SPICE ISLAND VEGAN

Vegan Pomelo/Grapefruit Salad (Happy Lunar New Year!)

2012-01-22T15:13:00.000-08:00

Happy Lunar New Year! The Year of the Dragon! This weekend, if you are roaming around China town, Vietnamese town, Thai town, etc. you will see a lot of Pomelos, Kumquats, Oranges, and Tangerines. When I start seeing pomelos in Asian markets, I know that it is close to Tết (lunar new year). Then, I start thinking about making pomelo salad. If there is no pomelo in your area, you can use grapefruit instead. Pomelo is larger than grapefruit, can weight from 2-4 lbs, but it is not as tart as grapefruit. The fruit looks like this:

It is huge and has a very thick skin, about 1/2 to 1 inch thick. Here are videos I found in youtube: How to Cut, Peel, and Eat Pomelo (including the horror movie music background) and Peeling the Pomelo. For this salad, I shredded the pomelo sections/pulps after they are peeled (the white skin part was removed). The inside of my pomelo was white instead of pink such as it was in the videos.

Now, why should I make a salad dish in winter time? This should be a summer dish, right? We should all be eating soups, right? The reason is that citrus is in season now and it contains a lot of vitamin C, such as the pomelo above. It is time to eat CITRUS so we can fight colds that are common during winter. I also have a lot of fresh limes from my tree. I will need fresh limes for my pomelo salad. Pomelo and lime contain a double dose of vitamin C. This diet works since I am proud to say that I haven't had any cold in more than 1 year now. Actually, I don't remember the last time I had any cold.

The ingredients of pomelo salad are:

From top left, clockwise: shredded pomelo(in blue bowl), carrots, cucumber, aburaage, mint leaves, cilantro leave, beansprouts.

Vegan Pomelo/Grapefruit Salad
Serve 4-6

2-3 cups shredded pomelo or grapefruit (it depends on the size of the pomelo, it can be from 1 to 2 pomelos after it is cut and peeled)
2 cups carrots, cut into matchsticks
2 cups cucumber, cut into matchsticks
1 cup aburaage or firm tofu, cut into matchsticks
Note: I used seasoned aburaage (one for inari) but you can use unseasoned aburaage or shredded fried tofu
2 cups beansprouts
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint leaves
1/4 cup chopped cilantro leaves
1/2 cup chopped roasted peanuts, 1-2 tablespoons more for the toppings
1/4 cup fried shallots, optional
Note: Below is the picture of fried shallots I bought at an Asian market. It is crunchy and savory. If you can't find it, you can substitute with French's French Fried Onions but fried shallots are the preference.

Salad dressing:
1/3 cup fresh squeezed lime juice (from 3-4 limes)
1/3 cup vegetarian soy sauce or light soy sauce
1/4 to 1/3 cup agave nectar, depending how sweet you like it
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 minced serrano chili or Thai chili
Note : for less spicy, use 1/2 chili

Combine the salad ingredients in a large bowl. Don't mix the dressing until about ready to serve. Note: I often store the combined salad ingredients in the fridge without the dressing and add the dressing before serving.
Combine the salad dressing in a separate bowl, mix well.
Pour salad dressing slowly into the salad and toss well. Add chopped peanuts on top. Serve.

This salad is very refreshing. It is sour, sweet, peanuty, minty, limey, and oniony. I just love it. It is also light. There is no oil in the dressing so if you are cutting oil after all those meals during the holidays, you will appreciate this salad (use plain firm tofu instead of aburage and omit the fried shallots).

Vegan Caterpillar Roll

2012-01-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

Vegan Caterpillar Sushi Roll

This blog was inspired by my recent visit to San Diego. I searched for a vegetarian restaurant in the area using the Internet and was directed to Sipz Fusion Vegetarian Restaurant. After reading a few reviews, I was interested to try their variety of vegan sushi. I haven't had sushi for a while and was excited to try several kinds of vegan sushi from this restaurant.

Unfortunately, when we arrived to the restaurant during lunch time, we were told that they didn't serve vegan sushi until after 5 pm. Bummer! What a disappointment! We had to go home that day and won't be back to Sipz that night. Apparently, the sushi chef is a different chef from the restaurant's. He rented a space in the corner of the vegetarian restaurant to make sushi every night. Oh well! We ordered other dishes and had delicious and yummy food. Don't take me wrong, Sipz is a really good restaurant and it was crowded, too. We'll be back some day for the vegan sushi. We consumed other lunch dishes that day instead.

Hence, I still didn't have any sushi. So I decided to take their sushi menu home. It says on the menu that their Caterpillar Roll is "Everybody's favorite!": I decided to create my own Caterpillar Roll at home and got the idea from the menu which says: Inside - teriyaki flavored shitake mushroom, yam, cucumber. Outside - avocado, sesame, teriyaki sauce.

I also want to take this opportunity to introduce a different kind of rice for sushi rice. In the past, I blogged about making sushi here and here. I was using short grain brown rice and quinoa. However, DH thinks that he still likes sushi better with white short grain sushi rice than brown short grain brown rice. Since I am trying to avoid white short grain rice, I came up with the idea of using semi brown short grain rice. The Japanese successfully created a healthier semi brown short grain rice called Haiga. Haiga rice is neither white or brown, it is in between or so called semi brown. The rice bran was meticulously removed and the nutritious rice germ was left intact. It is perfect for a healthy sushi rice.

Vegan Caterpillar Roll
Makes 2 large rolls

Teriyaki Sauce:
You can always purchase a store-bought teriyaki sauce. Below is what I came up with.
1/3 cup Kombu dashi (recipe below) or vegetable broth
1/3 cup Japanese soy sauce
1 Tbsp. Dark Mushroom Soy Sauce
1/3 cup Aji Mirin or other kind of mirin
2 Tbsp Agave Nectar
1 tsp. Toasted Sesame Oil
2 tsp. Cornstarch

Direction:

Combine all the ingredients in a small pot. Stir to combine thoroughly.
Bring to a boil, turn down the heat to low and simmer for 6 minutes.
The mixture will thicken slightly. Let it cool.

Kombu Dashi:
You can always use vegetable broth. However, I found that adding kombu and dried shitake mushrooms will add a lot of umami.

6-8 cups water
1 large piece of kombu
8-10 dried shitake mushroom
Direction:

Combine all ingredients in a medium pot.
Bring to a boil, turn heat to low, let it simmer for 30 minutes.
Take out kombu and shitake mushrooms (remove the stems and use the mushrooms for other cooking such as this roll).

Haiga Sushi Rice:
1 1/4 cups Haiga Rice
1 1/2 water
3-4 Tbsp. Organic Seasoned Rice Vinegar
1 Tbsp. Aji Mirin or other kind of mirin
3/4 Tbsp. Agave Nectar
1/2 tsp. salt

Direction:

Rinse haiga rice, drain. Combine rice and water in a medium sauce pan and let it soak for 30 minutes.
Cover tightly and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 30-40 minutes until water is absorbed. Remove from heat. Note: you can also cook this rice in a rice cooker with 'semibrown' setting.
Dump the rice into a wide shallow bowl. Combine rice vinegar, mirin, agave nectar, and salt in a small bowl. With a wide spatula or a rice paddle, slice into rice at a 45 degrees angle while pouring the rice vinegar mixture. Continue to combine and slice rice clumps until all the rice vinegar mixture is combined with the rice.
Use a magazine or a paper fan, fan the rice to cool while stirring for about 5-8 minutes. This method will combine the flavor and give the sushi rice a nice gloss.
Cover with a damp kitchen towel while preparing other ingredients.


Caterpillar roll ingredients: Avocado, cooked shitake mushrooms, teriyaki sauce, cucumber, yam

Ingredients (Caterpillar Roll):
1 large ripe Avocado
4-6 cooked shitake mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cucumber, sliced lengthwise
1/2 yam (Jewel or Garnett yam)
Haiga sushi rice, recipe above
2 -3 Toasted nori for sushi
Toasted sesame seeds
Teriyaki sauce
Sriracha hot sauce
Direction:

Steam yam in a food steamer for 20 minutes. Check for firmness while steaming as each yam is different in sizes. Don't let it be too mushy. It needs to be cooked but still firm. Let it cool, peel, and slice lengthwise similar to the cucumbers.
Add 1-2 Tbsp. teriyaki sauce to sliced mushrooms. Set it aside.
Cut the avocado in half, remove the pit, peel and slice the avocado horizontally as pictured below. I learned from this youtube video on how to arrange the avocado on top of the roll.

Rolling the Caterpillar:
I use a bamboo sushi rolling mat that I bought from a Japanese market. I covered it in a plastic bag so the rice won't stick to it. I will explain the process below. However, you can watch this youtube video showing the process of rolling a caterpillar sushi. It is actually quite fun making this roll.


Put sushi rice with wet hand on bamboo sushi mat. Spread and pat it down.

Add nori on top and arrange the filling (yam, cucumber, teriyaki flavored shitake mushrooms) on the bottom half.

Roll with the bamboo mat tightly until a firm roll is achieved (see youtube for a demo).

Add avocado slices in the same direction and rolled into the rice roll.

Sprinkle with sesame seeds and cut in pieces with a sharp clean damp knife.

Arrange on a plate and drizzle with teriyaki and sriracha hot sauce.

Sliced caterpillar roll on its side.

If it seems that it is hard to make this dish, it is actually not if you use short cuts by buying a store-bought teriyaki sauce and avoiding to make the kombu dashi. This dish is quite easy to make once you got the hang of rolling sushi and it is quite delicious and filling.

Vegan Adas Polow

2012-01-08T13:50:00.000-08:00

Traditionally, Adas Polow is a Persian dish of cooked basmati rice with lentils, ground lamb or beef, currants, dates, onions, and spices. However, I've been to several Persian restaurants that served this dish vegetarian style, i.e. without the ground meat. It is so delicious and satisfying. DH loves this dish very much. I perused the Internet to study how to make this dish. I opted to use my fancy smanzy rice cooker to cook the rice instead of the boiling method that used by Persians.

The cooked basmati rice to be used for this dish is not supposed to be sticky. I learned a new trick that if the uncooked basmati rice is rinsed in cold water a lot of times until the water runs clear, the rice won't stick together when they are cooked in a rice cooker or in a pot. The starch in raw rice is the cause of the stickiness. Another trick I found out is to take the rice out and spread them on a cookie sheet to cool right after the rice cooker beeped to tell you that it is done (or when it switches to Keep Warm mode).

Ingredients, left to right, clockwise: chopped onions, cooked brown lentils, basmati rice, currants, and dates.

The currant I used is the Zante currant which is smaller than raisin. I bought these at a Persian market. If you can't find currants, you may use raisins. It the raisins are large, they can be cut in halves. The thing is I want them in similar size as the lentils. I also cut the dates in small pieces, the same size as the lentils. Food that is uniform in size looks better and tastes better.

Now, I also used saffron as a spice in this dish. Saffron is very expensive but a small amount of it goes a long way. There are different grades of saffron. They are just like diamonds. I think I used the medium grade, it costs me $10.99 for 2 oz. The higher grade costs $19.99 for that much of saffron. I mixed 1/2 tsp of saffron with 2 tablespoon water.

According to Wiki, this is how saffron is graded:
Saffron is graded via laboratory measurement of crocin (colour), picrocrocin (taste), and safranal (fragrance) content.^[30] Determination of non-stigma content ("floral waste content") and other extraneous matter such as inorganic material ("ash") are also key. Grading standards are set by the International Organization for Standardization, a federation of national standards bodies. ISO 3632 deals exclusively with saffron and establishes four empirical colour intensity grades: IV (poorest), III, II, and I (finest quality). Samples are assigned grades by gauging the spice's crocin content, revealed by measurements of crocin-specific spectroscopic absorbance. Absorbance is defined as $A λ = - log(I / I 0)$ , with $A λ$ as absorbance (Beer-Lambert law) and indicates degree of transparency ( $I / I 0$ , the ratio of light intensity exiting the sample to that of the incident light) to a given wavelength of light.

Vegan Adas Polow
Serve: 6

6 cups cooked basmati or brown basmati rice
1 1/2 cups brown lentil, soaked in 3 cups of warm water
1 onions, chopped
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
1/8 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp saffron, dissolved in 2 Tbsp. water
3/4 cup currants
3/4 cup chopped and pitted dates
1 Tbsp. Olive oil
4-5 Tbsp. melted vegan butter

Method:

Caramelized onions.

Soak lentils in warm water for 15 minutes, then simmer in low for 15 minutes. Drain. The lentils should be soft but not mushy.
Meanwhile, while the lentils are being simmered, saute onions in 1 Tbsp olive oil on medium low heat for 45 minutes. This is to caramelize the onions. Keep turning them so they don't become burnt. At the end of 45 minutes, the onions should look like the picture above.
Then, add the salt, spices, currants, and dates. Mix well for a few minutes, add the drained lentils and mix.
In the pot used to cook the rice or the rice cooker pot, add 1 Tbsp melted vegan butter and swirl it around to cover the bottom of the pot, add a layer of cooked rice.
Add a layer of currants, dates, and lentil mixture.
Add a layer of cooked rice, drizzle with 1 Tbsp melted vegan butter.
Repeat step 5 and 6 and end with a layer of cooked rice on top.
Drizzle the saffron and its soaking water over the rice. This is going to make some of the rice to become yellow.
Cook the entire dish on low for 30 minutes or turn on your rice cooker (about 30 minutes cooking time) then serve warm.

Drizzle saffron soaking water at the end, on top.

My Persian friend told me that if I continuously hit the cook button on my rice cooker, it will create TADIQ which is browned, crispy, crunchy basmati rice on the bottom of the pot. I actually love tadiq and have had some at restaurants. Unfortunately, my rice cooker is too fancy because it has the non-stick pot and computer that won't burn rice. I tried several times and it didn't create the tadiq. I have to cook it traditionally using the aluminum or stainless steel pot to create tadiq. If your rice cooker has an aluminum pot, it may work.

There are other ways to cook basmati rice:

Heat 4 1/2 water until it is boiling (may add salt in water) in a medium pot, then add 3 cups of uncooked basmati rice (rinsed and drained). Cover and simmer in low heat for 20 minutes.
Remove the lid, wrap the lid with a kitchen towel and place it over the pot, tightly. Remove from heat and set it aside for 30 minutes. Fluff it with a fork to cool off.

Or you can watch this video how Indians cook their basmati rice in a boiling water and then drain the rice. Their method works great also and produces non-sticky rice.

Drunken Eye of the Goat

2011-12-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

Drunken Eye of the Goat beans

Happy New Year! I am posting a recipe for Drunken Eye of the Goat. No, I am not crazy and eating goat's eyes....ha ha....I am still a vegetarian. Eye of the Goat is an heirloom bean. My hubby got a super awesome gift from his boss for Christmas. It was a bag with 4 packages of heirloom beans and a bottle of New Mexico Chili Powder from Rancho Gordo, Napa Valley, California. You can order on-line from this company or look for their products at a farmers market or any specialty store listed here. One type of the heirloom beans we received was the 1 lb. Eye of the Goat or Ojo de Cabra beans. I was racking my brain and searching for recipes to make something out of these beans.

Finally, I decided that the Eye of the Goat beans are similar to pinto beans. I decided to make 'Drunken Beans' and came out with the recipe below. The word 'drunken' also came to my mind since it is close to New Year (not that I am going to be drunk eating this bean dish). These beans were cooked in beer (can be non-alcoholic). Hence, we found out that it is also good to eat this dish with a bottle of beer (maybe that's how people got drunk eating this dish, ha!).

One thing that is really important is to SOAK the dry beans overnight. Here is a picture of the Eye of the Goat beans after soaking overnight. This heirloom bean doesn't come in uniform sizes. One bean can be smaller than the other. It is kind of odd looking bean and kind of pretty too.

Soaked Eye of the Goat beans

Drunken Eye of the Goat
Serve: 6-8
I used a slow-cooker but a slow cooking method on the stove can be done also.

1 lb. Eye of the Goat beans or regular pinto beans, dry
1 piece of kombu, 2 by 3 inches
Note: This is for cooking the bean, to add nutrients and improve digestibility i.e. reduce intestinal gas
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 Tbsp. minced garlic
6 slices Veggie Bacon (I use Lightlife Smart Bacon), chopped in small pieces
1 tsp. Chipotle chili powder (can use 1/2 tsp for less spicy)
1 tsp. New Mexican Red Chili Powder
Note: you can buy any New Mexico red chili powder in hispanic market
1 tsp. Smoked Paprika
3 tsp. dried oregano leaves
2 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. canola oil + 2 tsp. sesame oil or 4 tsp. canola oil
12 oz. (a bottle) beer (can be non-alcoholic)
10 oz. Ro-Tel (diced tomatoes with green chilies in a can), include the juice
Note: you can use any other diced tomatoes with green chilies. It's just that I like to use this smaller can of diced tomatoes for the beans.
1 cup vegetable broth or broth from cooking beans
salt to taste
Note: I was very careful with the salt since the veggie bacon, ro-tel, and vegetable broth have a lot of salt in it already. I used just about 1/2 tsp salt. Please taste first before adding more salt..

Sauteed onions, garlic, veggie bacon, and spices

First and foremost, SOAK the beans overnight (as I mentioned above).
Drain the soaked beans and place in a pot, add water so that the water level is about 1/2 inch above the beans. Add the kombu into it. Do not add salt to the water. Heat in high temperature. When it starts boiling, start your timer and turn down to a simmer for 20 minutes. Turn it off and set aside.
While the beans are simmering, saute onions, garlic, and chopped veggie bacon in medium high for 5 minutes.
Add chipotle powder, New Mexican Red Chili Powder, Smoked Paprika, dried oregano leaves, and ground cumin. Saute for another 10 minutes in a low heat. Set aside and turn off the heat.
Prepare your slow cooker or cooking pot. Drain beans (save the bean cooking water) and place them in the ceramic bowl of your slow cooker or the cooking pot. Add the Ro-Tel tomatoes and beer. Then, add the sauted veggie bacon, onions, garlic, and spices mixture. Combine thoroughly.
Pour some of the bean broth or vegetable broth over your pan to pick up or scrape the bits and pieces of onions or veggie bacon that stuck to the pan.
Add enough vegetable broth or bean cooking broth to cover the beans (I added about 1 cup).
Do not add salt at this time but simmer this mixture until beans are tender. If using a slow cooker, cook 6 hours on high or 8 - 10 hours on low.
When beans are tender, taste for salt and add as necessary.
Finally, I use a potato masher to smash the beans (I only do it about 10 times) but do not smash all of them so some beans are still whole and some are smashed. Then stir to combine. This is a trick I use when cooking beans so that the beans are creamier and the bean flavor comes out to the pot liquor(bean broth). But some people like their beans whole. If you are those people, you can omit this step.

I can say that this is the BEST bean dish I have ever cooked. We ate it with soy chicken mole. Serving it, I started with warm and soft corn tortilla, add drunken beans on top, add soy chicken mole, and topped with fresh sliced avocado. I served it with a side salad and a bottle of beer (red ale O'Doul). It was really YUMMO! You can also serve it with hot cornbread and a side salad or even brown rice (rice and beans is the perfect meal).


Drunken beans topped with soy chicken mole and avocado

I would like to thank hubby's boss for this treat, for teaching us about heirloom beans, and for showing us the website where to buy them. We both thoroughly enjoyed this dish. It was the best Christmas gift we received this year. I didn't know that heirloom beans can be so good. If you are into beans, I recommend visiting this Rancho Gordo site and read all about heirloom beans. They are pretty interesting, pretty to look, and delicious. Other than the Eye of the Goat, we received 1 lb. each of Ayocote NEGRO (Black Runner Beans), Good Mother Stallard beans, and Runner Cannellini beans. Anyone has any idea or recipe to cook them? Let me know and I will blog it. :-)

Sambal Tomat(Spicy Javanese Tomato Sambal)

2011-11-19T12:34:00.000-08:00

Sambal Tomat

I grew up eating sambal and still have the habit of using this condiment when I eat Asian dishes (especially Indonesian dishes). It's basically, like the use ketchup in the US, Indonesians eat sambal with everything.

The description of sambal in wikipedia:

Sambal is a chili based sauce which is normally used as a condiment. Sambals are popular in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the southern Philippines and Sri Lanka, as well as in the Netherlands and in Suriname through Javanese influence. It is typically made from a variety of chili peppers and is sometimes a substitute for fresh chilis. It can be extremely spicy for the uninitiated. Some ready-made sambals are available at exotic food markets or gourmet departments in supermarkets in many countries.

The West has just incorporated sambal in their cooking. The most popular one in the US that is used in Food Network TV and by well known chefs is Sambal Oelek. Oelek means grinding or pounding. According to Wiki: Oelek is a Dutch spelling which in modern Indonesian spelling has become simply ulek; both have the same pronunciation. Ulek is Indonesian special stoneware derived from common village basalt stone kitchenware still ubiquitous in kitchens, particularly in Java.

Traditionally, to make sambal, Javanese use a mortar and pestle like this one to grind or ulek the ingredients.

There are all kinds of sambals and this blog is only talking about one of the varieties, the vegetarian kind: sambal tomat (with tomatoes). The basic ingredients of sambals are fresh hot red or green chillies, shallots, garlic, salt, and something sour like lime, lemon, tamarind, or vinegar and something sweet may be added, too. Then, other ingredients are added to it which can be several vegetarian ingredients such as small eggplants, watercress, nuts, or fruit OR non-vegetarian ingredients such as shrimp, anchovies, or meat. For example, I blogged about Sambal 'Udang' ('Shrimp' Chili Paste) in the past (without the real shrimp, of course, but I added dulse flakes or nori flakes to create the 'seafoody' flavor).

Sambal Oelek is vegetarian but this is not the most popular kind in Indonesia. The most popular sambal in Java is Sambal Terasi or Sambal Bajak. Those contain terasi/belachan or shrimp paste. If you are a vegetarian and would like to buy a bottle of sambal in an Asian market, please check the label for shrimp paste or anchovies first.

Sambal Tomat ingredients from left, clockwise: shallots, garlic cloves, tomatoes, New Mexico Chili (reconstituted), dark palm sugar, tamarind pulp, red Thai Chili (Bird's Eye chili), no shrimp paste.

I love making my own sambal instead of buying a bottle from the Asian market because it tastes better home made. DH also prefers my home made sambal instead of the bottled Sambal Oelek. I also don't have to worry about reading the label to find out if the sambal is vegetarian or not. Also, to be honest, I admit that I cannot eat HOT or EXTREMELY SPICY sambal anymore. The level of heat that I can take has reduced after years living in the US. By making my own sambal, I can control how many chili I can put into the sambal. Therefore, the recipe below is not that hot. I added New Mexico or California Chili to retain the red hot color but they reduce the heat level. It looks red and hot but it is not. It is a little bit on the sweet side also because of the ripe tomatoes, New Mexico chili, and dark palm sugar.

Sambal Tomat (Spicy Javanese Tomato Sambal)

2 cups chopped ripe tomatoes (about 2 to 3 tomatoes)
3 Dry New Mexico or California Chili
5 red Thai Peppers or Bird's Eye Chili (add more to raise the heat level)
6 shallots, peeled
12 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. canola oil
2 Tbsp. palm sugar or dark brown sugar
1/2 inch cube tamarind pulp or juice of 1 small lime
1/8 tsp. white pepper
1 tsp. white miso (optional)

Remove the stems and seeds from the New Mexico or California chillies and then soak them in hot water. Put a bowl on top to push down the chilis (tend to float up) into the hot water so that they stay immersed. This will take about 10-15 minutes. Drain the softened chillies, but reserve the water.
Soak tamarind pulp into 1/4 hot water, set aside.
Chop the shallots, garlic, and Thai peppers into 1/4-inch pieces. Be very careful when chopping Thai Chili by using gloves or wash your hands right away
Put chili, shallots, garlic, and salt in a mini chopper/food processor or a mortar and pestle. If using a food processor, use the pulsing method. The texture needs to be roughly chopped instead of smooth like a paste. I like using a mortar and pestle and pound the ingredients since it produces the roughly ground texture(ulek). However, a food processor with pulsing method gives generally the same texture.

If you have a mortar and pestle, you can use it. Otherwise, a food processor will do.

Using a wok or frying pan, on a medium heat, stir fry the ground chili, shallots, garlic, and salt mixture with the canola oil. Keep stirring the ingredients for about 10 minutes. Be patience with this process since the long stir frying of spices is the key to delicious result. If the mixture sticks to the pan, add a little of the reserved chili soaking water (not too much that the mixture is soupy).
Add the chopped tomatoes, again, stir fry for about 10 minutes until tomatoes are disintegrated. Add just a little chili soaking water if the mixture sticks to the pan.

Add palm sugar/brown sugar, soften tamarind pulp (check seeds and remove) and the tamarind soaking water OR juice of 1small lime, and white pepper. Combine and stir fry 5 more minutes until the mixture is thickened. Taste for more salt if necessary.
Turn off heat and add the optional white miso. The miso adds the fermented taste to sambal. It adds more umami to the sambal, too. Combine thoroughly. Keep refridgerated for a week in a jar.

Sambal tomat is good to eat accompanying dry meals meaning a combination of fresh raw vegetables such as fresh sliced cucumbers, sliced tomatoes, raw green beans, raw cabbage wedges, lettuce pieces, etc. and steamed rice (nasi) plus some kind of fried food such as fried tempeh, fried tofu, or traditionally fried meat or fish. Eating raw vegetables with sambal and rice is called lalapan or nasi lalapan. Then, fried food is added to it. The idea is to dip the fried food or fresh veggie into the sambal and then eat it with the steamed rice. I served lalapan (with raw fresh veggies) with Nasi Gudeg as a dry meal in the previous blog. DH loves lalapan with my fresh sambal tomat. He is an American born who learned to enjoy Indonesian meals.

The tamarind block I bought from Asian market. If it is wrapped in plastic tightly and store in a room temperature, it lasts many months. Every time I need it, I just cut a small chunk and soak the pulp in a hot water.

Vegan Gudeg(Javanese Young Jack Fruit Curry with Tofu and Tempeh)

2011-11-12T11:58:00.000-08:00

Gudeg with Tempeh and Tofu (the triangle shapes on the left)

This is Indonesian Young Jack Fruit Curry called Gudeg. It is a famous and traditional dish from Yogyakarta, Central Java. The color and looks of it is not that appetizing and fools people to pass it by in a potluck. Hence, Javanese will recognize it right away and will dig into it. The savory aroma of the dish itself will attract people to try it. It contains coconut milk, palm sugar, and spices such as coriander, cumin, galanga, tamarind, Indian bay leaves, and candlenuts or kemiri. I served this dish with sambal tomat (spicy tomato chutney), tomato and cucumber slices, and rice on a bright yellow plate to make it more appetizing.

Yogyakarta is a city near Borobudur, a world known Buddhist temple built in 9th century. Tourists stop by and stay at Yogyakarta so they can visit Borobudur. Most of them will have the chance to try Gudeg. Traditionally, this dish contains chicken, boiled eggs, and young jack fruit. I decided to veganize it by using tofu and tempeh. It is served with steamed long grain rice or nasi (in Indonesian). We always call it Nasi Gudeg when ordering in a restaurant.

Cooking Gudeg may take hours and hours on a very low heat and it may take days. The spices and coconut milk need to be absorbed into the ingredients and Javanese will cook the gudeg until the young jack fruit turn dark brown and that the dish is dry. Although some people prefer it more saucey (it is optional to add more coconut milk or broth). I don't have time to cook Gudeg for hours and hours on a stove and afraid to leave the curry cooking on a stove unattended. I modernized the cooking method by using a crock-pot. It took about 14 HOURS and I had to suffer the long hours smelling the savory aroma that made me hungry.

I only can get the young jack fruit in a can in an Asian and Indian market. We share similar ingredients with Indian cooking so most of the time I can go to a small neighborhood Indian market to find the ingredients. I can buy young jack fruit, tamarind pulp, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, shallots, bay leaves, and coconut milk in an Indian market. However, palm sugar, candlenuts or kemiri, and galanga may only be available in other Asian markets such as Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese. You may substitute palm sugar with dark brown sugar, candlenuts or kemiri with macadamia nuts, and order galanga powder from an on-line market if you cannot find it fresh (use sparingly about 1/2 to 1 tsp of powder). BTW, galanga is not the same as ginger.

Below are pictures of young jack fruit and tamarind pulp:

Young Jack Fruit in a can soaked in brine

Tamarind sold as in block or pulp wrapped tightly in plastic

Here are Gudeg Spices:

From left corner, clockwise: Shallots, Bay Leaves, Coriander Seeds, Cumin Seeds, Dark Palm Sugar, Galanga, Tamarind Pulp, Candlenuts or Kemiri, and Garlic cloves in the middle

Vegan Gudeg( Javanese Young Jack Fruit Curry with Tofu and Tempeh)

Ingredients:

2 cans (20 oz each) Young Jack Fruit, drained, rinsed, and squeezed water out
8 oz super firm tofu, cut into triangle or rectangle shape
8 oz tempeh, cut into triangle or rectangle shape
2 cups coconut milk or light coconut milk

Spices:
5 shallots, peeled
10 candlenuts or kemiri
10 garlic cloves
1 Tbsp. coriander seeds
1/2 Tbsp. cumin seeds
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup palm sugar or brown sugar
1 inch square tamarind pulp, soaked in 1/3 hot water until soft
2 slices galanga or laos (1 inch slice each)
2 Indian bay leaves

Toast the coriander and cumin seeds on a low heat in a dry frying pan for 1-2 minute or until fragrant. Keep stirring to avoid burning. Set aside.
Slice jack fruit, lengthwise, following the grain. Set aside.
Put shallots, garlic, candlenuts or kemiri, toasted coriander and cumin seeds, and salt in a mini food processor or blender. Add a little water or vegetable oil and process until it becomes a paste.
Note: Traditionally, this is done in a mortar and pestle.
Stir fry the spice paste in a wok or frying pan on a medium heat. Keep stirring and add water or oil if it starts to stick to the pan. This process takes about 10 minutes (it is similar process when frying the spice paste in Korean Mushroom and Tofu Stew). Eventually, the spice paste turns a bit darker and it also becomes aromatic.
Add coconut milk, palm sugar, bay leaves, galanga and tamarind water and softened tamarind pulps (check for seeds and remove). Stir to combine and let it simmer.
Add tofu and tempeh into the curry sauce and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.
Take tofu and tempeh out of the curry sauce and place them on the bottom of the crock-pot.
Then, add cut up young jack fruit on top of them and, finally, on top, spread all of the curry sauce including the herbs. Set crock-pot on LOW and let it cook for 12-14 hours. You can stir it once but I recommend keeping the lid closed during the cooking process.
Serve with long grain steamed rice.

Cutting up young jack fruit

Stir frying spice paste

Simmering tofu and tempeh in curry sauce

Vegan Korean Mushrooms and Tofu Stew

2011-11-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

I am blogging about a Korean dish again! There is a story behind this dish. A few years ago, Jay and Julie Hasson took me to a Korean restaurant in Beaverton, OR. I forgot the name of that little restaurant. There was only 1 vegan item they can serve us which is a spicy tofu stew/hot pot. We ate it with rice and I remember that it was red but it was not that spicy. It was so delicious that it stuck in my mind.

So when recently, I discovered Vegan 8 Korean blog, I perused the recipes that Sunnie blogged and this stew looks like that one I ate at the Korean restaurant years ago. The Korean name of this dish is hard to pronounce: Dubu-Busut Jeongol (Vegan 8 Korean recipe). I did more research and found out that Jeongol means 'stew' or 'hot pot' that can be cooked on top of a butane stove on the dining table in a family gathering. There are all kinds of Jeongol so the ingredients are interchangeable. Dubu means tofu and busut is mushroom.

As Sunnie was saying in her blog, it looks red but it is not very spicy so don't be afraid! That reminds me of what I ate in that Korean restaurant years ago. It was not that spicy, it was red, but it was flavorful. When I first tried this recipe, I used King Oyster Mushroom which started to pop up in Asian markets around my house. Apparently, DH didn't really like this kind of mushrooms since it is chewy. I decided to change the ingredients by using the fresh softer oyster mushrooms, golden (brown) enoki mushrooms, and shitake mushrooms. I also didn't have soy bean sprouts but had some fresh spinach leaves. DH said that he liked it better the 2nd time I made it with these ingredients. One thing for sure about this dish is that it is EASY and FAST to make. It is also HEALTHY.

I also learned using Perilla Oil in cooking this stew. It is apparently rich of omega-3 fatty acid and alpha-linolic acid (ALA). So I am excited of using this oil in my Korean dish (Perila oil can be found in Korean market). You can always use sesame oil if you can't find perilla oil.

Below is a version of my Korean Jeongol. I used more kelp powder since I like the 'seafoody' flavor. You are welcome to reduce the amount.

Vegan Korean Mushrooms and Tofu Stew/Hot Pot

1 pkg. or 14.5 oz firm tofu, sliced

1 1/2 cup fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1 pkg. or 8 oz fresh enoki mushroom, torn up to pieces
2 large onion, sliced
1 cup packed fresh baby spinach
2 scallions, chopped
3 cups of vegetable broth (I use mushroom seasoning broth or vegan chiknish)
salt, if needed and if the veg broth is not salty enough.

Seasonings:
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tsp. kelp powder
2 Tbsp. Korean Chili Pepper or Gochugaru (can be reduced to 1 Tbsp to reduce spicyness)
3/4 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
2 Tbsp. Perrilla oil (or sesame oil if you can't find perrilla)

Put sliced tofu on the bottom of the hot pot or heavy cast iron pot (as pictured above)
Add onions over tofu then add all of the mushrooms over the onions.
Stir frying seasoning until fragrant.
In a heavy wok on a medium heat, add perilla oil, then kelp powder, soy sauce, Korean pepper powder, sugar and garlic (all seasonings ingredients). Stir fry for 10 minutes. Yes, really that long while stirring it to avoid sticking. According to Sunnie this will break down the powder and make the seasoning smooth in the broth. After a few minutes, you'll notice that it creates a savory fragrant.
Add the combined seasonings and vegetable broth into the pot of tofu, onions, and mushrooms. I only used 3 cups broth and it looks like that it is too little and it is barely there but actually after simmering all the mushrooms will shrink. Cover and simmer on low heat for 20 minutes. Add baby spinach and simmer for another 5 minutes. Taste and add salt as needed. When serving, add chopped scallions on top.

Serve this stew with my perfect brown rice and vegan furikake. It's a great comfort stew in a cool Fall day!

Korean Stir-fried Glass Noodle (Vegan Japchae)

2011-10-31T13:10:00.000-07:00

I love this dish! I was first introduced to it in a potluck before I became a vegetarian. I didn't know the name of the dish but I knew I liked it. Then, after I became a vegetarian, I saw this dish at Korean markets, packaged in clear plastic containers. In Korean markets, there is hardly any label or sign in English on the containers. Again, I still didn't know the name of this dish. I was afraid to buy it since I was not sure whether beef, shrimp, or chicken broth was used in the cooking process.

This year I encountered a vegan Korean blog(the one and only, I think): The Vegan 8 Korean. I love this blog and recommend it to you to check it out if you like Korean dishes. Voila! I saw the recipe of the mystery dish and tried it. It was very good! This dish is called Japchae. It is a dish that Koreans brought to parties, potlucks, and community events. The glass noodle is made of sweet potato flour and this kind of noodle is called Dangmyun (as pictured).

Now, I really appreciate that Sunnie from The Vegan 8 Korean took a picture of the Dangmyun. Otherwise, I would not have known how to find it in the Korean market. As I said, usually, there is no translation on Korean products so I am often at lost trying to find the ingredient. As you can see there is no English name on the package although there is a picture of the dish on the package which helped.
This is different than the Chinese Bean Thread noodle or cellophane noodle that is made of mung bean starch. The Dangmyun is thicker and stronger.

I also didn't understand why Sunnie stir fried each vegetable individually after each vegetable is cut into matchsticks. I thought that it will be quicker to do them all together. I did more research on Japchae and found out the reason from this blog: Herbivoracious who invited a friend, Alice of Savory Sweet Life, to blog about vegetarian Japchae. She says the following about stir frying each vegetable individually:

"My mother taught me the importance of making sure to stir-fry each ingredient individually. One could easily be tempted to add all the vegetables at once and fry them together. But by frying them individually, the flavor and color of each vegetable is preserved without any cross blending of the other ingredients. As a result, the frying pan becomes more seasoned as layers of umami build on each other. The final dish is a beautiful medley of noodles, colorful vegetables, and tofu. From an aesthetic point of view jap chae is one of the most beautiful dishes in Korean cuisine."

Right on! Thanks Alice for the tip. I agree that this dish is colorful and umami-ful. I also learned that by reading blogs, I can learn a lot about cooking and ethnicity of a dish. It is so much fun!

Below is my version of Japchae with Soy Curls. It is optional for using soy curls. I often make this dish without soy curls, but I think by now, vegetarians and vegans should all learn about how great Soy Curls can be.

Vegan Japchae with Soy Curls (Korean Stir-Fried Glass Noodle)

1/2 pkg. or 4 oz Soy Curls ,soaked in 1 1/4 cup hot water
1 Tbsp. veg broth powder (preferrably not salty one like Chiknish)
2 Tbsp. Hoisin Sauce or Teriyaki sauce
1/2 pkg. or 8.5 oz Dry Sweet Potato Starch Noodle or Dangmyun
Note: The package I bought is 17.5 oz and I used only half a package
1 cup sliced fresh shitake mushroom (I prefer to use fresh but you can use dried shitake mushroom and soaked in hot water for 15-20 minutes)
1 cup fresh baby spinach
1 carrot, sliced into matchsticks
1 red bell pepper medium size, sliced into matchsticks
1 medium onions, sliced
4 green onions, sliced
3 tsp. minced garlic
salt to sprinkle for each vegetable when stir frying
1 tsp. soy sauce to cook with shitake mushroom
5 Tbsp. soy sauce (less sodium kind)
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. black pepper (freshly ground)
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
3 tsp. roasted sesame seeds

3 tsp. vegetable oil

Prepare soy curls by soaking it in hot water for 10 minutes, squeezed the water out, add chiknish or non-salty veg powder. Then, add the hoisin sauce or teriyaki sauce to marinade. Set aside.

Boil the dangmyun in boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain, pour cold tap water to stop the cooking process. Then, drain again. Immediately add 5 tablespoon soy sauce, black pepper, and 2 tsp. sugar into the drained glass noodles and combine thoroughly.
If using dried shitake mushroom, soak the mushroom in warm water for 15-20 minutes.
While waiting for soy curls to marinade and noodle to cool, slice the vegetables. Drain and slice the soaked mushrooms also.

Stir frying soy curls in my old Chinese wok.

Coat a wok or large frying pan with 1 tsp oil. Put it on a high heat and start with the soy curls. When soy curl is dry and brown, remove from wok and set aside.
Add onions to the wok. Sprinkle with a little salt, stir fry for 4-5 minutes until translucent. Remove from wok. Set aside. Repeat this process each separately with carrot, red bell pepper, spinach, and green onions. Everytime, sprinkle a little salt and stir fry until vegetables are cooked. Add a little water if vegetable sticks to the wok. You will notice that brown bits are forming in your wok and loosen up when you add water. That actually adds flavor to the veggies. When stir frying the sliced mushrooms, add the 1 tsp. soy sauce instead of salt. Combine and set aside all cooked vegetables onto a large plate.

This is what the cooked vegetable looks like when combined together.

Add the rest of the oil (2 tsp.) to the hot wok. Then, add the minced garlic, stir fry for 1 minute until fragrant, keep stirring to avoid burning.
Add the vegetables, soy curls, and seasoned noodles back to the wok and combine well. Stir fry for a few minutes until noodles are heated through.
Turn off heat. Add sesame oil, stir, and combine well. Sprinkle with roasted sesame seeds when serving.

All ingredients combined together and stir fried.

This noodle dish is good at room temperature too. It is a great dish to bring to a potluck. DH brought this dish to his potluck at work and he didn't have to reheat it before serving it. He said that people at his work loved it and a few asked for the recipe.
The Koreans also serve this dish as Banchan which are dishes in small plates (such as tapas) that are served with cooked/steamed rice. Most of these dishes on small plates are served in room temperature also.
This will be the next dish I will bring to a potluck at work.

5-Colors Bowl and Vegan Furikake

2011-10-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

This bowl is inspired by my recent trip to Portland, OR. I was brought to Cafe Yum by my friends Yongkie and Pokie. The bowl that I ate at Cafe Yum, Jazzy bowl, was good but I thought the sauce was kind of too rich. Then, Yongkie offered to make similar bowl at his home and he made Miso Ginger sauce instead of the rich sauce at Cafe Yum. I like the bowl he served me. The sauce was lighter and sweeter than what I had in Cafe Yum. He served brown rice topped with black beans, chopped tomatoes, black olives, avocado, onion, and cilantro. It was yummy! Of course, later on I visited Native Bowl and ate more bowls of goodness (Couch Bowl and Mississippi Bowl). I love 'the bowl' concept and was first introduced to it by visiting Native Foods where I tried Soul Bowl, Gandhi Bowl, Hollywood Bowl, etc.

The concept of a bowl is to have some kind of grain, protein, vegetables, seeds/nuts, other savory toppings, and sauce in one bowl. The grain can be brown rice, quinoa, bulghur, millets, coucous, or any other grain. The protein can be tofu, tempeh, all kind of beans, and seitan. You can use your imagination what kind of vegetables to put in your bowl, there are plenty. The vegetables can be raw, steamed or roasted. Any kind of roasted or raw seed /nuts can be added into the bowl. Now, the secret is in the SAUCE!

5-Colors ingredients.

I came up with this 5-colors bowl because I think that when we eat, we start with our eyes. If the food is colorful, it is appetizing. This bowl is colorful, fresh, and healthy. The 5 colors are yellow, red, green, black, and brown. I also think that this is an Asian Fusion dish which means that there are some Asian elements in it such as Adzuki beans, Sticky brown rice, Miso ginger sauce and Furikake. Asian dish usually doesn't incorporate avocado, chopped tomatoes, and black olives such as a Mexican dish. I can say that this is Japanese Mexican dish? Below is my own Miso Ginger Sauce recipe to go with the colorful bowl.

Miso Ginger Sauce

2 tsp. canola oil
1Tbsp. fresh grated ginger
1/4 water
1/4 rice vinegar
1/4 white miso
Note: I use South River Organic Chickpea Miso
2 Tbsp. Hon Mirin
1 Tbsp. Agave Nectar
1 tsp. sesame oil
Optional: to thicken the sauce mix 2 tsp Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour with 1 tbsp water, add the to sauce, simmer for 1 minute.

Heat oil in a small sauce pan, then, add the fresh grated ginger. Saute for a few minutes until fragant.
Add water, rice vinegar, and white miso. Using a whisk, mix it together until miso is breaking down and sauce is simmering. Simmer for 2 minutes. If a thicker sauce is preferred, you can add the rice flour and water mixture to thicken it.
Take it off heat, add mirin, agave nectar, and sesame oil. Note: Since my miso is not smooth, I use a hand blender (stick blender) to mix the sauce together into a smooth light brown sauce. Some miso is already smooth and this step is not necessary.

5-Colors Bowl (makes 4 bowls)

3-4 cups steamed brown rice ( I use My Perfect Brown Rice for this recipe)
2 cups steamed Butternut Squash (cubed)
           Note: I bought cubed and peeled butternut squash from Trader Joe's as a shortcut.
1 can 15 oz. cooked Adzuki Beans
1 cup chopped fresh tomatoes
1 avocado, peeled, sliced/chopped, about 1 cup
   Note: I happen to buy an organic Reed Avocado (pictured above)
1 small 8 oz. sliced black olives
3 green onions/scallions, chopped
Miso Ginger Sauce (recipe above)
Vegan Furikake (recipe below), optional
   Note: if you don't like seaweed, you can add toasted sesame seeds only, brown or black.

Drizzle the Miso Ginger Sauce on top of rice.

Scoop about 1 cup of steamed rice onto a bowl and drizzle with Miso Ginger sauce.
Add 1/4 cup cubed steamed butternut squash, adzuki beans, chopped tomatoes, sliced/chopped avocado, and sliced black olives.
Drizzle with more sauce.
Top with chopped scallions and vegan furikake(optional).

5-Colors Bowl with Miso Ginger Sauce, all mixed together.

This bowl has all kind of flavors: sweet, tangy, hearty, fresh, and salty. The furikake adds 'seafoody' flavor to it, too.

Furikake (Japanese rice seasonings) usually contains shaved bonito (fish flakes) if you buy it commercially at a Japanese market. It also may contain MSG (monosodium glutamate). I make it myself at home to avoid these ingredients. If you like seaweed and sushi, usually, you'll like furikake. Below is my vegan furikake recipe:

Vegan Furikake

1 tsp. sugar

1/2 Tbsp. Vegetarian Seasoning (Mushroom Seasoning, pictured below)

Note: Mushroom seasoning can be bought at Asian markets. Nowadays, it is hard to find one that has no MSG in it. I particularly like this brand which contains no MSG, not too salty, and also vegan. If you cannot find mushroom seasoning, you can use nutritional yeast or your favorite dry vegan broth powder.

2 Tbsp. Toasted Sesame Seeds (or more if you like)

3-4 large Toasted Seaweed (seaweed sheet for making sushi) or Seasoned Seaweed Lavers (Korean seaweed snacks, cut into large pieces

Salt to taste

Note: Some mushroom seasoning or broth powder has a lot of salt. You may want to taste first before adding salt.

Combine sugar, veg. broth powder, sesame seeds, seaweed pieces in a DRY food processor.
Pulse or run food processor until seaweed is broken into tiny pieces. The mixture should be dry(pictured below). Store in a dry and tight container such as a glass jar, a tight tupperware, or a dry spice jar for an easy sprinkle.

I often have a snack of seaweed laver, topped with steamed brown rice, steamed veggie (in this case it was some butternut squash) and sprinkled with my vegan furikake. Roll it up like a sushi!

Leeky Lentil Vegetable Soup

2011-10-14T17:15:00.000-07:00

One boring day I was watching a Food TV Network show Barefoot Contessa with Ina Garten. She was cooking Lentil Vegetable soup with a lot of onions and leeks. It looks so good that I was inspired to veganize it. It was not hard to do that. We love this soup so much that I made it twice now.

DH told me that when he was heating the soup at work, co-workers gave comments of how delicious the aroma of this soup. I think that the sauteed leeks and onions gave that aroma. I would like to share my own veganized version. This soup is filling, warm, hearty, and was easy to make.

Leeky Lentil Vegetable Soup

1 1/2 cup dry green/brown lentils
1 white/brown onion, about 2 cups diced
1 large leek, white part only, about 2.5 cups diced
Note: Clean leeks thoroughly by submerging them in cold water and swish around to get rid of all the dirt
1 Tbsp. minced garlic (about 3 cloves)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. dried thyme leaves or 1 Tbsp. minced fresh thyme
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 1/2 cup diced celery
1 1/2 cup diced carrots
7 cups vegetarian chicken stock
Note: I use Better Than Bouillon No Chicken Base by Superior Touch
1 can or 15 oz organic diced tomatoes
1 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar or red wine

Cover dry lentils with enough boiling water (water is about 1 inch above the lentils) in a bowl. Set it aside for at least 15 minutes. This allow lentils to soften.
Dice vegetables: onions, leeks, celery, and carrots.
In a stockpot, saute onions, leeks, and garlic in the olive oil.
Add spices: thyme, cumin, and black pepper, continue to saute about 15 minutes until vegetables are translucent and tender.
Add celery and carrots and saute 10 more minutes.
Add vegetable stock and lentils. Cover and bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes or until lentils are cooked through.
Add the diced tomatoes including the juice. Simmer 10 more minutes.
Turn off the heat, check for salt. Since I am using a salted vegetarian broth, usually, I don't need to add more salt. I leave it up to you to judge how much salt to add, if any.
Lastly, add the red wine vinegar or red wine. Serve it hot with whole grain bread or roll.

Fall is here and I think it is soup time!

My Perfect Brown Rice

2011-10-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

This is my perfect brown rice. I have been trying to cook this kind of brown rice since I discovered it in a vegan Vietnamese restaurant and finally I got the recipe. This is a perfect brown rice to eat with Asian dishes (Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Cambodian) if you want to avoid eating white rice. For an Indian, American, or Middle Eastern dish, I still prefer the long grain brown basmati or regular long or short grain brown rice.

I discovered what I called 'my perfect brown rice' when we started dining at Thuyen Vien, a vegan Vietnamese restaurant in Anaheim, CA. It's a great restaurant and it received a high rating at Yelp from vegetarians, vegans, and non-vegetarians customers. The owners of the restaurant, a husband and wife, Si and Loan(Laura) are great cooks. I fell in love with their brown rice which looks like the picture above. He doesn't share restaurant's secret though. Si just said it is made of 3 kind of rice. Hmmm....what kind and what is the ratio of the 3? I have to break the secret (which is challenging in itself) and try and try a recipe I created my own. I kept combining 3 different kinds of rice and finally I can resemble what they have. I think I got it pretty close. :-)

This rice is sticky, soft, and aromatic. Asians like to eat rice with those characteristics. That is why most of them opt to have white jasmine rice or sweet sticky rice in restaurants. They like to mold their rice in a bowl and invert it onto a plate like the picture above. You'll notice some Asian restaurants do it that way, or some put the rice in a big rice container, and some serve it in small rice bowls. Hence, most of the time the rice is sticky and aromatic. Since I try not to eat white rice anymore, it is not possible to replace the sticky and aromatic of white Jasmine rice with regular long grain brown rice. It is not the same. When eating Asian dishes, I want to have the same characteristics of eating my dish with the white and aromatic Jasmine rice.

The 3 kinds of rice I use are long grain brown Jasmine rice, sweet brown rice (not short grain brown rice), and red Bhutanese rice or Wehani Rice or Thai Red Rice. The sweet brown rice adds the stickiness. The brown Jasmine rice adds the aromatic characteristic. The red rice adds the nice color to it. All 3 have awesome nutritional values. It is much better for your health to eat brown rice than any white rice. Wehani rice usually costs much more. I prefer the Thai red rice that I purchased in an Asian market for about $6 per 5 lbs. bag.

I also purchased an expensive rice cooker to cook them with. This is my favorite kitchen appliance that I left out on the kitchen counter instead of storing it in the cupboard. I use it ALL the time since I cook rice every week and sometimes 2 to 3 times a week. What's great about this rice cooker is that it has 2 timers. With the timer, I can measure the rice and water in the morning and set the timer so when I get home from work the brown rice is ready to eat. Cooking brown rice takes about 45 minutes. This appliance saves me a lot of time.

Of course, you don't have to buy an expensive rice cooker and can manually cook rice with a pot on stove-top. Especially, if you don't cook rice all the time. However, I will recommend that the rice is soaked for about 6-8 hours if you want it soft and sticky. I measure and put the water in the morning so the rice was soaked in water for about 6 hours before the machine started cooking.

My Perfect Brown rice

1/3 cup Long Grain Brown rice
1/3 cup Sweet Brown Rice (not short grain brown rice)
1/3 cup Wehani, Bhutanese, or Thai Red Rice
2 cups of water

Combine rice in a pot and add water. Let it soak for about 6-8 hours.
Turn on heat until water is boiling, turn it down to simmer, and set timer for 45 minutes.
OR
If you have a rice cooker, measure 1/3 of each type of rice with your rice cooker measuring cup, add enough water until it reach the 'Brown Rice' level. If you have a timer, set the timer. If you don't, I suggest soaking the rice for 6-8 hours. Then, click the Start button (it is that easy!).

I use this rice in a dish I prepared recently. The rice is in the bottom of the bowl, topped with Korean Pepper Paste sauce (gochujang sauce), pan fried tofu, fresh spinach, shredded carrots, chopped and fresh snap peas, sliced green onions, more sauce, and roasted sesame seeds. This is called Couch (pronounced Kooch) Bowl from Native Bowl.

I recently visited Portland, OR and had a chance to try Couch Bowl at Native Bowl. I like it so much that when I got home I want to replicate the dish and share it with DH. You can find the recipe of this Couch Bowl here. Julie Hasson is the chef of Native Bowl and was featured in Veg Edge in Cooking Channel by which she presented this delicious bowl.

Enjoy My Perfect Brown rice with any Asian dish, Chinese food left over, Thai curry, or Vietnamese stir fry! When you in Anaheim, CA, please visit Thuyen Vien and let me know if my rice is pretty close to what they have. Also, try that Couch Bowl at Native Bowl, either visit them in Portland, OR or make it for yourself at home.

Remodeled Kitchen

2011-10-08T09:27:00.001-07:00

Welcome to my remodeled kitchen! This blog is long overdue for an update. I know, I know. Actually, the remodeled kitchen was finished back in January 2010. Then, we thought that our living room and dining room needed a remodeling. It was in the 1970s style and we didn't do any remodeling since we moved in (1993). So we did that. Then, we thought our downstairs bathroom also needed a remodeling. Almost the entire house was still in 1970s style. So we did that. Then, we thought that our bedrooms and master bathroom really needed a remodeling (wall paper and paint were peeling). So we did that. Then, we thought our 1970s carpet desperately needed to be replaced. So we did that. There you go. This is how it is with remodeling. We started with one room and it just went on and on to the next rooms. In 2010 and a big part of 2011, I spent a lot of time working with contractors and painters. I don't know how many times I visited Lowes, Home Depot, and other appliances store. I was out of my habit of blogging. I became an interior decorator instead. It is now all DONE! :-)

Friends have been asking me about my blog and pictures of my new kitchen. Here they are. The fun of rebuilding my own kitchen was designing the work space, cabinets, colors, granite, etc. I picked the cabinet and other kitchen features, DH picked the granite.

Not all of the appliances were replaced to keep the cost down. I still kept my older stove, refrigerator, and dish washer. They are still working fine. They are not stainless steel but when we replace them we might choose stainless steel in the future. Our new range-hood is stainless steel. It is a powerful GE Monogram brand.

The other appliance we added was the microwave/convection oven/speed cook GE Profile Advantium. We love this one since we have always owned on-top-of-the-counter microwave. This one is a built-in one to free the counter space. It is also a combination of a microwave and convection oven for my cookies and bread baking. This oven has a bread-proofing feature I can use to raise my bread dough. The temperature is all controlled by a computer chip. I love it!

The kitchen features that I requested from our contractor were the ones that will make my cooking easier. It is more on the functional and not just aesthetic request. First, I need a lot of storage for spices, condiments bottles, and small kitchen appliances. DH says that he never met anyone owns so many different spices and condiments until he met me. Below is the condiments rack I ordered from the cabinet maker. It stores many bottles of condiments, sauces, and oil. I can pull out this rack to choose a condiment or sauce or oil I need.

Then, for my spices I asked for another pull-out shelves below to store my many spices.

I also asked for pull-out shelves like this one below to store my small kitchen appliances (food processor, juicer, panini maker, mixer, etc.). Contractor guaranteed that these shelves will support and hold heavy items. I have no problem so far, he was right. I love this feature!

For the corner areas of the kitchen, I asked for rotating shelves for my pots, pans, and baking pans. This kind of storage was also good for bulk storage for rice, flours, and grains. This particular one below is the top corner storage. I have 3 more bottom corner ones with rotating shelves.

The last feature I wanted to share is in the sink area. Our contractor suggested that the button to turn on and off our garbage disposal be moved near to our faucet. The silver button on the right of the faucet is now the button for the garbage disposal. Very convenient!

We also ask for a customized feature of a hot and room temperature filtered drinking water faucet (the smaller faucet below) to be installed here in the sink area. We constantly drink hot tea. I also use a lot of hot water to soak TVP, soy curls, beans, lentils, etc. so a constant hot water access is always needed. We use this water drinking faucet a lot. The room temperature water is also connected to the ice machine in our fridge. This is a feature that is definitely useful and worth it.

We also remodeled our dining room which is connected to the kitchen. I chose the colors, furniture, and decorations. It is now all updated to modern style and is not 1970s style anymore. All I can say that I am happy that it is ALL done. I can have my life back with more cooking and traveling without worrying that I need to go back to Lowes or Home Depot to exchange the shower head, cabinet knobs, or light switches. I admit that I will not do it again. We'll sell this one and buy a remodeled house. :-) Wowee, a relief indeed!

Trip to Missouri and a Xmas gift: Vegan Comfort Food cookbook

2010-01-05T10:07:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! I have not been blogging so much since I don't have a complete functional kitchen but it's coming close to be functional. Cabinets and floors are installed as of now.

For the last 2 weeks of December, we drove to Missouri from California and back, to visit family for Christmas, a 4135 miles total. Pheww! It was quite an experience since we encountered rain, sleet, freezing rain, snow, slick roads, etc. What ever there is in a winter storm we went through it during this trip. We arrived home safely on January 1 and were very grateful!

During our trip, I encountered very little of vegan restaurants. I brought some bread, vegan chili, Tofurky deli slices, peanut butter and jelly for on the road snacks and in the hotels. The following restaurants are the ones we found along the way:

Santa Fe, New Mexico: Check out Annapurna Ayuverdic World Vegetarian Cuisine We had a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner at this place. They serve vegan dishes and are quite delicious.

Tulsa, Oklahoma: Check out Be le Vegetarian Restaurant. There were plenty of vegan dishes. We were actually surprised that this restaurant exists in the midwest. Their food were so delicious. We love their fried wontons, lo mein, Vietnamese Vermicelli, mongolian 'beef, and noodle soup. We actually had lunch there and ordered food-to-go for dinner on our way to Missouri and did the same on our way back from Missouri.

Tucson, Arizona: There are a lot more choices in this town for vegetarians or vegans. We love this restaurant: Lovin' Spoonful The owner, Peggy, has been a vegan for 20 years so she has a lot of experience in making vegan dishes. The entire menu is vegan so we splurged. We had 2 breakfasts, and a lunch while we were in this town for only 2 nights. Here is the picture of the tofu scramble breakfast. DH had a French Toast for one breakfast and a stack of pancakes for the next breakfast (not pictured).

This is a picture of their Sesame 'Chicken' Salad. Yum, I ate the whole thing.
We had a chance to try a healthy Japanese restaurant: Yoshimatsu Healthy Japanese Restaurant for dinner. It is not a total vegetarian restaurant but they have many vegetarian and vegan choices. Their miso soup is vegan. I tried the Ginger Tofu Bento with brown rice. It was delicious!
During our family Christmas gifts exchange, I received the best gift this year: Vegan Comfort Food Cookbook from my husband's nephew and his girlfriend. It is awesome.
I love the book cover, the content, and have tried a few recipes. The recipes are GREAT! It helps that the author was growing up in California and likes Mexican food (she likes spicy too) although she now lives in Atlanta. I tried her recipes of 'fish' tacos, fools your friend tacos, mango salsa, etc. and they were yummy. I made her 'Oven Fried Chick'n, Sage Gravy, Collard Greens, and Classic Cornbread for last Sunday dinner(pictured below). It was a dynamite! For those who don't like hot and spicy, I suggest to reduce the amount of cayenne or red pepper flakes from her recipes, but, for me, I love the amount of spicyness in her recipes.

I also like how the author gives 'meal ideas' or mini menus in the cookbook. Creating a menu for the week is already challenging enough for me. By following the 'meal ideas' from this cookbook I can make a set of dishes for a nice comfortable dinner. The menu for pictured above plate is called 'Southern Nights' which was perfectly named for a Sunday 'Chick'n' dinner. Thanks Jason for a great gift!

Viva Las Vegan

2009-11-26T10:55:00.000-08:00

We went to Las Vegas, Nevada for a few days to take a short vacation and also to take advantage of what this entertainment capital of the world offers during the economic downtime. Hotels and casinos in Las Vegas are hurting and offer a lot of cheap rooms from Sundays through Thursdays. Much more than they use to be. You can get 70% discount. No kidding! We don't gamble so we were just goofing off for a few days. I am blogging regarding what we found in terms of vegan meals. You can also check these blogs and directories: Vegas Vegan, Vegas Vegetarian, Super Vegan, Yelp, and happycow.

They say that 'What happened in Vegas Stays in Vegas.' Not! I have the NEED to share, especially with vegans. What I found in term of vegan goodies that worth to try(to us) are : 1. Ronald's Donuts 2. Authentic Japanese restaurant with a separate vegetarian menu: Miko's Izakaya, and 3. Red Velvet Cafe.

Let's start with no. 1: Ronald's Donuts. This is not a healthy choice but it is not that we eat donuts everyday. The last time I remember eating donuts were years before(maybe 13 years ago) since most donuts sold commercially contain eggs. As you can see in my picture above, the mouth watering chocolate-glazed-donut with soy custard filling above is VEGAN. We went to happycow.net and read all the great reviews. These vegan donuts are really out of this world: they are soft, squishy, melt in your mouth, and not too sweet. The BEST vegan donuts I ever tasted.

The picture below is a picture of donuts sold in Ronald's that we brought home. The donuts shop is not much(hole-in-the-wall) and owned by a Chinese couple. You'll have to drive to it (in China town area) since it is not on the strip. We bought the donuts to-go and consumed them in other coffee shop (I don't really like Ronald's coffee).

Other than the chocolate-glazed- donut with soy custard filling, I love the jelly-filled and maple glazed ones. There are trays and trays of vegan donuts available to choose from. The apple fritter one was too sweet for me.

Enough of donuts! That's what DH said after 3 days of donuts consuming. Let's talk about no. 2: Miko's Izakaya. Izakaya means a place to have snacks or meals after work (such as a cafe). I found this authentic Japanese restaurant with a separate vegetarian menu. It's not on the strip and you'll need a car to drive a few miles down Las Vegas Blvd. but it was well worth it. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera. The restaurant was a mom-and-pop restaurant owned by a Japanese couple. What was so special was that it was owned by Japanese. Most sushi and Japanese restaurants nowadays are owned by Koreans so the food is Koreanized with NO vegetarian options. Not at Miko's Izakaya! Miko and Greg are Japanese and their chefs are too. You'll find authentic vegan Japanese dishes at their restaurant. They also know what vegan means. Their tempura batter(no egg) was prepared after you ordered them. So it may take a while but it was fresh, crispy, and not oily. We went more than once to this restaurant and ordered vegetable tempura each time. I also ordered vegan Sukiyaki. It was out of this world! It was healthy, steaming hot (served in a flat hot crock), and light.

The last one that we found is Red Velvet Cafe. This place is a few miles from the strip so again, you'll need a car. It has great reviews in happycow.net but we found it just an ordinary, nothing is special in terms of meals (maybe my gourmet expectation is higher). Maybe we need to try them several times before we can find what we like. However, their Vegan Red Velvet Cake was really good. We were served a warm out of the oven red velvet cake with vegan creamy frosting and a fresh strawberry on top. The cake was moist and soft (not bread like). Yum!

Mock "Shrimp" Curry and Brussels Sprouts favorite!

2009-11-20T19:51:00.000-08:00

I tried this mock 'shrimp' curry recipe from Notes from the Vegan Feast Kitchen. It was delicious! Bryanna was so brilliant by adding ground almonds to the curry with 'tofu creme' sauce (instead of coconut milk). I think the ground almonds thickened this vegan curry and added the richness to it. There is no need to add coconut milk to fatten it up the curry too much. Almonds are good for you, too!

Since I have other ingredients on-hand that I need to get rid of such as a potato, a chunk of sweet potato, a cup of sliced mushrooms, and brussel sprouts, I added 1 cup each of these ingredients on top of the mock 'shrimp.' I doubled the sauce (everything else in that recipe but the shrimp) so I have enough sauce to coat the other ingredients.

The ingredients were sauteed and coated with all the spices before the 'tofu creme' was added. I used the Maharajah Curry spice powder from Penzeys Spice (a good quality curry powder that is not hot and it is not bitter).

This curry was so delicious on top of basmati rice.

It's Brussels sprouts season now! I have seen brussels sprouts on stalks in supermarkets and it's cheap. The sale price is $2.99 for the whole 25-inches stalks of sprouts. I love them!

This is my favorite quick, easy, and delicious way to prepare it:

Remove sprouts from stalks and cut in halves. Caramelize them in olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, add some water to steam fry them while covering the pot tightly. The water will evaporate, then, add some more water. Steam fry them for 5 - 10 minutes by adding more and more water when it evaporated. Test the tenderness. Immediately, add 1 tablespoon of Earth Balance while they were still warm. Stir and serve!

I like them roasted and browned when caramelizing them. It was sort of pan roasting them. I used my Swiss Diamond Covered Casserole Pan (best non-stick cookware recommended by Bryanna) to caramelize the sprouts. I bought this cookware from Amazon.com and it turned out that it is the genuine one. I read that there are fake ones(it may contain teflon) so be careful when you order on-line. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE this non-stick cookware. It is durable, can withstand high heat, easy to clean, and it is non-teflon.

My favorite brussels sprouts dish is a great companion of any dish. I'll keep buying sprouts as long as it is in season.

Kitchen CLOSED for remodeling! Stay tune for a new remodeled kitchen!

2009-11-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

I have not been blogging since I have been PACKING for the last 2 months, little by little. Our kitchen will be remodeled COMPLETELY! The project starts today(Nov. 9). It will be demolished completely! The old cabinets will be thrown away, floors will be stripped, and a wall will be added. It is a huge project and I have been dreaming to have a new kitchen since we moved to our house 16.5 years ago.

As a gourmet cook who prepares many different kind of dishes from many culture, you can imagine how much spices and ingredients I have. I have a LOT! I also have a lot of small appliances. Most of them have been boxed now but I still can access some of them.

Here is a picture of our old kitchen. I have been cooking in it for 16.5 years and it is getting worse. If you lean on the middle part of the cabinet door, it will collapse and go through. I have been patching them with small nails.

This kitchen is also dark and we will pick a lighter color of cabinets and floor.

There is a door to a formal dining room that will be taken out and closed with a wall. It will be covered with more cabinets for more space. Yay!

A new bar will be added at the end of this cabinet. So I will have more cabinets and storage space underneath the bar. Yay! The ceiling will also be raised another 6-8 inches. Another yay!

Demolition begins. We hired this done and PLBC Construction is doing it. He is well qualified, clean worker, and offers reasonable pricing.

The sample cabinet on the floor (lighter color) was the one we chose. Then, we have to choose a new granite for the counter top (sample board is next to the cabinet sample). Decisions, decisions!

Now, I am cooking in our garage. This is my temporary kitchen in a 2-car garage.

Look all those spices and ingredients I have. They are all piled in temporary boxes.

I have a butane burner to cook with. Pots and pans are piled in a box below. Tupperware and plastic ware is piled in another box, also below. But all my tools are available on hand, on the table.

A roll up chopping table is also handy. A small microwave is sitting in the background. Also, more boxes with staples ingredients, spices, seitan flour, etc. are organized. They are all in accessible boxes for my use.

I also have a temporary appliances table with food processor, toaster oven, slow cooker, rice cooker, panini grill, waffle iron, and electric skillet that are accessiblewhen it is needed. I will be cooking with those, too. I don't have a large oven so I can't bake cakes, casseroles, or bread.

We also have a refridgerator and a laundry sink installed in the garage. This is how and where we wash our dishes and cookware.

This is where we eat, our temporary dining table in the garage. Next to a stepping ladder...he he.... It can be cold in the morning so we have to eat quickly before our food becomes cold. What do you think? This is my first time going through remodeling so it is an experience.

My Vegan Birthday Celebration at Thuyen Vien

2009-09-18T18:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my birthday and I celebrated it at a vegan Vietnamese restaurant, Thuyen Vien(translated to 'meditation park' in English). When DH asked me of which vegan restaurant would I want to go for my birthday(his treat), he was surprised that I selected Thuyen Vien. I didn't select a fancy vegan restaurant with expensive decor, professional looking servers serving food on white gourmet plates, silver utensils, cloth napkin, and fancy wine glasses. I selected a tiny restaurant owned by a simple but very nice Buddhist Vietnamese family. What Thuyen Vien has over other fancy vegan restaurants are FLAVORS. As far as I am concern, flavors won over luxury.

After visiting this restaurant a few times, I got to know the husband and wive owners Si ('see') and Loan (and their daughter). Both work as a team of excellent cooks. They have become our friends after many times we talk about vegan food and cooking. Si always wants to create dishes that have all flavors combined and balanced in one dish: salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and savory. Their food is definitely full of love and umami. Both owners love to please their customers and talk to them. That's just what I like in a restaurant rather than to eat, pay, and go. You really can feel their love in their dishes. For example, they got to know how I like spicy food so they add more spicyness onto my dish (even some dishes that don't need to be spicy). The time I like to come is on week nights instead of their crowded weekends because then I'll have a chance to talk to them. Most of their customers have become their friends. Sometimes Si also like to recommend certain dishes to customers. I think by doing that he is trying to know what they like so he can please them.

The picture above is their famous Garlic Soy Chicken. Si has replaced their soy chicken to be vegan soy chicken after listening to their vegan customers. This dish is their customers' favorite. I can understand why. In 2007, their vegan Phở(traditional Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup) was voted as the Best Phở in the entire Orange County. I am talking about VEGAN Phở with soy beef against all the ones with the real beef in the entire county. That's awesome!

Our favorite appetizer is Fried Tofu with special sauce(in the small bowl) and rau răm (Vietnamese coriander). The fried tofu is not just any ordinary fried tofu. It is crunchy on the outside and soft in the inside(Si has a special technique to make it that way). To eat this, the fried tofu is dipped into the special sauce. Then, put it altogether in your mouth with the fresh lemony coriander leaf. Your tongue will be surprised of the flavors combination. Although we are friends, Si kept the special sauce ingredients as his secrets. Darn! He just said that there is some lime juice in it. Well, yeah, I can taste that. This sauce is soo goood. DH said he can put it on just about everything he wants to eat.

DH loves their sushi. Each sushi is topped with fresh tofu, a slice of radish, and a dot of spicy sauce. The presentation is also very nice and appetizing. There is something crunchy inside the sushi and we were told that it is crispy fried banana flower/blossom (Thai and Vietnamese use it as a cooking ingredients). Don't be surprised, it is good.

This next appetizer is a new item, called Seaweed Xao Lan. Si has been asking me to try this dish since I blogged about Vietnamese Green Mango Salad with black sesame crackers (inspired by this restaurant) last June. I think he also knows I like curry and coconut. This dish reminds me of a seafood curry. The ingredients are seaweed, tofu, king mushrooms, coconut milk, curry paste, and other spices and herbs. It is eaten on top of black sesame rice crackers. People may not like the rice crackers but I do since Indonesians eat this kind of crackers we called Krupuk. It's like American potato chips. Krupuk is great with curry on top rather than by itself. Just like this one, I used the black sesame crackers (vegan krupuk) to scoop each bite of the Seaweed Xao Lan. That's the way to eat it. The cracker may not be that great by itself. He made it a bit more spicy customizing to my taste. I LOVED it and ate the whole plate (DH rather devoured the sushi).

Other than the garlic soy chicken , we also ordered Tofu Thuyen Vien accompanied by brown rice. This special tofu (again, he won't share the secret) was rolled inside a seaweed, steamed, and then sliced and deep fried before it was thrown into the wok as a stir fry (stir fried with onions, garlic, tomatoes, and sprinkled with lots of black pepper). It is then served on a bed of lettuce and sprinkled with chopped Asian celery. I bet the tofu is done sort of like making a veggie fish, I think.

Finally, I'll get the credit for this one: my own birthday cake. I made Vegan Coconut Cloud Cake from More Great Good Dairy-Free Desserts by Fran Costigan. I tell you: so far this cookbook has not failed yet. Every thing I made from it turned out delicioso, including this cake.

The recipe of the Coconut Cloud Layer Cake is on page 142 and the Island Coconut Cream Filling and Frosting is on page 145.

I decided to bring the whole cake with us to the restaurant and shared it with all the lucky customers who happened to be there while we were there last night and also to share it with Si and family. It was real yummy. The cake was moist and coconut-ty. I love the toasted coconut sprinkled on the cake.

Si said that I made a good vegan cream for a frosting. Hhmmm...is it my turn not to tell him my secrets? I said to him that it's tofu, the frosting is made of tofu (regular firm tofu), agar, and coconut milk, not margarine or shortening or butter. Well, I guess, if he reads this blog, it's not a secret anymore. The secrets are all in Fran's cookbook.

It was really my happy night. As I was offering cakes to other customers and talking to them about the great dishes this restaurant have, I got invited by a lady customer who is a member of the Magic Castle in Hollywood, CA, a private clubhouse for magicians and artists. She gave me an invitation to come and visit (visitors have to be invited by members). I thought that it was a great birthday gift for me and we'll seek this opportunity very soon.

On top of that, Si took out his harmonica to accompany all others that sang 'Happy Birthday' to me. While we were eating cake and drinking tea, he also serenaded all of us with his harmonica, a beautiful summer song. This is definitely a night to remember. Thanks to all who shared it with me!

Thuyen Vien
11080 Magnolia St (on Katella and Magnolia)
Garden Grove, CA 92842
(714) 638-8189
Closed on Tuesdays

Vegan Coconut Turnover, Barbados style

2009-09-07T16:46:00.000-07:00

Carribean Vegan contacted me and asked if I wanted to be her tester of this recipe. Check out her blog! Unfortunately that weekend she contacted me, I was very busy at work and had to work overtime. This weekend I was able to do it. These are yummy turnovers. You know me, I love anything coconutty since I grew up eating coconut anything.

I used 2 kinds of coconut filling just to see the difference. The one on the left side, the filling is finely grated coconut was made of frozen-fresh grated coconut. I bought it in an Indian store near me. The one on the right side, the filling was Baker's sweetened grated coconut mixed with brown sugar. We prefer the freshly grated coconut, of course, but for a short cut and depends on availability the Baker's coconut should work, too. Below is my picture of the turnovers just came out of the oven.

These turnovers are great served with tea or coffee. It's definitely a delicious snack. I can't wait for her cookbook.

Smoked Tofu and Mango Summer/Salad Rolls

2009-08-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

My first encounter with the recipe of this yummy Vietnamese-style Summer/Salad Rolls or goi cuon (not the fried ones called cha gio which is also called spring rolls) was at Bryanna's Vegan Cooking Class in 2004. I fell in love with it. The way she combined the flavors of ripe mango, marinated-and-baked tofu, carrots, basil leaves, cucumber, lettuce, vermicelli noodles, and peanut sauce is BRILLIANT! For the last 5 years, I lost count how many times I made this dish. I brought the summer/salad rolls to potlucks too. Every time it never fails to be the first dish gobbled up by my non-vegan or vegan friends attending the potlucks.

Recently, I went to a poolside vegan potluck hosted by Orange County Veggie Meetup group and brought these rolls. Again, they were gone in a matter of minutes. I decided to blog it and share my version with the world.

Like any recipe, especially the one that I use many times, this recipe went through many iterations of changes. Every time I made it, I may use slightly different ingredients. Thus it is not really the same as the original recipe. I invite you to be creative also and use ingredients that you like. However, I think the combination of the baked or smoked tofu and ripe mango is a 'must have'.

I sometimes use a store-bought-baked-and-marinated tofu for a short cut. There are a few vegan baked tofu brands with Thai or Teriyaki flavors (those are the best for these rolls) that are ready to eat. This is just perfect if you don't mind the cost and that you'll like to save time. You can also buy store-bought Teriyaki sauce to use for the marinade and then bake the tofu at home. I have done these before too when I am lazy or really busy. I usually make my own marinade, add liquid smoke to it, and bake the tofu. Don't be nervous about using liquid smoke! It is natural and vegan. You can read this blog about it. Apparently, liquid smoke is just smoke and water but adding a few drops of this liquid to your tofu marinade will make your tofu so flavorful and smoky. I provide my version of smoked-marinated-baked tofu below.

About the rice paper or banh trang, for those who are not familiar with Vietnamese rice paper, I recommend this blog about selecting rice paper. I prefer the Red Rose brand but I have also used the Three Ladies brand. For beginners, I definitely recommend these brands. Here is a blog about How to Make Rice Paper. I believe that's the traditional way. The ones that are sold in stores are probably industrialized with machines in factories. Here is also a blog for a Step by step how to roll these spring/summer/salad rolls or goi cuon (not a vegetarian recipe). I also provide the step by step pictures below. I hope with these you'll have an idea how it is done.

Vegan Smoked Tofu and Mango Summer/SaladRolls
Serve 16

Summer/Salad Rolls Ingredients:
16 Vietnamese rice papers
2 large ripe mango, peeled and cut in 4" by 1/2" thick
1 medium head of green lettuce, shredded thinly
1 English cucumber, cut in 4" by 1/2 " thick
2 cups julienne cut peeled carrots marinated with:
2 Tbsp. vinegar, 1 tsp salt, and 1 tsp vegan sugar
1 lb baked-and-marinated tofu or smoked tofu, cut in 4" by 1/2" thick
1 cup basil leaves, separate leaves from stems
Note: I like to use the Thai Basil type but I have used the Italian Sweet Basil too. Whatever is available in your area will be fine.
Optional: 2-3 cups cooked rice vermicelli or thin soba noodles

Clockwise from upper left hand corner: ripe mango, cucumbers, basil leaves, julienned-and-marinated carrots, smoked-baked tofu, and shredded green lettuce.

Peanut Dipping Sauce Ingredients:
1/3 cup hot water
4 Tbsp creamy peanut butter
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp agave nectar
2 Tbsp vinegar or fresh lime juice
1 Tsp sesame oil
1 Tsp Chinese Chili Garlic Sauce or Sriracha
2 Tbsp chopped green onion

Marinade the julienne cut peeled carrots with the vinegar, sugar, and salt. Combine and set aside for 30 minutes to 1 hour. The carrots will be limp and seasoned or pickled. Then drain them thoroughly (you can do this 1 day ahead if you like).
To make the peanut dipping sauce, combine hot water and peanut butter until it is well mixed and the peanut butter is melted and thinner. Then, add the rest of the peanut dipping sauce ingredients, set aside (you can to this 1 day ahead if you like).
Prepare a large bowl of warm water (about 120F), a damp and clean kitchen towel(wet a clean kitchen towel and squeezed the water out), a large plate or cutting board. Set all the ingredients of the Summer/Salad rolls around you so that it is within reach. BTW, I learned this method at Bryanna's vegan cooking school in 2004.

Dip a rice paper in the bowl of warm water and circle it around to make sure it is all wet and covered with water.

Quickly put the rice paper on the damp kitchen towel. Let the water soaks through the paper. I usually count about 30 seconds before I put the ingredients on it and start rolling.

Pile the ingredients on the wet rice paper. At this time the paper will be limp and pliable but it should not tear. If you wait too long the rice paper will be too soft and easily torn. You'll have to work QUICKLY.
Start rolling like making burrito. I like to put the basil leave on the outside layer of the roll to make it prettier. I usually put the leave right side down. You can put 1 leave or 2 to 3 leaves in a row. You'll see the result later. It's nice!

Then, continue wrapping it like burrito. Again, work QUICKLY!

Roll and tada! Here is the final result and you'll see the leave behind the transparent rice paper. It's an art!

Repeat steps 4 to 9, 15 times. It looks hard but with practice it will become easier and easier each time. If the rice paper is torn or stuck together, you can throw it away and start all over again. It's cheap, you know. Believe me, I have done that and been there before but I am persistent and determined to tackle this skill. I had practiced many times and ate many smoked tofu and mango goi cuons which is not too bad of an experience. DH loves it too that I practiced a lot.
Then, you can eat the roll whole with the peanut dipping sauce or cut it in a diagonal like the picture below.

If you are allergic to peanut, I have a peanut-free dipping sauce for it. Check out the salad dressing in my blog titled Vietnamese Green Mango Salad. This dressing is great for a dipping sauce for this salad roll.

Regarding the smoked-baked-marinated tofu, you may want to check on Bryanna's blog regarding A Nifty Gadget for Pressing Tofu. This kind of tofu is great for this recipe. I don't have this nifty gadget myself but I usually buy an extra firm tofu. Bryanna suggesteds 2 parts soy sauce, 1 part maple syrup, and a little sesame oil for the marinade. I added 1 part of water, 1 tsp liquid smoke, 1 tsp garlic powder, and 1 tsp onion powder for the smoked tofu marinade sauce. Make sure that all the tofu slices are covered in the marinade sauce and let them submerged in the marinade for at least 4 hours. Then, you can bake them in a 400F oven for 15-20 minutes or pan fry them in a skillet. Basically, you can create your own version of the marinade sauce.

These rolls are to be eaten within a day (we have no problems with that). They are not good to be refrigerated and eaten the next day(have done that, too).

Enjoy these summer rolls(goi cuons) this summer!

Grilled Vegan Caesar Salad

2009-07-31T08:45:00.001-07:00

What??? Yes, you read it right! This vegan Caesar salad contains grilled Romaine lettuce. I learned this from a Create PBS TV show featuring Steven Raichlen, Primal Grill with Steven Raichlen. So, why would a person who doesn't eat meat watch a bbq show? Beats me! I just like to watch cooking show, I guess. I thought that it is summer bbqueing time again so why not? Our weather is perfect for grilling right now. I was rewarded by watching him making grilled Caesar salad. I thought what an odd dish! My first response was I GOT TO TRY IT! before I judge it no good.

So I did and I was surprised that I LIKE IT! I like it that I made it twice. Something about the smokey grilled romaine lettuce and baguette added savory flavor to the salad. I also veganized the recipe. I followed his method of grilling the Romaine lettuce and oiled baguette. Then, I used vegan Caesar salad dressing(which has no anchovies in it) and soy Parmesan. It is very simple if you buy your favorite vegan salad dressing and vegan soy Parmesan. You can also make your own vegan Caesar salad dressing and vegan soy Parmesan. I also added vegan soy chicken strips. You can buy your favorite soy chicken and mine is Morningstar Chik'n Strips, however, it is optional.

Grilled Vegan Caesar Salad
Serves 6

3-4 heads of Romaine lettuce, slice in halves from the roots (see picture above)
1/2 of a long French baguette, cut diagonally, 1/2-inch thick
1 or 2 fresh garlic cloves, halves
2-3 tablespoon olive oil or garlic infused olive oil.
1 pkg. vegan soy strips, optional
store bought vegan Caesar salad dressing, I like Follow Your Heart
vegan soy Parmesan, homemade or store bought
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt to taste

Optional: 2 cups wood chips soaked in water for 1 hour

Grill with hot coals

Clean lettuce by soaking them in water to remove the sands and grimes. Drain and let them dry.
Prepare hot coals ( I use real wood briquettes charcoal). Add wet wood chips on the hot coal. It will start to smoke. It is optional to use the smoking wood chips.
Grill romaine lettuce on hot coal. Close the lid to smoke them.
Meanwhile, brush each side of the sliced baguette with raw garlic to add flavor.
Then, brush each side of the sliced bread with olive oil. Or you can buy garlic infused olive oil and skip the step above. I bought the garlic oil below at Trader Joe's.
Don't forget to check on the romaine lettuce. It should not be grilled too long till they are crispy. The picture below shows how I like it. Some of the leaves are not wilted and some are. Take them out of the grill and slice them with a knife into bite pieces and remove the core.
Add the soy chicken and oiled sliced baguette on to the grill. Add a drizzle of oil on the soy chicken so it won't stick to the grill. I used a grill pan so they won't fall off into the coals. Watch the bread closely since it will brown quickly.
Slice soy chicken in bite pieces. Serve them on top of the grilled lettuce with drizzles of vegan Caesar salad dressing, freshly ground black pepper, a sprinkle of sea salt, and soy Parmesan. Serve with the grilled bread on the side or cut the bread into bite pieces and mix them in the salad (my preference).

Enjoy!

P.S.:
Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana (not far from where I live) by Chef Alex Cardini (not Caesar). You can read the history of Caesar salad here.

More Vegan Vietnamese Dishes

2009-06-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

I am cooking lots of vegan Vietnamese dishes lately. Above is a picture of Vietname BBQ Noodle/Vermicelli salad. Vegan Vietnamese restaurants serve this cold noodle salad. In my area there are 6 vegetarian Vietnamese restaurants(3 are vegans): Thuyen Vien, Au Lac, Zen Vegetarian, Bodhi Tree, Bo De, and Van Hanh. I visited them often and can get ideas on how to make Vietnamese dishes. My favorite is Thuyen Vien and that's why it is listed first. I seldom go to Bo De and Van Hanh because they are my least favorites. The restaurants usually call this dish BBQ Vermicelli. This dish is a perfect meal for a hot weather since it is served in a room temperature. My recipe was posted on my other inactive blog, click here.

The ingredients that I use this time are (clockwise from top left): jicama, cucumber, carrots, Vietnamese Coriander or rau ram, bean sprouts, fresh mints, and green lettuce. All of them were sliced in thick julienne form.

This time I used buckwheat soba noodle instead of the white rice noodle or vermicelli. It is not traditional but I think soba noodle is more filling and it is more nutritious.

I also modified my salad dressing with coconut juice without added sugar. This one is my favorite brand. To see recipe of the salad dressing please my previous Vietnamese Green Mango Salad blog and scroll down to the recipe.

I have been also drinking a lot of natural coconut juice lately and bought the Amy & Brian brand. It is quite delicious when it is chilled. I have been using coconut juice for cooking lately, a new discovery. This one below is Tofu Stew with Coconut Juice from Vietnamese Fusion Vegetarian Cuisine cookbook by Chat MingKwan.

The ingredients in this stew are probably not familiar to some of you. They are lotus root, jicama, lemon grass, and coconut juice. I substituted the water chestnuts with jicama since I didn't have any water chestnuts. I also added green beans to it since I had some. It is quite delicious served with a bowl of steamed sweet rice.

Vietnamese Green Mango Salad

2009-06-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been craving Vietnamese Vegan dishes. I was inspired by my visit to a local Vietnamese Vegan/Vegetarian restaurant, Thuyen Vien, to prepare this dish. If you are in SoCal area, I really recommend this restaurant. Their dishes are authentic and the owner is very friendly and accommodating. It is a mom and pop, not a fancy vegan restaurant, but the food is out of the world!

After having a super delicious green mango salad in Thuyen Vien, I vowed to replicate it at home. It is not hard to find green mango in my area. I usually pick mangoes that are still firm and green in Asian or Indian markets nearby. If you cannot find green mangoes, you can use green apple such as Granny Smith. I even use 1 green apple in this recipe to add a crunchy texture.

It is also not that hard for me to find the fresh herbs used in Vietnamese cooking. I live near the so called Little Saigon of Orange County, California. The essential ingredient for this salad is a fresh herb called Vietnamese Coriander, the Vietnamese name is rau răm. I went on a special trip to a Vietnamese market just to get it. It is not available in the usual natural food markets I frequently shop at. If this is not available in your area, you can use fresh lemon verbena. Whatever you use for a substitution, choose a fresh herb that has lemony flavor and smell. I took a good picture of it so you can see how it looks like if you are able to find a Vietnamese market near you (you know that language barrier can be a problem shopping in such a market). Probably, you can also ask your local Vietnamese restaurant if they know where to buy it.

The ingredients of the salad are as follows (from left hand corner, clockwise): green mango, firm cucumber (English cucumber), carrots, jicama, green apple, chopped herbs (Vietnamese coriander and fresh mint leaves).

As you can see that the green mango is light yellowish and not white. During my growing up years, I was able to pick green mango from my own tree in the yard before it turned light yellow (a bit too ripe). However, for the purpose for this salad, since the mango was still firm, it was good enough.

The ingredients were all cut in julienne manner or match sticks. This is a chore. I used a food processor but then found out that it was not a good idea since this tool tends to make the ingredients juicy. I will investigate of a good mandolin that can perform julienne cut fruit and vegetable the way I want it. A julienne peeler did not do a good job since it cut too small. Don't worry since all the effort to cut all the vegetable and fruit is well worth it. This salad is so refreshing, spicy, light, healthy, and very low fat.

Another unique ingredient is young coconut juice. It is the water/juice and not milk, ok? If you can find a young coconut and get the juice out of it, that's great (recently we have lots of young coconuts in nearby Asian and natural food markets). Otherwise, I recommend the one in a can without added sugar and no pulp. I am using it in the veganized salad dressing (originally, this salad has fish sauce in its dressing).

Vietnamese Green Mango Salad
Serve 4-6

Ingredients:
2 cups green mango, julienne cut (about 2 small green mango)
1 cup English cucumber, julienne cut
2 cups carrots, julienne cut
2 cups jicama, julienne cut (1 small jicama)
1 to 2 Granny Smith apple, julienne cut (about 1 to 1 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup Vietnamese Coriander, measure then chop
1/2 cup fresh mint, measure then chop

Garnish:
Cilantro
2 tablespoons fried shallot, omit for lower fat
3 tablespoons chopped unsalted peanuts, omit for lower fat
Sriracha hot sauce
Rice chips or crackers

Salad Dressing:
1/4 cup light soy sauce or Bragg's Liquid Amino
Note: refer to my blog about soy sauce I use
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 to 1/3 cup young coconut juice or vegetarian broth (room temperature)
1-2 tablespoons agave syrup
1-3 Thai chili or 1/2 jalapeno, chop finely (reduce amount for less spicy)
1 teaspoon minced fresh garlic

Preparation:

Combine all salad ingredients in a salad bowl or a large salad plate.
Combine all the salad dressing ingredients. Adjust the lime juice and agave syrup so this dressing is a sweet, sour, and spicy. Add enough young coconut juice to make it about 1 cup. Make sure the dressing is mixed thoroughly.
Just before ready to serve, pour the dressing over the salad and combine well.
Add garnish on top of salad, serve immediately in a room temperature with rice crackers, papadum, and drizzle with Sriracha hot chili sauce, if desired.

While shopping in Vietnamese markets, I discovered Vietnamese rice crackers that is usually served with this kind of salad. The Vietnamese name is Bánh da .

It is made of rice flour, tapioca starch, salt, water, black sesame seetd, and peanut. In this case, it was covered with black sesame seeds. It is crispy like a large cracker about 12-inches diameter and is broken into pieces when it is served with the salad. A closer look:

I thought that this rice cracker is quite delicious with the salad or even just for snacking by itself. It reminds me of Indian papadums. I guess every culture has chips as snacks and this one is a great Vietnamese snacks. Here is how this salad is served: rice cracker on the bottom, top with salad, and drizzle with Sriracha hot sauce. I made sure that every bite has all 3.

This is our favorite salad. It can be a light meal by itself for a hot summer. I cannot describe how good is the combination of sour green mango and green apple, sweet carrots, crispy jicama and cucumber, spicy sweet and sour dressing, refreshing herbs, and crackling rice chips all together. It was a party in our mouth!

Vegan Coconut and Lilikoi Scones

2009-06-13T10:17:00.001-07:00

I haven't blogged for 2 months! I've been very busy with a project at work and at home. To relieve stress we decided to go for a Hawaiian vacation for 2 weeks. That trip inspired my blog and recipe for this blog: Coconut and Lilikoi(Passion Fruit) Scones, an inspiration from our trip to the Big Island and Kauai.

This recipe below is an adaptation of 'Classic Currant Scones' from the by Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. I wanted rich and tasty scones resembling what I ate in the Big Island. There is no fresh passion fruit or Lilikoi where I live so I used Passion Fruit Jam that I brought home from Hawaii.

Coconut and Lilikoi(passion fruit) Scones

Ingredients:
1 1/2 teaspoons Ener-G Egg replacer
2 tablespoons water
1 1/4 cup unbleached flour
1 1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup vegan sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup non-hydrogenated, nondairy butter, cold (like Earth Balance)
1/2 cup shredded dry coconut (not sweetened)
1/2 cup soymilk creamer (or any other non-dairy milk)
Extra soy milk and flour for kneading
2 tablespoons Lilikoi (Passion Fruit) jam
2 tablespoons soy milk for brushing on top
Sucanat or vegan sugar for sprinkling on top

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Lightly oil a cookie baking pan or use a parchment paper to line it.
In a food processor, whip the egg replacer and water together until creamy and white.
Meanwhile, combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
Cut the cold vegan butter into small pieces or chunks.
Add the cut butter into the flour mixture and combine lightly.
Add the butter and flour mixture into the egg replacer mixture in the food processor.
Pulse the food processor while adding the soymilk creamer for about 30 seconds to 1 minute until a dough formed and mixed together.
Add the 1/2 cup shredded unsweetened dry coconut and continue to mix for another 30 seconds. The dough will not be smooth like a bread dough but it should not stick to your fingers too much.
Move the dough onto a floured cutting board and form a ball. Then flatten the ball with your hand. Add 1 tablespoon of lilikoi jam and fold over and mix. Then, add another 1 tablespoon jam and repeat. The dough may be soften. If it becomes sticky add extra flour until it is not sticky anymore(you may want to lightly flour your hands, as well). Then, flatten with your hand to form a 8 or 9-inch circle, 1/2 inch thick. Cut into 8 pieces (like cutting pizza) so that you'll have 8 triangle pieces.
Place them 1/2 inch apart on the baking sheet, brush the tops with soymilk creamer or non-dairy milk, and sprinkle with sucanat or vegan sugar.
Bake until the tops are brown, about 15 minutes. Let cool on a rack and serve warm with more lilikoi jam.

This scone is different than the lilikoi scone we ate at the Island Naturals market in Pahoa. We visited this market almost everyday while we were at the Big Island, staying in the Puna District. In Hawaii, they used fresh lilikoi. You can also use crushed pineapple and folded them in the scones, instead. This is a tropical vegan scone that is so delicious.

I am going to talk about our vegan experience in both islands: Kauai and Big Island with some pictures.

We were disappointed that Blossoming Lotus Cafe in Kauai closed down. We stayed in Kapa'a, Kauai and was hoping to visit this vegan restaurant. Alas, there were a few vegan establishments in Kauai. One market that we visited was the Papaya's Natural Foods in Kapa'a. They provide all kinds of vegan sandwiches and warm deli dishes. We loaded our cooler with vegan sandwiches and goodies before we headed for the beaches.

This is the view from the condo we stayed at. Every morning we had a vegan breakfast on our lanai(balcony) consisted of a bowl of tropical Hawaiian granola, soy milk, kona coffee, and tropical fruits, facing the beach. The sound of waves, birds, monk seals, and rooster were the background noise of our breakfast. Life is good!

We also went to farmers market in Lihue, Kauai and bought lots of fruits. The scene of their farmers market is different than home. They have lots of tropical flowers and fruits. We bought Hawaiian papaya, Mountain Apples, Apple and Baby Banana, and Longans.

I was so happy there since the weather and tropical fruits remind me of Indonesia. The landscape is so beautiful and green. The air is so clean and fresh and the sound of waves could be heard all night long from our bedroom. Unfortunately, we didn't find any Indian or Vietnamese restaurants. Their popular ethnic restaurants are Thai. There were several Thai restaurants that we visited. They provide vegan and vegetarian dishes with tofu. After 2 or 3 visits to the Thai restaurants; however, we were ready to try other ethnic restaurant that provides vegetarian food but there was none.

During our visit in Kauai, we did try Jojo's Shave Ice which according to our guide book: "The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook" by Andrew Doughty (the best guide book for Hawaiian islands, btw. We bought one for the Big Island, too.) it is the BEST shave ice in the island. We didn't try other shave ice joint and trusted this book. I can say that it was the BEST because the ice was shaved very finely. You can get 60 different flavors from this place. I notice that coconut and lilikoi combination flavor is very popular in Hawaii. Their coconut pudding or jello called Haupia is a popular dessert. Haupia is made of coconut cream and sometimes it is mixed with coconut meat and/or other tropical fruit like mango or passion fruit. You can get a recipe of a Tropical Haupia in Everyday Dish TV from a Hawaiian Chef: Brian Igarta, the Maui Vegetarian. I had a vegan haupia and lilikoi dessert from Island Naturals while I was there and it was yummy. This combination inspired my recipe for the scone above.

I chose Haupia Cream flavor shaved ice: coconut cream with coconut meat and DH chose the Coconut and Lilikoi combination shaved ice (the lilikoi syrup was the yellow one).

A trip to the beach was our schedule almost everyday. We managed to find a beach for snorkeling and swimming with calm waves and clean/clear water such as this one: the Ke'e Beach (the best beach in Kauai), thanks to the wonderful guidebook.

The highlight of Kauai was our visit to this beach and watching the Sunset:

Then, it was followed by a nice vegan dinner at a gourmet restaurant with vegan options: Postcards Cafe, at the town of Hanalei. It is a fancy restaurant where we celebrated our 20th anniversary with a nice vegan dinner. The Postcards Cafe has a postcard to take home:

What I enjoyed the most at that restaurant was their Hisbiscus cooler and their vegan Hanalei Taro Fritters with pineapple chutney(pictured).

It is not over yet, folks! We moved to the Big Island and stayed at the Puna District area. Our highlight of this trip was to see the active lava going into the ocean with an ocean adventure tour: Lavakai. We woke up at 3 am to catch a boat tour at 4 am. Are we crazy? No, we are not! Lava is best to be seen during the dark since it competes with the sun. I really recommend this tour. It is a safe adventure and it is once in a lifetime experience (the lava may stop at anytime). We visited this area 10 years ago and wanted to see the lava going into the ocean, booked the trip, but the lava stopped just before our tour day. So imagine our disappointment at that time. After waiting for another chance (another 10 years), we got our wish. It was well worth it to wake up at 3 am for this:

This is a lava explosion we saw from the boat at 4:30 am. Steam covered my lense so many times that I had to wipe it often. The boat was also rocking and rolling. It was very hard to get good pictures in such situation. Bonine or other motion sickness pill is a must for this trip.

Active lava represents Madame Pele (goddess of fire in Hawaii). She was nice to us this time and revealed herself with no disappointment anymore. We were awarded by this view and the sunrise view over a steamy ocean water at 5:45 am:

The selection of vegan meals in the Big Island was similar to Kauai (many Thai restaurants). We were lucky to find this natural market: Island Naturals (has a sister market in Hilo) which serves lots of vegan pastries, breakfast burrito, warm deli (chana masala, thai tofu, tofu and spinach curry, brown rice, etc.), cold sandwiches, vegan vegetable/tofu sushi, and tofu pad thai. They also have lots of vegan desserts such as haupia and lilikoi, carrot cakes, chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, etc. They have great organic coffee with organic soy creamer, too. The one in Pahoa opens at 7 am with warm, yummy vegan morsels and organic coffee. We visited this store several times during our visit and I really recommend this store to vegan tourists. Aloha!

Berbere, The Spice Mix I Love

2009-03-20T15:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged for a while. This one was started back in March and I haven't released till now. I have been busy with work(TJIJ - Thank God I still have a Job) and family that this blog is delayed.

I love spices and love meals with a lot of spices such as Indian, Indonesian, and Thai. I think that's because I grew up with spices in a spice island: Java. Recently, I found that Ethiopians also use a spice mix that I really like. After visiting Ethiopian restaurants several times, I grew to love Ethiopian food. I did try to make injera (Ethiopian bread) but I didn't like the result. However, I succeeded in making their spice called Berbere. The one I made look exactly like the picture in this wiki info. I found the recipe in the Internet and modified it to be less spicy. Whenever I use this spice in cooking, our house smells so wonderful. Our neighbors made comments that they can smell my cooking and that it smells so good they say, thanks to Berbere. DH often comes back home from work and can smell the aromatic smell before he enters the house.

I love this Ethiopian Berbere spice mix combined with garlic and onions. Ethiopians use clarified butter or ghee mixed with spices too and it is called Niter Kibbeh. I tried make it with Earth Balance once by melting it and add some spices to it. It was good but I still like using Virgin Olive Oil and/of Grapeseed oil in my cooking so I don't use Nitteh Kebeh in my Ethiopian cooking.

Berbere

Adopted from www.recipezaar.com

Ingredients
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
4 whole cloves
3/4 teaspoon cardamom seed
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorn
1/4 teaspoon whole allspice
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seed
4 small dried red chilies
1 teaspoon dried gingerroot
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 tablespoons sweet Hungarian paprika or smoked paprika
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Directions:

In a small frying pan, on medium-low heat, toast the cumin, whole cloves, cardamom, peppercorns, allspice, fenugreek, and coriander for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove the pan from the heat and cool for 5 minutes.
Discard the stems from the chiles.
In a spice grinder (a coffee grinder for spices only) or with a mortar and pestle, finely grind together the toasted spices and the chiles.
Mix in the remaining ingredients.
Store Berebere refrigerated in a well-sealed jar or a tightly closed plastic bag.

The original recipe uses 8 dried red chilies which make it fiery hot. Therefore, I reduced it to half. If you don't like spicy hot food, you can reduce it even more. This is a dry spice mix and not a paste. There are berbere spice paste for sale in the Internet. I haven't really bought any so I can't recommend one.

The reason that I like the dry spice mix instead of the paste is that I can use the dry spice on popcorn. It's quite delicious to drizzle this dry spice mix on freshly made popped corn.

Below is a simple recipe of a vegetable stew spiced with Berbere. In the picture above, it's the one on the right hand side. I served this stew with Indian style lemon rice and chana masala. The stew is good with brown rice, too. Or, if you can buy or made fresh injera, that will be the way to enjoy this stew.

Spicy Vegetable Stew with Berbere
Serves 4

1.5 cups peeled and chopped carrots
1.5 cups peeled and chopped sweet potato
1.5 cups yellow squash
1.5 cups chopped fingerling potato
1.5 cups chopped zuchinni
1 peeled large onions, chopped finely
6 cloves peeled fresh garlic, minced.
1 cup tomato sauce
vegetable broth (1.5 to 2 cups)
1 Tbsp. Berbere
1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp Olive or Grapeseed oil

Direction:

Cut all the vegetables about 1-inch cube (as pictured).
Sautee onions and garlic in oil on a medium heat in a 2-quarts sauce pan.
After onions is translucent, add berbere spice mix and stir for a minute until aromatic.
Add all the vegetables in to the pan and mix. Stir for 2 minutes.
Add the tomato sauce and vegetable broth enough to cover the vegetables and no more.
Add salt and simmer for 20 minutes or untill all the vegetables are soft.

Pictured above are roasted vegetables with Berbere, boiled fingerling potatoes, and new Trader Joe's Vegan Stuffed Chick'n with blackbean and corn. Roasted vegetables with Berbere is so good and easy. I usually use about 1 Tbsp dry Berbere mixed with 2 - 3 Tbsp olive oil and salt. I coat onions, zucchini, yellow squash, and garlic with this mix and roast them in 425-450 F oven. Any other vegetable that is good for roasting will be good with Berbere.

El Misti Peruvian Restaurant with Vegan Options

2009-03-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

I was browsing the Internet one day and found this Peruvian restaurant in Anaheim (Southern California) that serves vegetarian/vegan dishes: El Misti. Although they serve meat and seafood, they have an on-line menu which contains a vegetarian section with vegan options. I was surprised that they understand what vegan means. Wow! Since I haven't had a good vegan Peruvian dishes lately (I usually make my own, see my blog about veganized Yuca ala Huancaina, here), I decided to have a try.

The outside of the restaurant looks like a plain small restaurant in a plain shopping mall.

Apparently, it is a mom and pop restaurant owned by a couple Peruvian. In my opinion, usually this kind of restaurant serve better home cooked meals than fancy ones. The husband, Juan, helps by talking to customers and waiting tables. He is very friendly and welcoming. His wife, Hilda, is the Chef and she is a very talented one, really. Juan told us that he is a vegetarian and his son was a vegan. His son was the one who told his wife how to cook vegetarian and vegan. Therefore, they have a large vegetarian section in their menu.

The food here is absolutely delicious. I came with my husband and a friend who is moving back to Germany and it was our goodbye dinner for her. It was our friend's first experience of Peruvian food so it was a real adventure for her. Especially, when we ordered a picther of Chicha Morada (traditional Peruvian beverage made of purple corn, pineapple, and hint of citrus) and she tried it for the first time. She never had anything like it and she liked it. The articles in the Internet mentioned that Chicha Morada has a lot of antioxidant and can lower blood pressure. Who would have known when we drank this juice that was so yummy. You can read a blog about Chicha Morada, here.

The starter is always a basket of soft warm bread with Aji (green hot sauce made with garlic, oil, spices, and huacatay , pronounced wah-kah-tye (peruvian mint) instead of cilantro).

The secret of this restaurant really is in the sauce. This green spicy sauce is so good that it's good on everything, I bet. Our friend really loves this green aji sauce. Juan told us that it's huacatay that we like and he brought us to the back of his restaurant where he has huacatay bushes growing. Huacatay is a black mint that is used a lot in Peruvian cooking. Hhhhmmm, I wonder if I can find that in an ethnic market somewhere. If I can, I will be able to make it at home.

Our next course was veggie tamale wrapped in a banana leave.

I thought the tamal was a bit dry and not much filling in it. The pickled onions and radishes on the side was great with it though. We shared this dish since we ordered 3 main courses. Forewarn, this restaurant serves HUGE portions. Since the price is not low, we really could have shared a main course for 2. However, since we wanted to try everything, each of us ordered a main course dinner.

My husband's dinner was Veggie Cau Cau (pronounced cow cow). The fuzziness of this picture came from the steam because it was still really hot when it came. It smelled and tasted absolutely like the picture, real yum. I wish there is a technology to taste and smell blogged pictures.

It's a stew made with soy protein, potato, peas, and carrots in a mild yellow pepper sauce with a hint of huacatay (again, that Peruvian black mint). It came with that refreshing pickled onions and radishes.

I opted out the soy and quinoa stir fry.
This dish had lots of veggies in it. There was really a pile of quinoa underneath it. This was very very good. Here, in this picture, you can see the healthy quinoa underneath the pile of goodness:

Our friend chose Soy Chicken and Rice (Arroz con Pollo): soy chicken drumsticks cooked in vegetables and rice with cilantro spinach and premium dark larger. I thought that there were more rice than the soy chicken. Our friend said that the soy chicken tasted very good.I tasted a bit of the dark green rice and it was really good. The vegan option will probably come with lentils instead of salad and without the cheese sauce.

If you live in SoCal, I highly recommend this restaurant. The other dish that we ordered in the past and didn't mention here was the Lomo Saltado with soy beef or Soy Beef Stir Fry. I thought that it was absolutely delicious. Hilda really did a great job in serving vegetarians and/or vegans with her specialties. I thank her and Juan for providing an ethnic Peruvian vegetarian/vegan in her non-vegetarian restaurants. Sometimes, I am really tired of eating boring American vegan dishes like vegan chili or vegan shepherd pie, you know.

El Misti Picanteria Arequipeña
3070 W Lincoln Ave, Suite D
Anaheim, CA 92801

Telephone: (714) 995-5944
FAX: (714) 995-3254

Email:	elmisti@elmisticuisine.com
	info@elmisticuisine.com

Revisiting Vegan Tiramisu

2009-02-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

After our visit to That's Amore vegan Italian restaurant(previous blog), I kept thinking about making Tiramisu. I took out my favorite cookbook: Nonna's Italian Kitchen by Bryanna Clark Grogan and whipped up my favorite dessert.

This time I took clear plastic cocktail cups that people use in parties and layered my Tiramisu in them . I was thinking that I can give away this dessert without asking for any container or glass back. I gave some to my mom and friends. They absolutely loved it. This works great. What do you think? Afterward, the consumer can just pitch the empty cup into a recycling bin.

I baked the Vegan Genoise cake(page 222) in 2 9-inches round cake pans so the cake will be a bit thinner. Then, I cut small and medium circles of cake using the cup as a guide.

I ended up with a few circles of cake and some crumbs. None was wasted. I used the crumbs on top, too.

For more details about vegan tiramisu, you can visit my blog about it here. I used real wine glasses at that time. The only thing I did different this time was that I used a different custard recipe. It's still Bryanna's recipe from Nonna's Italian Kitchen and called Zabaglione (page 218). Last time I made it with Cashew Pastry Creme (page 219). Zabaglione usually is made with egg yolks, cream and sugar. For Bryanna's vegan version, I used Bird's Custard Powder to make it custard-like.

I also like this brand of instant espresso for tiramisu. It's easy to make and thought it tastes good:

I absolutely love Vegan Tiramisu. If I have to choose between a chocolate cake, vegan cheesecake, vegan ice cream, gelato, and vegan tiramisu as my Valentine's Dinner Dessert, my number one choice will be Vegan Tiramisu.

Vegan Hainan 'Chicken' Rice

2009-02-07T09:38:00.000-08:00

I veganized Hainan Chicken Rice dish( a Malaysian chicken and rice dish). Unlike other vegetarians who don't like mock meats, I like them and don't mind them at all. I cook dishes with mock meats sometimes. I still order mock meats in vegetarian restaurants, too. Maybe because I ate meat for the 35 years of my life? Who knows? If I became a vegetarian when I was a teenager, it maybe a different story now. That's my theory.

I used to eat Hainan Chicken Rice dish when I was eating meat and growing up in an Asian country. With the help of VegeFarm Vegan Chicken Breast (the 5th product on the list) that I found in a nearby HFS, I was able to veganize it. It needs some additional tricks to make it delicious: kombu broth, dried shiitake mushrooms, and tamari or soy sauce. These items add umam i or an essence of deliciousness to this dish.

To begin with, the 'chicken breast' is simmered in a gingery and garlicky kombu broth with the shiitake mushrooms for 45 minutes. Then, I took out the 'breast' and mushrooms and let them rest. Next, I made the rice by using the broth the 'chicken' is simmered in (that's why it's called 'chicken' rice). Traditionally, white long grain rice is use but I used brown jasmine rice instead. Although, brown basmati rice will do. Malaysian uses pandan leaves in their rice and also some coconut milk with the chicken broth. This kind of rice is called nasi lemak. However, I didn't have pandan leaves and opted out to make a lesser fat rice dish. Therefore, I used lemon grass that I have in my garden and no coconut milk. While making the rice, I prepared the chili dipping sauce by combining lime juice, Asian style chili sauce, minced garlic, sugar/agave nectar, and some more of the cooking broth.

In both pictures above, in plating the dish for each person/consumer, the rice and 'chicken' are accompanied by sliced cucumber, sliced tomatoes, sauteed shiitake mushrooms, left over broth, chili dipping sauce, and hoisin sauce. Traditionally, the warm rice is molded into a rice bowl and inverted over on the serving plate. Since it is a dry dish, sliced 'chicken' can be dipped into the condiments or the broth. The other way to eat it is that the broth and condiments can be poured over both the 'chicken' and rice. Either way is good.

I made kombu/shiitake broth ahead of time and usually freeze this kind of broth as I use it a lot in my cooking. I use kombu/shiitake broth in making miso soup and other kind of soups, too. Kombu/shiitake broth is healthy and has a lot of umami in it. It is easy to make:

6 cups water
1 dried kombu (5 by 6 inches)
6-8 dried shiitake mushrooms

Simmer the mixture above for 30 minutes. Strain broth. Discard kombu and reserve shiitake mushrooms for other cooking use.

The recipe below only serves 2 people but it can be doubled.

Vegan Hainan 'Chicken' Rice
Serve 2

Ingredients for 'Chicken':

1 VegeFarm Vegan Poultry-Free Chicken Breast or any vegan chicken breast(see sources below)
5 stalks green onion (white parts only, reserve the green parts), chopped
2 Tbsp. fresh ginger, chopped finely
3 Tbsp. garlic, chopped finely
1 Tbsp. Tamari or soy sauce
5 cups Kombu/shiitake broth (recipe above)
6 dried shiitake mushrooms
1 1/2 tsp. roasted sesame oil
1/2 tsp. whole black peppercorns
1 tsp. vegetarian chicken broth powder such as Chiknish
1 tsp. salt

Condiments/Garnishes:
1 Cucumber, peeled and sliced
1 Tomato, sliced
Cilantro sprigs
Fried Shallots(brambang goreng)
Vegetarian Hoisin sauce

To prepare 'Chicken':

Put all ingredients above (except garnishes and the green part of green onions) in a medium size pot.
Heat it with a medium high heat until broth started to boil. Then, lower it to simmer.
Let it simmer for 45-50 minutes, covered.
Take out the 'chicken' breast and the shiitake mushroom, and let them rest on a plate. Strain and reserve broth(about 4 cups left) to cook 'chicken' rice below.

Ingredients for 'Chicken' Rice:
1 1/2 cups brown jasmine rice, washed, rinsed, and drained
3 cups of cooking broth for 'chicken' (if coconut milk is used, replace part of broth with coconut milk, about 1/2 cup)
1 Tbsp. garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. roasted sesame oil
1 stalk fresh lemon grass, cut in pieces or 2 or 3 pandan leaves
more salt, if need

To prepare 'Chicken' Rice:

Heat sesame oil in a medium pot over a medium high heat.
Saute minced garlic for a few seconds until fragrant.
Add rice into the pot and stir for about 3-4 minutes in oil and garlic.
Add cooking broth and pandan/lemon grass.
Taste for more salt as needed.
Cover and cook for 45 minutes until broth is absorbed and rice is cooked. The optional way is to use a rice cooker (put sauteed rice, broth, and pandan/lemon grass in a rice cooker).

Ingredients for chili dipping sauce:
1 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
2 Tbsp. 'Chicken' broth (from reserved cooking broth above)
2 Tsp. sugar/agave nectar
4 Tsp. Chili garlic sauce (Asian style like Sriracha)
1/2 Tsp. minced fresh garlic
1/4 Tsp. salt

To Prepare for Chili dipping sauce:
Combine ingredients above . Pour sauce into small condiment dishes for each individual serving.

To Serve:

Saute the 'Chicken' breast and cooked shiitake mushroom on a small frying pan until a bit brown (a few minutes). Slice 'chicken' horizonally with a sharp knife.
Mold brown rice in a rice bowl and invert it over to a serving plate. Sprinkle fried onions on top.
Heat reserve broth. Add chopped green onions (the green parts).
Arrange garnish and sliced 'chicken' on the serving plate with the rice for each person. Serve with condiments individually: broth, chili dipping sauce, and hoisin sauce.
This dish can be served warm or in a room temperature.

I served sauteed kale, mushrooms, and onions with this dish.

Other on-line sources for vegan chicken breast: Vegieworld, Follow Your Heart and Gardein.

Vegan Pizzas for Super Bowl? That's Amore!

2009-02-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

The above pizza is topped with vegan pepperoni, artichoke heart, black olives, and mushrooms.

After being absent from my blog for a long time, I can't resist to blog this one. Last week, we heard that there is a new restaurant in town, a vegan Italian restaurant. Oh Boy! Local vegans can rejoice! I thought of pizzas right away. How nice would it be to have a place where we can order pizzas with vegan mozzarella cheese that melts? Well, people, that kind of restaurant is here at Cerritos, CA (ironically, it was formerly known as Dairy Valley), about 20 miles from where we live: That's Amore! That's the name of this new vegan Italian restaurant.

I can make my own vegan pizzas at home but hhmmm..... I think pizzas that are made in a restaurant on a stone-based oven that can be heated up to 550 - 600 F are better, in my opinion, than homemade ones. Besides, sometimes, I just want to go out and/or call for pizzas to go just like everybody else.

Unfortunately, this restaurant has no website yet. You can visit reviews of this restaurant at VegParadise , Yelp, quarrygirl, and happycow. After reading these reviews, we drove, salivated, enjoyed, and walked out with full bellies. We opted out to try their vegan Italian dishes first: DH had Eggplant Parmigiana dish and I opted out the 'Chicken' (soy chicken) Parmigiana one. Both of us basically ate every bite on our plates. Then, we ate some vegan cannolis for desserts. Our other choices are vegan gelatos and sorbets. It was really hard to decide but we know we'll be back. We also brought home 2 pizzas (pictured here) to enjoy while we were watching the Super Bowl. This is really the first time I can order pizzas to go with vegan cheese on it and that I can reheat at home or work for lunch.

Above is the Veggie Pesto Pizza which is very light, creamy, and topped with lots of veggies.

The crust is light, tasty, and thin (thicker crust can be ordered). I saw the chef really flung the pizza dough with his hands, round and round, in their kitchen just like in a classic and traditional pizza kitchen. The white mozzarella cheese was hot, melted, and bubbly when it came out of the oven. There are more to try at this restaurant including pastas with vegan sausages, vegan meat balls, vegan bechamel sauce (for alfredo style), and vegan pink sauce (bechamel and red sauce combined).

The owner of the restaurant, Marina, and I were discussing about adding Vegan Tiramisu on their dessert menu. I shared my experience in making this dish that I really love. I even blogged it here back in May 2008. I was hoping that she is inspired with my tips and she can develop her own Tiramisu to serve her happy vegan customers.

Here is the restaurant info:

That's Amore!
13349 Artesia Blvd., Cerritos, CA 90703
Phone: 562-926-2112 and 562-926-8920
Hours: Monday to Saturday: 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Sunday: 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

The atmoshpere of this restaurant is light, airy, and happy. I love the yellow and blue combination of their wall colors. We were so amused when we heard the 'Theme of The Godfather' music was played on the background. We both were chuckling and visualizing Italian mafias coming out of their back door with guns. But no mafias here, just fiercely melted vegan cheeses. Marina was informing us that she planned to have Karaoke nights in this restaurant. Oh boy, what a farce addition to that place! I told her that we have Italian Crooners Karaoke CD that we can bring to her party. Can't wait!

Vegan Sushi Party!

2008-09-28T09:49:00.001-07:00

Yet, another vegan sushi party! This is my 3rd post about vegan sushi. You can tell that I love vegan sushi and like to have a sushi party. It's a lot of fun to let your guests roll their own sushi and choose the filling they want to put in it. I don't have to prepare too much before hand and can enjoy the company. This time, I include an option for those who don't like seaweed or nori. I served 3 types of vegan sushi(with or without nori): mak i sushi, temaki sushi, and inari sushi .

I piled up the filling ingredients on a tray: cucumber, carrots, crispy sauteed soy ham, seasoned tofu, red or yellow bell pepper. I didn't have an avocado which would be great in a sushi. You can actually be creative in what kind of filling you want to use. I prepared the sushi rice in a separate large bowl. Guests can create their own sushi, any style they like.

Rolled Sushi or Maki sushi wrapped with nori. Guests can roll their own sushi like these above.

Soy sheet wrapped sushi (temaki). Guest can hand roll their own temaki or rolled sushi with the soy wrapper. This is for those who detest nori or seaweed. I learned about soy wrappers for sushi from Julie a while back. Check this out: Sushi Party soy wrappers

Nori wrapped sushi (temaki). Guest can roll their own temaki with nori, too.

I prepared these before hand. This is actually my favorite sushi style (no nori). I added some green peas and corn in the filling. For a vegan inari sushi recipe, you can check Bryanna's blog, here.

I made my sushi rice combined with quinoa. For recipes and previous blogs, you can click here and here.

If you have never had sushi party, you should try it. You can invite your friends who love Japanese food, friends who detest nori, and friends who love to gather for a fun and feast event!

Vegan Potato Salad with Mustard and Fresh Baby Dill Weed

2008-09-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

Store-bought potato salad or any potato salad served in a picnic or a party is a 'no-no' dish for us. Generally, potato salad recipes contain mayonnaise (eggs and dairy). Therefore, I have not made potato salad in the last 12 years. I could have made one with vegan mayonnaise but DH doesn't like mayonnaise or vegan mayonnaise (home made or store-bought). I had been racking my brain for a potato salad recipe that will satisfy both our palates. Alas, I came up with this recipe. It is very mustardy and a bit spicy but that's what we both like. It also has fresh baby dill weed and salty vegan bacon in it. This salad is a bit sweet, too(agave nectar). It's a definitely a bold and flavorful potato salad and not the general lame potato salad made with mayonnaise.

Vegan Potato Salad with Mustard and Fresh Baby Dill Weed
Serve 6-8

3 lbs. Fingerling potatoes or Yukon Gold potatoes
2 ribs celery, diced small
3 green onions, diced
1/2 medium red onion, diced small
1/2 pkg. Smart Bacon (Lightlife), cooked and crumbled
3 Tbsp. Fresh Baby Dill Weed(I really prefer fresh dill weed in this recipe), chopped

Dressings:
1/3 cup olive oil
4 Tbsp. Organic Apple Cider vinegar
1 1/2 Tbsp. Agave Nectar
1 1/2 Tbsp. Organic Grained Dijon Mustard or Spicy Grained Dijon Mustard (or smooth Dijon mustard) My favorite brand is Roland Organic Grained Dijon Mustard
1 tsp. salt
Fresh ground black pepper (1/4 - 1/2 tsp)

Prepare veggie bacon as instructed on the box. Let them cool and hardened. Then, crumble or cut them into small pieces.
Boil potatoes (unpeeled) for 30 minutes. Drain and let them cool for 10 minutes, then, peel them. Cut them up in bite pieces. Let them cool some more while preparing dressing.
Measure apple cider vinegar into a bowl. Using a whisk or hand held blender, pour olive oil into the vinegar while whisking or blending this mixture. Oil and vinegar will combine into a nice and creamy looking dressing.
Add agave nectar, dijon mustard, salt, and pepper. Mix them really well with the whisk. You can adjust the sweet, spicy, sour, and salty taste.
Put all salad ingredients in a big bowl. Add dressing and combine well.
Let salad sit in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving. Serve it cold or at a room temperature.

VEGAN COMFORT MEALS

2008-09-14T09:55:00.001-07:00

There have been some stress in our household lately. We got some not-so good news from direct family members who are dealing with health issues and major surgeries. A friend of mine suggested that I made some comfort meals. So I did. These are not my recipes but I will direct you to the sources I used (cookbooks or websites).

Above are Crispy Beer-Battered Seitans (upper middle) from Yellow Rose Recipes cookbook by Joanna Vaught, my new vegan cookbook. On top of it is Bryanna's Southern Biscuit Gravy (from her newsletters). On the right of it are Jalapeno Poppers made with Bryanna's Vegan Sharp Chedda (from her newsletter). I grilled some zucchini and yellow squash and fingerling potatoes to eat them with.

Above is our vegan barbecue meal. I made vegan Barbecued Seitan Ribs (top right under the corn bread) from FatfreeVegan (SusanV.). I also made barbecued super firm tofu (underneath ribs). I made vegan Baked Mac and Cheese from Yellow Rose Recipe cookbook using Bryanna's Vegan Sharp Chedda Cheeze (from her newsletter). I also barbecued corn-on-the-cobs topped with Earth Balance and made a new recipe of corn bread I tried from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.

My favorite was the vegan macaroni and cheeze. I think this was the best vegan mac and cheeze I ever made. The combination of a great recipe from Yellow Rose Recipe and Bryanna's cheeze did it. I don't really like store-bought vegan cheese. However, I love Bryanna's cheeze that I can make at home. I was also surprised by the corn bread recipe from the Joy of Vegan Baking. It was delicious.

There are all kind of recipes of Jalapeño poppers which are also known as Dragon Eggs (because it is fiery hot) or Armadillo Eggs. It usually is stuffed with cream cheese and other kind of cheese and spices. This one is vegan. I used Bryanna's Soft Vegan Sharp Chedda Cheeze mixed with chopped parsley and chives. Then, I used the same beer batter for the crispy seitan above (from Yellow Rose Recipes cookbook) to coat them with. It was crispy and somewhat spicy and hot. I used rubber gloves to remove the seeds and white membranes from inside the jalapeño before I stuffed it with the soft chedda mixture.

Dessert was not left out in vegan comfort meals. This time I made Fall Fruit Crisp from The Joy of Vegan Baking cookbook. I used organic honeycrisp apple and blueberries I bought from a nearby farmers market for the filling. Then, I mixed them with raisins, spices, and brown sugar. For the crisp layer, I mixed a combination of rolled oats, whole wheat pastry flour, spices, Earth Balance, and maple syrup. It was served warm and topped with vegan vanilla ice cream.

How to Make Vegan Fish or Mock Fish - Vegan Unagi Donburi

2008-08-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

If you've ever been to Chinese Buddhist vegetarian restaurants and ordered dishes with 'fish' in it, you probably thought about how the mock fish was made. Below is a recipe that reveals the secret of Chinese Buddhist vegetarian fish. They use fresh or frozen yuba (which you may found it in the frozen or refridgerated sections of an Asian market) that is chopped into small flakes and then seasoned and wrapped in a nori sheet (sometimes a yuba sheet is added on the outside of the nori for a crispy skin). Then, it is steamed, cooled, and sliced into a fillet. Most Chinese Buddhist restaurants deep fry the yuba and nori wrapped 'fish' and then top it with flavored constarch thickened sauce.

Fresh or frozen yuba pockets (pictured) are hard to find in certain parts of this country (or your country). I found it in a nearby Asian market. But it is easier to find dry yuba sheets or sticks in Asian markets near you, probably? You'll have to do a few extra steps with yuba sticks because it is harder to soften them.

2 lbs fresh or thawed yuba pockets OR 2 pkgs dried yuba (6 oz. dried each) - see how to prepare below
3 tsp sugar

6 tsp vegetarian bouillon mix powder

Note: I used Harvest 2000 Vegetarian Bouillon Mix chicken flavor or Bill's Best Chiknish
1/2 tsp salt (use 1 tsp if using chiknish since it is not salty)
1-2 tsp kelp granules or more, depending on how 'seafoody' you want it to be
6 Tbsp cornstarch
1 1/2 Tbsp sesame oil
4-6 nori sheets

Glue mixture:
2 Tbsp Cornstarch mixed with 2 Tbsp water

Preparing with dry yuba sheets or sticks:
Soak dry yuba in a lot of warm water in 2 large bowl. Make sure the water covers the yuba. Let it sit over night or at least 6 hours.
If they are not soft enough, boil a large amount of water in a large pot, simmer soaked yuba about 5 - 8 minutes. The idea is to make the yuba soft. After soaking, a few sections of the yuba are still hard. Simmering them for a few minutes will help.

Let them cool and then squeeze the water out as much as you can, then proceed to the next step below.

Preparing 'fish' mixture (with fresh or dryyuba):
Chop the yuba with a knife or put the yuba (soaked yuba) in a food processor and process about 5 seconds only. Do not process too long. The idea is to chop them to small flakes.
Squeeze the water out of the yuba (especially if using dried yuba sticks). You may use a piece of cloth or drain the yuba in a colander and squeeze the water out using your hands. Transfer the yuba to a large bowl and add the rest of the ingredients, excepts the nori and glue. Mix really well.

'Fish Fillet' :
Layer a piece of nori on a cutting board. Brush lightly with the cornstarch and water mixture (glue mixture). Scoop about 1 1/2 cup of the 'fish' mixture on the bottom half of the nori sheet. Press it down with your fingers or a spoon. You need to press and squeeze the filling tightly so it won't fall apart after it is steamed and cooked. I found out that if you wet your hands, the mixture will less likely to stick on your fingers or you can use a saran wrap.

Then, fold the other half of the nori over and make sure there is a 1/2 inch overlap to cover the fish (see picture). Seal the fish using cornstarch and water mixture that is spread over the 1/2 inch overlap and press and squeeze the 'fish' mixture tight together as much as you can. Repeat with the rest of the mixture for each nori sheet.

Steaming 'Fish Fillet' :
To prevent sticking to your steamer, put a few of cabbage leaves or lettuce leaves on your steamer, arrange fillet on top of the leaves (see picture). I have used Chinese bamboo steamers without leaves and it works nicely (didn't stick). Steam for 20 minutes. Let the fillet throughly cool before transferring it out of the steamer. Put them in the refridgerator to cool off some more for a few hours before cooking it. They freeze well.

Cooking Tips:
It is best to use the 'fish' for cooking after it is refridgerated for a few hours or frozen and then thawed.

JAPANESE VEGAN UNAGI DONBURI ('Eel' On Rice Bowl, pictured above)

I used to order Unagi Donburi when I visited Japanese restaurants before I became a vegetarian. I sometimes missed the 'sea' flavor of Unagi. I was able to re-create this dish after I discovered how to make my own vegan fish. It is best to eat this dish accompanied by vegetable miso soup and vegan kimchi. Since the unagi sauce is so sweet, the saltiness of the miso soup balance it out. I also serve it with hot Genmai Cha (Japanese green tea with roasted brown rice). I am now back to eating Japanese food again.

1 recipe 'fish fillet' above
Note: For Unagi, I added 1/4 cup of reconstituted chopped wakame seaweed when making the 'fish fillet'. This will add more 'sea' flavor to the fillets. This is optional, of course.
vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. Toasted Sesame seeds
Dash of roasted sesame oil

4 cups steamed Japanese rice (short grain rice, white or brown)

Sauce:

1/3 cup Japanese soy sauce
1/3 cup Mirin (Sweet Style Japanese Mirin)
1/3 cup vegetarian Kombu Dashi or vegetable broth
2-3 Tbsp sugar, depending how sweet you like it or use agave syrup

Prepare the sauce:

Put the sauce ingredients together in a small pan. Simmer until the sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Set it aside. I only use a small amount of sauce for each fillet. It is a matter of preference. Some people likes lots of sauce on their donburi. If you do, you can double the recipe.

Preparing the unagi:
Heat a non-stick frying pan, then add 1/2 to 1 tsp vegetable oil. Pan fry 'fish fillet' in batches,2 fillets each time. Make sure both sides are crispy. Turn down the heat to low, pour 1/3 of sauce over fillets. Let the sauce cover the fillet and immediately take it off the heat. You don't want the sauce to crystalized in the pan. The longer you cook the sauce in the pan the thicker it will be. Repeat for the rest of the fillets.

Divide rice into 4 or 6 bowls. Transfer and divide the fillets and sauce on top of the rice. Sprinkle with dash of roasted sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds on top.

Yield: 4-6 servings

Secrets of Vegan Travellers

2008-08-08T10:10:00.001-07:00

Hearst Castle Roman Pool

I went on a short vacation this week to Cambria/San Simeon, along the California Coast Hwy, to Hearst Castle. After becoming vegetarians/vegans, DH and I have a challenge regarding what to eat while we travel because we live in a non-vegan world. This issue didn't stop us from going on vacations and trips. My secrets are the Internet, Happycow.net, and a GPS system.

Before a trip, I usually visit Happycow.net to see what restaurants are available in the area. If there is no vegan restaurant in this site, I search the Internet to find restaurants with vegan or vegetarian options. Then, I either print a page or two and/or enter the addresses into my Garmin nuvi 260. This GPS tool was a xmas gift from DH last year. I thought it was the best gift I ever received from him (on top of the kitchen tools he gave me). If there is such a thing as a Vegan Garmin, it will be perfect. But there is none, so I entered all the vegan restaurants I found into my Garmin.

Talking about secrets, I want to let you know about Mary's Secret Garden, a 100% Organic Vegan Bistro, in a California beach town called Ventura. This is the last place we visited during our trip but it was the highlight of it all so I will start from here and then go backward.

We visited this bistro TWICE in 2 days and splurged on vegan dishes. It was indeed a VEGAN HEAVEN. For someone like me who cook ALL THE TIME, it was nice to have someone else cooked for me, for a change. It was a real treat for me!

This bistro is small but homey. It looks like an old 50s house that was converted to a bistro. I found this restaurant at Happycow.net a year ago and we went to visit it then but I didn't let the secret out till now. It's too bad that I live 1.5 hours away -without traffic and 3 hours away-with 101 Hwy traffic from it. That's the only issue I have with this bistro.

Other than that, the vegan dishes are so delicious, healthy, gourmet, colorful, and organic. If you read its reviews at Happycow.net, you'll find that lots of visitors complained about it being pricey. It's true that it is pricey but have you looked at the price of fresh organic ingredients in your nearby organic market or a farmers market? Eating organic is not cheap. That's the fact.
I know so because I shop organic, too.

We definitely were very satisfied with what were served to us. Every dish was a gourmet meal and made personally by Chef Mary (except the cakes, her friends made them). Half of the menu is vegan raw and the other half is vegan cooked dishes. She also provides 'specials' all the time so you don't have to eat the same thing all the time (or if you want to eat the same thing you'll find that in their menu). I met Chef Mary and talked to her. She was very nice, helpful, and humble. Our waitress, Rose, had a lot of recommendations for us which some we followed and some we didn't but she was very accommodating.

During our first visit DH ordered Mushroom Bakin Burger with a side of raw slaw. DH doesn't like veganaise or any other vegan mayonnaise so he asked for mustard on the side:

This dish has a lot of umami in it. All of them were yummy, including the raw slaw.

I ordered Blueberries/Pineapple/Coconut smoothie (one of the specials) and Vegan Shrymp Pad Thai. I thought the smoothie was very colorful and delicious.

My Vegan Shrymp Pad Thai was right on! It was spicy, peanutty, and flavorful. Mary suggested that I squeezed all the limes all over it to enjoy it more. She was right.

At our next visit, the next day, we ordered a raw appetizer, Vegan Mock Salmon Raw Sushi. The picture speaks for itself. It was very refreshing and tasty.DH ordered Middle Eastern Platter served with warmed whole wheat pita bread (on the menu) and opted for both Stuffed Grape Leaves and Falafels. Mary made everything on this plate. The Stuffed Grape Leaves were stuffed with rice and garbanzo beans. The hummus had herbs in it and was quite delicious. The taboulleh was a raw one. I was intriqued with the grains in the taboulleh but was told that they were HEMP SEEDS. Rose showed me the Organic Nutiva Hemp Seeds that they sell and use. I bought a package and am going to use it in my taboulleh, the next time I make it. Hemp seeds have a lot of omega oils in it and are definitely nutritious.
I ordered Vegan Chicken Cilantro Salad. I am curious about the cilantro dressing and wanted to save room for a dessert:

This salad and the dressing was delicious. It was all homemade and gourmet but the vegan chicken was not, I think.

We split this Vegan Heaven Coconut Cream Chocolate Cake. This finished off our trip on a good note: I definitely know that all my vegan friends will be drooling over this cake.

The last few days before we visited Mary's bistro we had just adequate vegetarian dishes. Most of them are dishes we ate at non-vegan restaurants with vegan options. We visited Sojourner Cafe in Santa Barbara.

I had Tempeh Reuben and DH had Tempeh Taco Salad. You can ask for veganized items in this restaurant. Their dishes were good but they were nothing real special(compared to Mary's). They were just good and adequate food.

We also found a Southeast Asian cafe in Cambria that offered vegetarian dishes, called Wild Ginger . This cafe is owned by a Singaporean Chef. This one is not in Happycow.net yet. There are a few vegetarian dishes in their menu. I had the Curried Butternut Squash-Sweet Corn Bisque that was spicy and coconutty (it has coconut milk in it). DH had Indian Vegetable Samosa. We both opted for the Sezhuan Tofu with rice. Surprisingly, it was spicy and flavorful. For desserts, we opted for their home made sorbets (available flavors are pomelo, kiwi strawberry, lime, lychee, mango, pomegranate).

I picked lychee and DH got the lime one. I was very surprised of how good it was. I could taste the lychee very strongly. Yum! I may make this at home. We definitely were satisfied with what we found in Cambria. We had another dinner at Morro Bay at a California Fusion Mexican restaurant called Taco Temple. If you ask to hold the sour cream and cheese, this restaurant provides vegetarian burritos and tostadas that can be veganized. Their black beans and rice are vegetarian. What I like was that everything tasted so fresh with lots of veggies.

Well, looks like my vacation is over. This means that I am going back to my kitchen and will start cooking again!

Vegan Vietnamese Shaking 'Beef' with help of California Earthquake

2008-07-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

When I posted this blog this morning, we didn't have the Earthquake. It just happened a few minutes ago while I was eating my lunch in my office at Santa Ana, California. It happened at 11:42 am, a 5.8 earthquake at Diamond Bar and Chino Hills, California. It was PRETTY SHAKY! I am ok, a bit shaken up. We are about 17.5 miles from the epicenter.

The original name of this dish is Thit Bo Luc Lac, a famous Vietnamese dish that literally is translated to English as 'Shaking Beef.' This dish is named this way because the marinated beef is shaken in a very hot wok or cast iron pan, searing and shaking them, until they are evenly cooked. Then, they are served warm on a bed of fresh watercress, tomatoes, cucumbers, and seared onions, with a clear sweet and sour sauce (like salad dressing).

DH and I have been dining in Au Lac Vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant in Fountain Valley, CA for about 10 years now. One of our favorite dishes from their menu is Soy Beef and Watercress. We've been eating this dish for a long long time without knowing that this is the vegan version of Thit Bo Luc Lac. We have never eaten the original non-vegetarian dish at a non-vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant since we were not introduced to Vietnamese dishes until we became vegetarians 12 years ago. Not until recently, when I started to read blogs in the Internet that I found the original recipe and the story behind it. When I perused the ingredients, I realized that what I read was similar to our favorite dish that we frequently eat at Au Lac.

I recreated the veganized dish at home but used more ingredients than the original recipe such as tomatoes, cucumbers, and grilled pineapple. Au Lac uses watercress, tomatoes, and cucumbers but not pineapple. I had some left-over grilled pineapple in the fridge and thought that it would be a nice addition. This dish is flavorful because it tickles your tounge with 5 flavors: sour, sweet, salty, bitter, and umami (savory/deliciousness). The sour taste comes from the rice vinegar, lime juice, tomatoes, and pineapple. The sweet taste comes from the tomatoes, pineapple, seared onions, and agave syrup. The salty taste comes from the soy sauces and salt. The bitter taste comes from the watercress, soy sauce, and cucumber. The umami (5th flavor) comes from the seared 'soy beef', seared onions, freshly ground black pepper, and the soy sauces. The key to the deliciousness of this dish is to have a balance of all 5 flavors. I hope I can do the justice with the recipe below but you are welcome to adjust the flavors according to your taste of balance.

Vietnamese Soy 'Beef' and Watercress

Serve 4-6

Ingredients:

1 pkg. dried soy meat, beef style (Thit Chay)(7-8 oz.) or 2 cups dried Soy Curls™ prepared (see instructions below) and marinade with:

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
2 Tablespoons minced garlic
2 Tablespoons light soy sauce or Bragg's Liquid Amino™
2 Tablespoons agave nectar
1 Tablespoon dark mushroom soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon salt
Note: See my blog regarding the dark mushroom soy sauce or light soy sauce or 'fish' sauce that I use in Vietnamese or Thai cooking. Do not use Japanese soy sauce because it won't taste the same.

1 medium onion, slice thinly (1/4-inch thick)

Sweet and Sour Light Sauce(salad dressing):
2 Tablespoons rice vinegar
2 Tablespoons light soy sauce or Bragg's Liquid Amino™
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1 -2 Tablespoons agave nectar
1 Tablespoon lime juice
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Vegetables:
1 bunch organic watercress, cleaned and dried
2 Persian cucumbers or 1 English cucumber, sliced diagonally
1 medium fresh and ripe tomatoes, sliced
1 cup grilled or fresh pineapple

Preparing dried soy 'beef' (Thit Chay):

Simmer dried soy beef in hot water for 20 minutes.
Drain water and squeeze most of the water out.
The soy 'beef' should be soft now. I use this brand since it is very thinly sliced and is soft after they are simmered in boiling water.
Combine all marinade ingredients in a bowl.
Apply marinade to soy 'beef', mix well, and let it sit for at least 30 minutes.

If using Soy Curls™ :

Soak Soy Curls™ in warm water for 10 minutes.
Drain water and squeeze most of the water out.
Combine all marinade ingredients in a bowl.
Apply marinade sauce to Soy Curls™ , mix well, and let it sit for at least 30 minutes.

Preparing vegetables:

Mix sweet and sour light sauce ingredients together and marinade the sliced red onions in this sauce. The fresh onion flavor really makes this dressing flavorful. Let it sit marinating while you are preparing the rest of the vegetables.
Layer watercress on a serving dish, top with sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and pineapple.

Searing onions:

Heat a cast iron frying pan until it is very hot.
Drain onions from salad dressing/sauce but reserve the sauce in a bowl.
Pour or sprinkle the reserved dressing/sauce onto the prepared vegetables on the serving platter, evenly.
Put 1 teaspoon vegetable oil onto the hot cast iron frying pan. Then, add the drained onions.

Shake and turn onions until cooked (translucent) and a bit charred. Pour onions on top of the prepared vegetables.

Shaking Soy 'Beef' or Soy Curls™ :

Heat a cast iron frying pan until very hot.
Add 1-2 teaspoons vegetable oil. Then, add the marinated soy meat.
Shake and turn soy meat until a bit charred. Place warm soy meat on top of seared onions and prepared vegetables.

Before serving, mix the soy meat, onions and vegetables together and serve this dish with brown rice or white steamed sticky rice.

VEGGIE ROLL-UP FOR VEGGIE MEETUP

2008-07-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

DH and I attended Veggie Meetup of OC at Corona Del Mar State Beach Park. It's a very nice beach neighboring millions of dollars homes. We met nice people who are vegetarians and vegans (or vegan raw). This was a potluck event so each one of us brought a dish or two.

Picture taken by Ami

It's summer in Southern California. We are enjoying hot summer days at the beach, right? Wrong! True as far as enjoying the beach but it was not hot and sunny. We had an overcast and cold day, last Saturday. No need for sunscreen! Do I look cold or what? Bring a jacket or a wrap!

Talking about a wrap, I made Veggie Roll-Up or Wrap and Quinoa Taboulleh for the potluck.

We all really were enjoying to eat all the food on the table without worrying about non-vegan items. Someone brought chocolate mousse with peaches in it. Someone else brought 4 kinds of desserts from 4 different vegan cookbooks (recipes were shared, too). Yummy! Then, someone else brought fresh young coconuts, fruit salad, watermelon, etc. etc. We came late so we didn't see what else was available before we came.

Everyone enjoyed my dishes. I am going to display how this roll up was made. I made it just an hour before we took off for the beach potluck. It's an easy potluck dish for a summer event or a nice lunch dish to bring to work.

Veggie Roll-Up

Serve 6 for a meal or a bunch for potluck

Ingredients:

2 cans (8 oz. each) organic black beans (cuban style is ok, too)
6 vegan garden burgers (your favorite brand), prepared according to package
3 avocadoes, cut up
2 raw carrots, shredded coarsely
2 cups baby spinach leaves (raw)
1 cup organic corn (frozen, thawed)
cilantro sprigs
your favorite salad dressing (can be vegan thousand island or vegan chipotle ranch or veganaise)

6 whole wheat lavash bread (10 by 14-inches)

First, rinse and drain black beans completely. If there are some moisture, it's ok. Smash only some of the beans with a fork or hand-held blender to make it sticky.

Take a piece of lavash, lay it flat on a cutting board. Spread 1/6 of the black beans on lavash, then, top it with corn.

Break up 1 prepared and cooled vegan burger and put it in the middle, lengthwise, and then top with 1/2 of an avocado, cut up.

Top with a few baby spinach leaves all the way (lengthwise). Then, top with your vegan dressing (I used vegan chipotle ranch). Sprinkle some coarsly chopped carrots.

Add a few of the cilantro sprigs on the side and brush the rest of the lavash with water, lightly. This is to prevent it to break while it is rolled up (an important step).

Then, roll up everything like making a burrito. Squeeze all ingredients tightly while preventing the filling to spill over on both sides. This takes a practice but it 's not that hard. :-) You'll end up with a log or a roll-up sandwich or a wrap. Whoopie, I didn't break it!

You can eat the wrap just like it is or cut it up (a good idea for a potluck, don't you think?). To cut it up, with a very sharp knife, cut the wrap into halves, in the middle of the roll, then cut each half into 3 or 4 pieces. Clean the knife by wiping it with a moist paper towel for each cut (unlike what I did below, shame on me!)

Repeat Step 2-7 for the rest of the lavash. Enjoy this veggie roll-up with your favorite salad.

Vegan BBQ on July 4th and Vegan Peach Melba

2008-07-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

It's the time for a BBQ at So Cal (Southern California). It's July 4th, the weather was hot, and the BBQ grill was out. The menu for our July 4th's BBQ consisted of: BBQed Field Roast Smoked Apple Sage sausage topped with grilled onions, peppers, and sauerkraut; grilled vegetables; and a Peach Melba for dessert.

The recipe for grilled Field Roast Smoked Apple Sage on a bun is really easy. If you have not tried this product, I highly recommend it. I love the smoky and sweetness of this vegan sausage. To balance the flavor, I topped it with grilled red onions, red and yellow bell peppers, and organic sauerkraut, sauteed with a little EVOO.

Grilled Field Roast Apple Sage Sausage with Onions, Peppers, and Sauerkraut
Serve 4

1 pkg. Field Roast Apple Sage Sausage
4 vegan hot dog buns, your favorite brand

Toppings:
1 small red onions, sliced
1/2 large red bell pepper, sliced
1/2 large yellow bell pepper, sliced
1 cup organic sauerkraut (I used Eden brand)
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

mustard (your choice)

Heat a cast iron pan on medium high flame(I used a portable stove to cook outside when the weather is hot).
Add olive oil. Then, add onions. Pan fried for 1 minute. Add bell peppers. Sauteed for another minute.
Add organic sauerkraut and ground black pepper. Sautee until all vegetables are browned and heated through.
While toppings were being pan fried, put Field Roast Smoked Apple Sage sausages on the grill along with the buns. Carefully, watch the hot dog buns. Flip sausages after 2 minutes.
Assemble the hot dog buns and sausages together, Then,add toppings and mustard.
Serve immediately.

Grilled Vegetables
Serve 4

Marinade:
2 Tbsp. minced garlic
3 Tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive oil
2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
2 Tbsp. tamari
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 medium organic sweet potato or yam ( microwaved for 2 minutes)
2 large organic zucchini
2 large organic crooked neck yellow squash
1 lb. organic asparagus

Cut(lengthwise) yam, zucchini, and yellow squash into 1/4-inch thin slices.
Mix marinade in a small bowl with a wire whisk
Marinade all vegetable for about 1 hour
Grill on hot coals for about 4 minutes each side

Now, the fun part is the dessert: Vegan Peach Melba, vanilla ice cream served with a poached peach and raspberry sauce. This dessert was inspired by Curtis Stone, the Aussie celebrity chef from Take Home Chef. I love to watch cooking shows whether it is vegan or non-vegan(I always think that recipes can be veganized). Curtis reminded me of Peach Melba, a dessert that I savored in my childhood. This dessert is well-known in Australia where he came from. Americans probably never heard of this dessert. However, growing up in Indonesia which is near Australia, my late dad always took us to have Peach Melba as a treat in our hometown's ice cream shop. I totally forgot about this dessert until Curtis made this dessert in one of his shows. Yeah, I remember this delicious ice cream dessert so I determined to make it and to re-live my childhood.

I invited my mom and siblings to try it and we went back to our memory lane, our childhood era, talking about fun events we had together as a family in our hometown's ice cream shop, having Peach Melba. Mom and siblings had the non-vegan store-bought vanilla ice cream in it. I had it with Turtle Mountain Purely Decadent with Coconut Milk,Vanilla Bean, soy ice cream. This product has been blogged in many different vegan blogs. It finally reached the shelf of the ice cream section of Whole Foods market in my area. This vanilla soy ice cream was really decadent and creamy.

Vegan Peach Melba
Adapted from Curtis Stone's recipe
Serve 4

Ingredients:

For the Poached Peaches:
4 cups water
1 cup sugar
1/2 lemon, thinly sliced
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
Note: I used vanilla beans and scraped the dark bean specks. You are welcome to substitute with vanilla extract (1 -2 teaspoons) but using vanilla beans is much better.
4 peaches, peeled but leave whole

For the Raspberry Sauce:
12 oz. fresh organic raspberries
2/3 cup powdered sugar

Soy Vanilla Ice Cream (try Turtle Mountain new product: Purely Decadent with Coconut Milk)

Combine water, sugar, and lemon slices in a heavy large saucepan. Scrape in the seeds from the vanilla bean then add them to the liquid mixture. Bring the liquid to a boil over high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
Add the peaches and simmer gently over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes or until the peaches are almost tender. The cooking time will vary depending on the ripeness of the peaches.
Allow the peaches to cool in the poaching liquid. Add vanilla extract this time (if you don't use vanilla beans). The peaches will continue to cook in the liquid as it cools, so be sure not to over-cook them initially.
While the peaches are cooling off, puree the raspberries and powdered sugar in a blender until smooth.
Strain the raspberry sauce through a fine sieve and into a bowl. Discard the seeds.
Place peaches and raspberry sauce in the fridge until time to serve.
To serve: Place 3 tablespoons of raspberry sauce in the center of each 4 plates and stir to create 4 large circles of raspberry sauce. In the center of each plate, place 1 peach and serve with vanilla ice cream. Enjoy!

Alternate serving method is just to put ice cream in the middle, put sliced peaches around it, and drizzle with raspberry sauce (see picture below).

Boy, this ice cream dessert topped it all, a fun filled weekend with a family. I know it is not red, white, and blue (more like red, white, and yellow) as the 4th of July dessert should be but it is absolutely divine and brought a family together in a hot summer day.

SPICY THAI 'FISH' AND STIR- FRIED CUCUMBER WITH WOODEAR MUSHROOMS AND CHILI

2008-06-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

This week I am making vegan spicy Thai 'fish' and stir-fried cucumber with wood ear mushrooms and red chili. They are served with jasmine brown rice. This is a rather long blog but I presented 2 recipes. So I hope it is worthwhile to read them.

About the Spicy Thai 'Fish' dish:

I bought the vegan fish frozen from an Asian market. It is made with soy bean curd and seaweed. I actually can make it at home from scratch with yuba and seaweed. But that's another blog, I think. It is also easier to buy since it is readily available here, in my area.

The 'fish' is browned on cast iron frying pan with a little bit of oil, on both sides. The seaweed will become crispy. Toasted and crispy seaweed is delicious, in my opinion. But I love 'sea' flavored dish so this is a treat for me.

The other ingredients are: Thai basil (known also as Cinnamon Basil), chopped garlic, chopped chili such as jalapeno or serrano, diced red and yellow/orange bell pepper.

I made this recipe many times. I received this recipe from my friend Yongkie years ago and have modified it many times by reducing the sugar content. I finally use agave nectar in my cooking.

I also use special Asian soy sauces for a replacement of fish sauce or oyster sauce. When I mention light soy sauce or a replacement of fish sauce, I use this soy sauce brand: Healthy Boy Soy Sauce with Mushrooms. It is not easy to find but I believe that this is important in Thai or Vietnamese cooking which uses fish sauce heavily. As a vegan, I need to find a replacement of fish sauce as closely as possible. Bragg's Liquid Amino can also be used as a replacement of fish sauce. It has that natural brew flavoring. However, I still prefer the Thai mushroom soy sauce. I go as far as L.A. to visit Thai markets to get this brand. I really take my Thai/Vietnamese cooking seriously, I think. Please don't use Tamari or Japanese soy sauce because it will not taste the same. If you can't find the mushroom flavored soy sauce you can surely find Bragg's Liquid Amino in your area. Or, perhaps, you can buy them on-line (click the links).

I also use dark mushroom soy sauce in my Asian cooking. I love this brand: Pearl River Bridge Mushroom Flavoured Superior Dark Soy Sauce. I use this dark soy sauce in my Asian dishes. This is not Ketjap Manis (an Indonesian sweet soy sauce) which is used for another type of cooking in my kitchen.

This Thai 'fish' recipe is very simple when you have all of these ingredients on hand. I am trying to grow my own Thai basil or cinnamon basil in pots. Now, my plants haven't matured yet ( see picture). The leaves are still so small. I still rely on Asian market to get my cinnamon basils. Hopefully, in another month, I can enjoy this herb and cook more vegan Thai or Vietnamese dishes.

Spicy Vegan Thai 'Fish' serve 4-6

1 Vegan Thai 'fish' (buy frozen), pan fry until crispy and toasty, set aside in a warm oven

canola oil for pan frying and stir frying
1.5 cups Thai/Cinnamon Basil (leaves only)
1/2 large red bell pepper, diced
1/2 large yellow/orange bell pepper, diced
2 Tablespoon garlic, chopped finely
2 Tablespoon red or green jalapeno, seeds removed (reduced amount accordingly for less spicy)

Sauce Mixture: (combine in a small bowl)
3 Tablespoons light soy sauce or fish sauce replacement (see above)
1 Tablespoon dark soy sauce (see above)
1 Tablespoon rice vinegar
1.5 Tablespoon fresh lime juice
2 Tablespoons agave nectar (3 Tablespoon if you like it sweeter)
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

Put 1 teaspoon of oil in a cast iron frying pan and pan fry 'fish' both sides until crispy and toasty. Set aside in a serving platter in a warm oven.
Heat wok until very hot. Add 1 - 2 teaspoons oil, add garlic, stir fry for 3o seconds, then, add red and yellow bell pepper, stir fry for a minute.
Add Thai basil, stir fry until basil leaves are wilted and soft.
Add sauce mixture, stir, and let it become hot and boiling.
Immediately, pour over warmed and ready 'fish'
Serve immediately

About the Cucumber Stir Fry with Wood ear mushrooms and Chili:

Stir-fried CUCUMBER, you asked? Yes! I watched Kylie Kwong's cooking show on TV one day and she was preparing stir fried cucumber. I thought it was pretty interesting and thought that Iwould like to give it a try. I had to reduce the amount of ginger since DH doesn't like ginger that much. I also veganized the dish with Vegetarian Mushroom Flavored Stir-Fry sauce instead of oyster sauce.

The trick to stir fry cucumber is to act quickly after cucumbers are added. If sauces are added and combined quickly, then, immediately remove wok from the heat, I think, you'll find that the cucumber is still crispy. You'll also need to serve the dish immediately.

This dish is unusual because it needs fresh wood ear mushrooms. This kind of mushrooms grow on trees and looks like an ear. That's why it is called wood ear. The use of this kind of mushroom is very common in Asian dishes. They sell dried ones in Asian markets that you can soak in warm water to re-hydrate them but I prefer the fresh ones. The fresh ones cook very quickly. If you can't find this kind of mushrooms you can substitute with other kind of mushrooms but you'll need to stir fry them before hand and set aside. Then, when you add the cucumbers into the wok, you can add the cooked mushrooms at the same time. Other wise, the cucumber will be too soft to wait for the mushrooms to be soft and cooked.

Below are the ingredients: cucumbers, finely sliced garlic, julienned green onions, sliced red jalapeno (fresh red chili), diced wood ear mushrooms, and julienned ginger.

Stir-fried Cucumber, Wood Ear Mushrooms, and Chili serve 6-8Adapted from Kylie Kwong's recipe

2 large cucumber, peeled
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1/3 cup ginger, julienne finely
6 cloves garlic, finely diced
5 green onions, trimmed , and cut julienne into 3-inches long
8 oz. fresh wood ear mushrooms, cut in bite pieces
1 -2 large fresh red chili (red jalapeno), sliced diagonally

1/4 cup Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry
2 Tablespoons Vegetarian Mushroom Flavored Stir-Fry Sauce
2 Tablespoons light soy sauce
2 Tablespoons rice vinegar
1 Tablespoon agave nectar

1 teaspoon sesame oil for drizzling before serving

Cut cucumbers in half length ways and scoop out the seeds using a spoon. Cut in half width ways, place halves cut-side down on a chopping board and slice on the diagonal (julienne) into 3-inch pieces.
Heat work until very hot. Add peanut oil and let it heat up before adding garlic and ginger. Stir fry for 10 seconds. Add cucumber, wood ear mushrooms, red chili, and green onions and stir-fry for 30 seconds.
Quickly add wine or sherry, mushroom flavored sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, and agave nectar.
Combine quickly for about a minute until all ingredients are hot. Take it off from heat.
Lastly drizzle with sesame oil before serving. Serve immediately.

GINGERED TEMPEH WITH RED SPINACH AND SHIITAKE

2008-06-20T11:27:00.001-07:00

I have been so guilty of not using more tempeh in my cooking. After all I am an Indonesian girl , born in Java, and Indonesia is the birthplace of tempeh. So here it is, my stir fried gingered tempeh with organic red spinach, shiitake, and yellow bell pepper. This dish is Asian, I think, because of the ginger, tempeh, tamari and rice vinegar. I created this dish 'out of the blue' when I was so busy with my overly active Toastmasters clubs and needed to cook something easy and fast.

I found this beautiful organic red spinach at Mother's market. It is so delicious that I went back the next week for more. It tastes just like regular spinach except that it has red stems. If you can't find red spinach, swiss chard, or kale will do.

I also found a great tempeh product, Tofurky brand, that is not bitter. Therefore, I don't need to steam the tempeh first (Indonesians never steam tempeh before use. Maybe, because we always get them fresh?). Below is a picture of marinated tempeh, chopped ginger, chopped garlic, and diced yellow pepper, the main ingredients of this dish.

Then, I added shiitake mushrooms at the last minute. Remember, this is not a 'planned' recipe. The tempeh marinade was also an 'idea' that came out of my brain after I made this Herb Crusted Tofu from Everydaydish. After I made the delicious tofu dish, I had a left over marinade that I didn't want to throw away. I dumped in tempeh into the marinade (tamari, marsala, and water). Isn't that super easy?

I think this dish was very satisfying and yummy. I served it on top of a bed of brown jasmine rice.

Gingered Tempeh with Red Spinach, Yellow Pepper, and Shiitake Mushrooms
Serve 6-8

Ingredients:
8- 10 oz. tempeh
2 bunches of red spinach (about 1.5 - 2 lbs.)
1 red, yellow, or orange bell pepper, diced
10 shiitake mushrooms (fresh or dried), sliced
Note: if using dried, soak in warm water for 30 minutes
4 cloves garlic, chop finely
2 Tbsp. fresh ginger, chopped finely
3 Tbsp. Tamari
2-3 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 Tbsp. olive oil

Marinade:
1/2 cup Tamari
1/2 cup Marsala wine or white wine
enough water to cover the tempeh to marinade

Finishing:
drizzles of roasted sesame oil
1 Tbsp. roasted sesame seeds
1/2 Tbsp. Korean red pepper (optional)

Marinade tempeh for 1 - 4 hours (or leave overnight in the fridge).
Drain tempeh and cut in 1/2-inch cubes.
Cut and clean red spinach by washing them in a big bowl of water. Drain but don't pad dry. Set aside in a bowl.
Heat olive oil in wok or large frying pan. Add garlic and ginger. Saute for 1 minute.
Add bell pepper and saute for 3 minutes.
Add shiitake mushrooms and tempeh. Saute until tempeh is brown. Add water to prevent sticking. Don't add too much water since there are water in the spinach.
Add red spinach in batches (3 or 4 batches). After each batch, stir over and under until spinach is wilted. Water/juice will come out of the spinach which will create sauce for this dish.
After all batches are added, add tamari and rice vinegar( add 2 tbsp. first and taste. Then, add another tablespoon if necessary).
Add freshly ground black pepper at the end and stir. I don't think it is necessary to add salt but you can add salt to taste.
Pile jasmine brown rice on a plate and top with the spinach mixture. Drizzle with sesame oil, roasted sesame seeds, and optional Korean red pepper.

Enjoy!

VEGAN 'SEA' FLAVORED MEALS

2008-06-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

I loved seafood before I became a vegetarian because I grew up on an island surrounded by the sea. Seafood was a major part of our meals in my growing up days. I figured out that, now, after I became a vegetarian, what I missed is the 'sea' flavor instead of the seafood. I also found out that I can satisfy it with eating seaweed. Some vegans do not like seaweed at all but I do. It's good for me because seaweed has a lot of minerals and vitamin B-12, I was told.

Below is my recipe of my favorite Italian soup(pictured above): Cioppino (seafood Italian stew). At first, I got a recipe from Bryanna but I have modified it to satisfy my own 'sea' cravings that the recipe has become my own because it is more 'seafoody' than the original recipe. There are many different styles of this stew, depending on the regions of Italy, but I like the one made with fresh tomatoes (not very tomatoey).

The main ingredients of my vegan cioppino are vegan fish, vegan scallops, and vegan oysters. I bought the 'fish' from Chinese market (frozen). I made my own vegan seitan scallops and oysters. The latest newsletter from Bryanna featured a recipe of homemade vegan seitan scallops. Hooray! Finally, a recipe of seitan 'seafood'! I converted her recipe by adding fresh wakame to make seitan 'oysters.' These have lots of 'sea' flavors due to the fresh wakame in them. Pictured below are: store-bought vegan fish, homemade vegan oysters, and homemade vegan scallops. The dark green specks in them are chopped wakame and kelp granules.

VEGAN CIOPPINO (VEGAN “SEAFOOD” STEW)

Vegetables:
1 onions, chopped small
1 cup celery rib, chopped small
1 cup carrot, chopped small
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. dry red chili pepper flakes
4 large ripe tomatoes, chopped

2/3 c. chopped flat-leafed parsley

2 tbsp.. extra-virgin olive oil

8 dry shiitake mushrooms soaked in 3 cups warm/boiling water (you may add the soaked shiitake mushrooms into the soup, chopped, if you want)

2 c. mushroom soaking water above or dilute 2 cup water with 1.5 Tbsp. Pistol River Porcini mushroom powder

1 1/2 cup dry white wine, optional or more broth above

a bay leaf
1/3 c. chopped fresh basil or 1 tsp. dry basil flakes
1 tsp. kelp granules
1 - 4X6 inches kombu (Japanese seaweed)
1 tsp. salt or to taste
1/8 -1/4 tsp. fresh ground black pepper

a heaping 1 T. light miso

'Seafood':

2 1/2 cups combination of vegan fish, seitan scallops, and seitan oyster, chopped in small pieces (I have made this soup with store-bought vegan fish and vegan shrimps, another option)

1	Saute 'seafood' and chopped shiitake (if using) in 1 tbsp. olive oil until brown. Set aside. Then, sautee with 1 tbsp. olive oil: onions, dry chili pepper flakes, garlic, celery, and carrots until the onions are soft and translucent.
2	Add chopped tomatoes. Cook 10 minutes until tomatoes are soft and disintegrated.
3	Add wine or broth, basil, and bay leave. Cook on high heat 5 minutes.
4	Now add more broth(2 cups), with the large piece of kombu seaweed and kelp granules. Cook about 25 minutes. Remove kombu.
5	Add the sauteed 'seafood' and shiitake back in. Add more broth, if necessary. Simmer for another 5-10 minutes.
6	Add salt and pepper to taste.
7	Add light miso, stir until dissolve. Finally, add chopped flat leaf parsley and take it off from heat.

Ladle into bowls and serve with garlic bread or whole wheat baguette or sourdough baquette.

Below is a picture of another 'seafood' meal that is featured in Bryanna's latest newsletter: Fried Seitan 'Scallops' (and 'Oysters') with Lemon-Garlic 'Butter' Sauce. Unfortunately, Bryanna stopped her newsletters production although you may be able to order her previous versions of these wonderful newsletters soon. I served the delicious 'seafood' morsels with Roasted Baby Yukon Potatoes with olive oil, garlic and rosemary and steamed fresh asparagus. You see, we eat yummy vegan meals in our household and aren't missing out delicious 'sea' flavored meals at all.

Sin-Dawgs - Yummy, Gooey, and Cinnamony!

2008-06-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

What prompted me to blog Sin-Dawgs is my recent purchase of a new mixer: Bosch Universal Kitchen Machine, 800 watts. YES, I finally got the top-of-the-line mixer: the BMW of mixers. My older Kitchen Aid Heavy Duty mixer did not satisfy my needs anymore. I sold it at craigslist. With the proceed of that sale, I happily ordered my dream machine, a Bosch mixer with a 6-quarts bowl, from Julie at Everydaydish.tv/ Market.

While I was shopping for the mixer, I reviewed a few new Cooking Shows at Everydaydish.tv and encountered Sin-Dawgs. Gosh, what's that? You really need to view this video, I recommend it, because it's a blast. A guy with big muscles and a pony tail demonstrated how to make his creation he called it: Sin-Dawgs. The scene of a guy who looks like a biker, cooking in Julie's kitchen, is very rare but amusing. :-)

This guy is Dave Dahl from Dave's Killer Bread. Apparently, he sells bread at Portland (Oregon)Farmers Market and other places in Oregon. Golly, that's far away from where I live but yet his recipe is so intriguing that I can't help to try to make Sin-Dawgs at home with my new mixer. I want to know what I missed for not being able to visit Dave's booth in Portland's Farmers Market. I thank Dave for sharing his recipe to all of us who live far away from Portland, OR. You can visit his website and blog to get to know Dave because he has an amazing story. You can get his recipe at everydaydish.tv, here. Don't miss the video before you try making it! BTW, he is also a wonderful musician and you can listen to his music in this video and his site. The instructions to make this bread are pretty clear. In this video, he used the same mixer I bought.

Sin-Dawg is apparently a VERY cinnamony loaf and that's how it got its name. My house was full of cinnamony goood fragrants while these loaves were baking. The bread is surprisingly soft considering it was made with all whole wheat flour. The filling is yummy, gooey, and cinnamony.

I cut about an inch of it, just to try it, and then, cut some more to eat more. It was SINfully gooood! It was especially delicious when it was still warm. You really have to like cinnamon to appreciate Dave's creation. The smells of cinnamon trigerred my childhood memory growing up with spices in Indonesia: the home of spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, etc.; therefore, I LOVE cinnamon. I used the Indonesian Korintje Cassia Cinnamon (Grade A) that I bought from Penzey's.

DH tried it too and said 'Hhmmmm...I have never eaten anything like this before!' 'Well, do you like it?', I asked. 'Yeah, it's real good, the fact that it's great with beer, that's pretty good' he said with a smile(at that time, he was drinking a bottle of non-alcoholic beer). Then, he added comments that the DAWGS are pretty big to eat for one person (a recipe makes 3 big loaves). He suggested that I made 'Sin-Puppies' next time. Not a bad idea! I can make small dawgs and eat one for breakfast per day. Sin-Puppies, Dave, how about Sin-Puppies?

Now, about my new mixer, I absolutely LOVE it. It's like driving a new BMW. I have been dreaming of owning it since 2004 when I went to Denman Island attending vegan cooking vacation with Bryanna. That's the first time I saw a Bosch mixer. At that time, I still owned a Kitchen Aids mixer which I found out later on that it was not strong enough to make seitans and breads. Bosch IS a better tool for this job.

VEGAN TIRAMISU - PICK ME UP!

2008-05-24T08:37:00.001-07:00

I was craving for a cake! Do you think because we were feeling romantic, celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary, this week? I remember our wedding cake was not vegan, 19 years ago. It was a delicious rich and chocolaty cake, a non-traditional one. If I have the chance to plan my wedding again (marrying the same guy) I would pick Tiramisu as a wedding dessert- an Italian trifle - cake or ladyfingers layered with custard and liquor and topped with whipped cream. Tiramisu means 'pick-me-up.' Maybe, it should be a 'date' dessert? By all means regular and traditional Tiramisu is not vegan. Custard is loaded with eggs, ladyfingers are made of egg white, and what about the whipped cream on top? I was wondering if I will ever eat Tiramisu again.

The answer is YES! Due to Bryanna Clark Grogan, that is! She wrote an Italian vegan cookbook titled Nonna's Italian Kitchen. When I opened the book years ago and discovered a recipe for Tiramisu, I thought, 'No way!' But yes, way, it is possible. In her recipe, the ladyfingers is replaced by her Vegan Genoise Cake. She created Cashew Creme Custard for the filling and Sweet Soy Creme for the topping. It's all in her book, page 223.

I made Bryanna's Tiramisu recipe a few times. loving it, however; I still think that it needs a whipped topping that should taste creamy and have an airy texture like a real whipped cream. Tiramisu is not perfect without a whipped cream, I think. Until recently, I discovered Soyatoo whipped soy cream. The one in the can has a lot of problem with the can. After a few squirts, nothing comes out of it anymore. I stopped buying it because it was becoming too expensive and wasteful. Then, I discovered Soyatoo sells a liquid, whippable soy cream in the box that I can whip myself with a mixer. I don't even have to order this product on-line because it's available in a nearby major supermarket. How cool is that?

Just for a 'pick-me-up experience again, I re-made Vegan Tiramisu with Soyatoo whipped soy topping, at last. I chose to serve and assemble the components in wine glasses and dessert cups. If I have to serve this dessert in a wedding, it better be a really small and special wedding because serving it this way is pretty time consuming. However, the presentation is really lovely and romantic!

The components of Vegan Tiramisu are: cut up Vegan Genoise Cake, page 222

Cashew Creme Custard, page 219, and espresso mixed with Amaretto (I used Monin Amaretto Syrup)

and Soyatoo whipped soy topping. On top, sprinkle with some powdered pure cocoa and sugar mixture. This is definitely my favorite dessert!

FRESH MOREL MUSHROOM - I FINALLY TASTED IT!

2008-05-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

I am a foodie. I like to taste different kinds of unusual culinary items(vegan items, of course). Well, I kept hearing how tasty morel mushroom is from DH. Every time we talk about mushrooms he mentions FRESH MOREL. It's delicious, he says, you got to try it! I had a chance to try it last week while we were vacationing to El Dorado Springs, Missouri, visiting my in-laws. It was apparently a morel season while we were there because the local newspaper featured how people in this area gather morel in the woods and found big ones.

Being lazy Californians(us) who always get produce from the supermarkets, instead of gathering morels in the woods, my MIL sacrificed going out early in the morning to a garage sale (yes, the folks in this area sell fresh morels in garage sales) to buy fresh morels for us, $7.50 per quart size bag. She even went back out again because she thought she should have bought more for my SIL. What a mother she is! BTW, Happy Mother's Day, Mom! Don't worry, we are not ingrates we gave her a gift certificate for a massage treatment she needed and lots of hugs!

I heard that people make money by selling fresh morel mushrooms and the price can go up to $80 a lb. in the city. I don't know if this was true or not but knowing that fresh chantrelle mushrooms are sold for $19.95 per lb. at a major supermarket in our area, I think it could happen with morels, too. Therefore, having fresh morels was a treat for us.

My MIL split the mushrooms into 2 and soaked it in water. She said for removing dirt or dead bugs nestled in the honey-comb like surface. Then, she spread them out to dry on clean towel.

We opted out to deep fry the mushrooms with soda cracker meal breading. I use soy milk and lemon juice mixture (replacing eggs or buttermilk) to soak the mushrooms then coated them with a mixture of soda crackers meal, salt, and pepper. My MIL used eggs to soak them in and coated them in the same dry mixturel.

It was quite delicious! I think it tastes like a combination of oyster and portabella mushrooms. If I can find fresh ones easily, I could have use them in many different recipes. Now, I tasted it, fresh morel mushrooms, after hearing about it for almost 20 years! I can buy dried morel anywhere but having fresh morel is truly an experience that a foodie is looking for!

In response to Emily's request (see comments), I entered the recipe. I also entered the non-vegan version of my generous MIL. I am still dreaming about fresh morel mushrooms!

Deep Fried Fresh Morel(Vegan and Non-Vegan versions)
Serve 4-6
Appetizers/light meals
Time: 30 minutes

1 quart fresh morels (about 1/2 lb)
2 cups soda cracker meals
1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt (cracker meal is already salty so be careful of adding too much salt)
1/8 - 1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1-inch vegetable/peanut oil in a cast iron pan for deep frying.

Vegan version:
1 cup soy milk/other non-dairy milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Non-vegan version:
2 eggs, beaten

Split fresh morels into half. Soak them in a bowl of cold water to remove dirt and dead bugs. Drain and place them on clean kitchen towels to dry.

Mix soda cracker meal with salt and pepper.

Heat oil in the frying pan till 350F degrees. Use a deep fryer thermometer.

For vegan version:
Combine non-dairy milk and lemon juice. Wait for 1 minute. The milk will curdle like buttermilk. Soak each mushroom slice in this mixture. Then, drench each mushroom slice in soda cracker meal mixture. Deep fry each mushrooms until golden brown. Do not overcrowd the frying pan.

For non-vegan version:
Beat eggs in a small bowl. Soak each mushroom slice in the egg mixture. Then, drench each mushroom slice in soda cracker meal mixture. Deep fry each mushrooms until golden brown. Do not overcrowd the frying pan.

Enjoy!

CASSAVA OR YUCA --- WHAT IS IT?

2008-04-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

CASSAVA OR YUCA! What is it? What's the code? This is the question I always get when I buy yuca/cassava at Whole Foods market. The cashier scrambles to ask other cashiers to know what is this 'thing' called and to search page after page in her or his book for the code to enter. If I buy it at an Asian or a Hispanic market, of course, the cashier usually knows what it is. No question was asked. It is not very American at all, isn't it?

I grew up eating yuca in Indonesia. It's a root that tastes very similar to potatoes. There is a waxy film covering the root (I think it is to preserve it's freshness). After it is cut horizontally into chunks, the brown and waxy outer layer can be removed easily with a knife.

I like eating yuca, deep fried, just like thick French Fries. Indonesians have many ways/recipes to prepare yuca. We eat them as snacks. It can be prepared salty or sweet (as desserts).

I usually boil yuca in salty water for about 20 to 25 minutes. I tried the pressure cooker, too, which only take 3 minutes (under pressure). Below is my garlicky yuca recipe. This dish can be eaten just like it is (boiled). Or, the gravy (sauce) can be drained and then the yuca is deep fried until they are crispy. DH who loves fried food loves deep fried yuca. Boiled yuca looks soft but it becomes hard and crispy when it is deep fried.

Garlicky Yuca/Cassava

1.5 lb yuca/cassava (prepared as pictured)
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 Tsp. table salt
3 cups water or enough to cover it entirely
1 tsp. oil

In oil, sauté garlic until fragrant. Add the yuca chunks, water and salt. Simmer for 20 to 25 minutes until tender. The water will become a bit thick like gravy.

I have other recipe I adapted from Bryanna's recipe. I receive this recipe after I emailed Bryanna about the Peruvian restaurant we visited one day, called Inka Mamas. One of their menu items is called YUCA ALA HUANCAINA. Of course, Bryanna has a recipe for this dish with potato, instead. She said I can replace it with yuca. It's an appetizer consists of lettuce, corn, carrots, olives, and deep fried yuca smothered with 'cheezy' warm sauce.

YUCA ALA HUANCAINA (A PERUVIAN YUCA DISH)
(adapted from Bryanna's recipe)
Serves 6

1 Garlicky Yuca/Cassava recipe (above), deep fried

White Sauce ingredients:
1/2 pkg. Mori-nu Silken Tofu, Firm
1 cup soy milk
1/2 to 1 cup water
2 Tbsp. non-dairy margarine/Earth Balance
2 Tbsp. unbleached flour

1 T. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 an onion, minced
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1 Tsp. minced jalapeño
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of white pepper
2 Tbsp. Bill's Best Chiknish
2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast flakes
1/2 tsp. salt

6 to 8 large lettuce leaves
18 black olives
12 2"-long chunks of cold cooked corn on the cob
12 2"-chunks cold cooked carrots

White Sauce:
Combine silken tofu, soy milk, and 1/2 cup water in a blender. Blend until smooth/not grainy (take a few minutes). Melt margarine/Earth Balance in a small sauce pan on a low heat. Add flour and combine until thickened. Scrape flour mixture into the blender. Blend until smooth.

Sauté the chopped onion, hot peppers and turmeric in the olive oil until the onion is soft. Stir in the white sauce, chicknish, spices, salt, and nutritional yeast. Keep warm. If the sauce is too thick, add the remaining water (or add more) a little each time until desired consistency.

On each serving plate, place a lettuce leaf. Place a few chunks of deep fried yuca (still hot) on each lettuce leaf. Place a few olives, 2 chunks of carrots, and 2 chunks of corn around the yuca. Drizzle the yuca with the sauce, distributing evenly. Serve immediately with more sauce, if desired.

I used the left over sauce on top of Tofu Benedict(toast, tofu, vegan sausage, caramelized mushrooms, and grilled tomatoes) for breakfast and it's delish!

Yuca tastes just like potatoes. If you can find it, don't be afraid to cook it and try it!

Vegan Pecan Sticky Buns - Move Over Cinnabon

2008-04-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

It has been almost a year that I haven't posted a new blog. This doesn't mean that I haven't tried new recipes or cooked. I have. It's just that there are so many blogs out there that I enjoyed reading so why repeat what they did, I thought.

Although someone may have blogged vegan pecan sticky bun already, this blog is all about learning to make bread the easiest way. I grew up with rice and noodles so making bread is something I am not good at. I threw away dough that will not rise time to time then I got frustrated.

Recently, I learned that it's easy to make bread and it's nothing to be scared about. I learned about no-knead yeast bread from my friend Bryanna who recently blogged about it. I bought this recipe book that she recommended. She found out about this book from Julie Hasson from Everyday Dish who also blogged about it. Word of mouth (or blog to blog) is a powerful thang! This book is titled Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.

You can throw away your Kitchen Aid mixer or your expensive bread maker. You can just go back to the basic: a very large bowl and a wooden spoon. I successfully made artisan breads from the recipes. It was so easy, no kneading. I mixed the ingredients in 5 minutes and let the dough rise in the fridge for 24 hours or more. I went to bed after mixing the dough and the next morning it will be ready for bread baking. Or, if I don't want to make bread that day I'll let it rise in the fridge until I am ready.

Being successful with bread, I wanted to make more exciting bread such as vegan sticky buns; especially, after tasting the most delicious vegan pecan sticky buns when we were at Flagstaff, Arizona. We had them at Macy's International Bakery. We went to this bakery twice just for their sticky buns. That was last December. After that experience, I craved for this sticky buns so did DH although he may not admit it.

The dream for having sticky buns didn't just started last December. It started after I stopped eating eggs. Whenever I passed Cinnabon at malls, my mouth watered smelling and seeing the cinnamon rolls they displayed. Of course, those are not vegan. It's loaded with eggs and butter. I thought that there must be a way to make them without eggs and butter, the vegan way.

At last......I found this good recipe in this cookbook with the help of Bryanna who veganized it.

There are two recipes listed below. One is the dough and the other one is how to convert this dough to delicious Pecan Sticky buns.

I ended up making it in a 13 X 9 pan and used 3/4 of the dough.

Veganized Master Enriched Dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day*

* Veganized by Bryanna Clark Grogan

The book contains several master dough recipes, and this is an enriched, sweet dough, perfect for a loaf of Challah (the braided dough) and the Sticky Rolls. You start by mixing the master dough first, Let that rest overnight in the refrigerator, then the next day, pinch off a cantaloupe sized hunk-o-dough to make your Sticky Pecan Caramel Cinnamon Rolls! Return the rest to the refrigerator to use for another day.

1 3/4 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 Tbs instant yeast
1 1/2 tsp table salt
1 cup soymilk, warm, whisked with 2 Tbs. Ener-G Egg Replacer (I used Bob's Red Mill egg replacer)
1/2 cup agave syrup or maple syrup
1/2 cup Earth Balance butter, melted
5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour

In a large bowl, mix together the soymilk/Ener-G mixture, water, syrup, melted EB, yeast and salt. Stir well with a wooden spoon. Add in the flour. STIR, BABY STIR!!! Stir until you don't see any more dry bits of flour (about a minute). Cover (not airtight) and stick it in the refrigerator overnight, or up to 4 days. The longer you let it fart around in the refrigerator (literally!), the better tasting the dough will be.

Cooking Tips
NOTE: When you let the dough hang out in the refrigerator, it's not going to "rise" like a normal dough Think of Cinnabon, that chain store found in every American mall, except EVEN BETTER.

VEGAN PECAN STICKY BUNS*

The Dough above: A cantaloupe sized chunk of the Master Dough (about 1.5 lbs)

The Gooey Sticky Caramel Topping:
6 Tbs Earth Balance, softened
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
30 pecan halves ( I chopped them)

The Heavenly Sweet Cinnamon Butter Filling:
4 Tbs Earth Balance, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped and toasted pecans
pinch of freshly ground black pepper

9" square or round cake pan

The first thing you need to do is take that master dough out of the refrigerator, grab a small cantalope sized chunk of dough. Return the rest of it to the refrigerator to use another time (psst...get the book for all the other recipes using this dough!).
Generously flour your hands and the dough. Shape the dough into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough and tucking it to the bottom all around, rotating hte ball a quarter-turn as you go. This creates a taut, smooth surface. Let the dough rest, covered with a towel to take the chill off while you prepare rest of ingredients.

While the dough is unchilling, mix the topping and the filling.
FOR THE TOPPING: Cream together the EB, and sugar. Spread this topping evenly on the bottom of the cake pan. Scatter with pecan halves (I used chopped pecans).
FOR THE FILLING: Cream together all ingredients except the pecans. Set aside.
Dust your counter with flour and roll out the dough with a rolling pin to 1/8" thick rectangle. Try to get it 13" x 17" I had trouble with the rectangle shape, so I we just rolled it into a large oval. Spread the sweet filling evenly on the surface. Scatter chopped pecans all over.

Roll it up, starting with the long side.
Flour your serrated knife and cut roll into 9 even pieces (square pan) or 8 pieces (round pan).

Set it in the pan on top of the caramel, cover with towel and rest for 1 hour
Preheat your oven to 350F. The book says to bake for 40 minutes, or until golden brown and well set in the center. But take a peek at the rolls around the 35 minute mark.

While still hot, run a knife round the edge of pan and invert immediately onto a plate. If you wait until it cools, the caramel will harden and it will be difficult to turn out.

YUM. Soft, pillowy dough. Sweet cinnamon and nutmeg butter dribbling down your chin. Sticky, gooey caramel. Crunchy pecans.

Indonesian Coffee Flan at Everydaydish.tv!

2007-05-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

Photo by Yongkie Hurd

During my vacation at Portland, Oregon(see last blog), one exciting event I did was fulfilling Julie's request to present my Indonesian Coffee Flan recipe in her Everyday Dish.TV, a newly born website to present healthy and creative cooking. This is, indeed, a wonderful site with videotaped cooking shows (click on Cooking Show) where you can view what the dishes look like and how recipes are made, in short webtv segments. No measurements of ingredients are mentioned during the videotaping since you can find the recipes on the right hand side of the cooking show page. It is a smart idea for individuals who want to learn an easy-does-it cooking by using simple recipes and simple techniques.

I was, of course, NERVOUS, because the experience was really nerve-wrecking! It was my first experience being videotaped. Just try it, cooking something with someone breathing on your neck and watching you closely or from behind your back. In my case, it was the camera and the cameraman/director/producer, Jay. I was cooking under the shining bright lights everywhere. Hence, I have never cooked like this before. But Jay was very patience with me and methodical. At one time, he offered me a shot of tequila...hhmm....what a good idea! But I didn't take a shot and was able to go through it with his help. Let me know what you think of my video: Everyday Dish.tv presents Indonesian Coffee Flan. You may need to download the latest Quicktime 7 for Windows to view all the cooking shows in this site. If you are an iPod user, you can subscribe and download all cooking shows from this site. DH happens to get an iPod for his birthday and will be able to show his wife cooking to everyone he knows. :-)

Indonesian Coffee Flan is a recipe I invented because an acquaintance visited an Indonesian restaurant, had this dessert, and wanted to know how to make it. The secret ingredients are Indonesian Palm Sugar called Gula Jawa, Pandan (Southeast Asian flavoring leaf smells like vanila, also called screwpine leaf), vanilla, and a good coffee. I grew up with these ingredients and have always used agar powder in making jello-like desserts. I didn't know that gelatin powder that is used commonly in the US is made of an animal ingredient until I became a vegetarian and was told so. Indonesians have always used agar powder which is derived from seaweed for gelling desserts.

You may say, 'Wow these are EXOTIC ingredients! How can I find these ingredients?' If you live in a metropolitan area, you can find these ingredients in asian markets who usually carry Indonesian ingredients. You may find Gula Jawa (palm sugar) and agar powder in the aisle of Thai or Indonesian ingredients and the pandan leaves in the frozen section. It is very unfortunate that I can't find fresh pandan leaves in the States. The aroma of fresh pandan leaves is so wonderful!

Agar powder found in Asian markets in small packages

If you live in a non-metropolitan area, you can find on-line sources for gula jawa: IndoMerchant or Indonesian Food Mart; agar powder: barryfarm.com or Amazon , and pandan essence (use 1 to 2 teaspoons): Importfoods.com.