think we ended up eating dinner around 10:30, but we're down with that. Luckily, there was tons of food and I got two more lunches out of all this goodness. Just remembering this meal makes me wish I could eat it right now... it was an incredible dinner!

Valentines for Four

First we made a dinner date with our friends Max & Sophia, and then we realized it was Valentine's Day... Oh well! Sophia and I decided we weren't gonna let a little holiday like Valentine's Day get in the way of our friendly time! We'd just celebrate friendly love and boyfriend love! But, naturally enough, we stuck with the theme, because themes are fun.

Here's the table all set and ready to eat. Of course there were little old-fashioned heart place cards for everyone.

Sophia and Max were in charge of salad - and they made a delicious and gigantic salad with roasted beets and blood oranges and fennel. Isn't it just lovely? The blood oranges were extra super yummy too....

For our main entree, I made a big batch of stuffed shells... which are all hidden under the tomato sauce on top. The stuffing was a combo of tofu ricotta, sauteed spinach, caramelized onions, and cooked up mushrooms. Very yumsy-yums. I used to always put Isa's Pine Nut Cream (from Veganomicon) on my stuffed shells, lasagnas, etc - until my unfortunate pine nut incident. So this time, I followed the recipe for Pine Nut Cream, but used cashews instead. Guess what? It's totally magical and delicious! Hoorah! All in all, these stuffed shells were a total hit and there was not even one left over by the end of dinner. :) Plus, I got to use my heart-shaped dish, which is always fun.

We both contributed something for dessert, because we love dessert, and because we love making dessert, and because it was Valentines Day - which means you must have sweeties on the menu. I made mini cherry pies using cherries I had pitted and frozen way back in the middle of last summer. Smart thinking, former self! Sophia made some crazy delicious almond ice cream, complete with toasted almond slivers in it. SO GOOD. Sophia is a vegan ice cream master mind.

Of course, we are both sneaky, so without any discussion, we BOTH decided to make surprise chocolate truffles. Ha! Good plan! You can never have too many chocolate truffles. I made the nut butter truffles from Bryanna Clark Grogan's excellent blog - using tahini and amaretto. Sophia made Chocolate Raspberry truffles. Mine were a lot more firm than hers, and obviously the flavors were quite different - so luckily this gave everyone good reason to sample them all!

It was really fun sharing our Valentines Day together with Sophia and Max! :)