Spicy Garlic Sesame Broccoli with Red Beans and Quinoa

Work was less than ideal today so I had to let off some steam by taking a long walk with the dog. When I got home I wanted something relatively simple so I could eat and go straight to bed. I knew the fresh broccoli in my fridge would do the trick.

Ingredients
.5 cup quinoa
1TB sesame oil
Several medium heads of fresh broccoli cut into trees (I had maybe 6 cups?)
4 cloves of garlic (less if you aren't a garlic lover like me)
1 cup light red beans
Red pepper flakes to taste
Salt to taste

Cook quinoa (combine with 1 cup water, bring to the boil, simmer 15 minutes or until all water is absorbed). In a large pan (I wanted to use my wok, but it needs to be retired), heat oil on medium. Add broccoli and garlic. Toss to coat. Cook for 5-7 minutes until broccoli becomes bright green and is your desired level of crispness, stirring regularly. Add beans, salt, and red pepper flakes. Cook another minue. Remove from heat.

I ate the broccoli and quinoa side by side, but you could mix them all together or eat the broccoli atop the quinoa. It made 2 large servings (I used a LOT of broccoli). This was so easy and tasty. The sesame oil gave it a nice, unexpected flavor (since I rarely use it). It would have been even better with sesame seeds, but I've never bought them in my life. Maybe next time.

Split Pea and Bulgur Stuffed Tomato

I was so excited about these beaufiul beefsteak tomatoes at a decent price at the grocery this weekend. I couldn't resist. I knew exactly what I'd do- stuff 'em!

Ingredients
1 medium/large red onion, chopped or diced
.5 cup yellow split peas
.5 cup bulgur
3 TB nutritional yeast
Salt/pepper to taste
2 beautiful beefsteak tomatoes

In a medium sauce pan, bring 2-3 cups of water to a boil and add onions and split peas. Cook for 15 minutes, then add bulgur. Cook for 15 minutes until the bulgur is done. Stir in nutritional yeast and salt/pepper.

Meanwhile, carefully massacre tomatoes by cutting off top and carefully scooping out the middle. Try not to rip the side or cut through the side or bottom. Put guts into stuffing and let it cook for a few minutes (5 to 15).

Add stuffing mixture to tomato and put in oven on 350 for 10 minutes or so. I'm only guessing because I royally messed this part up. I put them in for maybe 20 minutes while the stuffing cooked. I opened the oven and they had deflated. Good thing I have no camera to produce any evidence. I took my flattened tomato and topped it with the...former stuffing, now topping. I use these ingredients together all of the time, but this was definitely one of the tastest ways I've combined them. Probably because I usually mix the tomato in with it, but his time it was separate and I could really taste it.

It made 2 delicious servings and I can only imagine how amazing it would have been if the tomatoes and been little serving bowls. Next time, my friends...

Cherry Biscotti and Mocha Chocolate Chip Muffins

I have some more enticing to get people at work to come to my 9am meeting I scheduled, so I thought I'd make biscotti. I found an easy Biscotti recipe on vegweb that seemed doable. As I was making them I got scared because it wasn't coming out like I'd hoped, so I found this Mocha Chip Muffin recipe on Post Punk Kitchen, thinking the mocha was perfect for the morning. Strangely, both recipes call for emulsifying, a word I can't recall seeing in a recipe ever.

And I apologize for still not having photos. Food blogging without pictures is like driving the scenic route with no windows. Maybe this weekend someone will buy me a digital camera a few weeks early before my birthday. Jeff, feel free to say something to my dad like, "Hey, Bill, I would love to see pictures in Anne's blog, maybe you could get her a camera while she's in town this weekend. You'd be the greatest dad and colleague of all time." Just a suggestion...

Biscotti

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups of flour (half white, half whole wheat)
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup dried cherries
2 tablespoons flax seeds & 1/4-1/2 cup of water
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup melted vegan soy butter
2 TB macadamia nut liqueuer
1-1/2 teaspoons grated lime rind
soy milk for browning

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, combine the flour and baking powder; stir in the dried cherries. In a separate bowl, whisk together the wetness of the flax seeds, maple syrup, soy butter, macadamia nut liqueur and orange rind until thoroughly emulsified. Make a well in the dry ingredients. Stir the wet into the dry until soft, sticky dough forms. I needed to add a ton of flour because it was too sticky.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface; with hands, form into smooth ball. Divide the dough into about 6 uniform balls and make into 8-12 inch long strips. The original recipe calls to make 2 long logs, but the dough was too sticky so I had to make them smaller. Transfer each to its own ungreased baking sheet. The original recipe says to brush the top of each log with a bit of soymilk for aesthetics, BUT I tried this on half of mine and it didn't work. They ended up sticking to the pan and not cooking as much as the others.

Bake at 350F for 20 min. Remove from oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet placed on top of a cooling rack for 5 min. Transfer each log to cutting board. With a sizable and sharp knife, make firm cuts on a diagonal at about every 2cm. The original recipe says "stand the cookies back up (sideways) on the baking sheets," which makes no sense so I just put them back on a pan and return to oven for 20-25 minutes longer, or until golden. Remove to rack and let cool. A little lesson I learned the hard way- don't put on bottom rack, or if you do, watch them very closely. Some of mine ended up a little darker than I'd hoped. So I did what any good chef does- I coated the bottoms in chocolate. I melted 1/2 cup chocolate chips and dipped the underside of each piece into it, placing them on wax paper in the fridge until cool (about 30 minutes).

If I ever make these again, I'll skip trying to brush with soy milk, and I'll make my logs skinnier. I'd also like to play with the flavors more. One of my coworkers doesn't like nuts so I didn't add any, though the chocolate and cherry combination was great. I'd also avoid the bottom shelf :(

Mocha Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup white, 1/2 cup whole wheat)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup unprocessed cocoa
2.5 teaspoons instant coffee
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup soy milk
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners. In a large bowl, sift together dry ingredients (flour through salt). In a seperate bowl, wisk together wet ingredients (soy milk through yogurt) until emulsified. Pour wet into dry and combine until dry ingredients are moistened. Fold in chocolate chips. Fill muffin tins almost to the top. Bake 18 - 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

These came out amazing! Very fluffy and moist and chocolatey. Originally I was thinking a vanilla cake with chocolate chips, but you really can't go wrong with chocolate on chocolate. I'd go ahead and call these perfection.

Maple Strawberry Muffins and Flourless Cashew Butter Cookies

I'm giving a lunchtime presentation at work tomorrow on a topic that most colleagues probably don't really care about, so I thought I'd lure them there with baked goods. I didn't want to make more brownies or cupcakes, so I though muffins would be nice. But I wanted a twist and remembered the random fresh strawberries in my fridge. Maple Strawberry Muffins seemed perfect though not healthy by any means. I then caved and thought about a cookie and knew I wanted a nut butter cookie. Thus, the Cashew Butter Cookie was born.

Maple Strawberry Muffins

The recipe I used is very close to this Vegan Blueberry Muffin recipe I found online.

Ingredients

2 cups flour, I used half wheat and half white
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup soy milk
1/4 cup margarine
Egg replacer for one egg, I used 1 TB ground flax mixed with 3 TB water
1 tsp acidic fruit juice, I used some pineapple juice but lemon/orange/lime will do
2 TB real maple syrup
1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly grease a muffin pan. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the soy milk, margarine, egg replacer, maple and pineapple juice and stir until mixed. Add the strawberries.

Spoon the batter in to the muffin pan, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until muffins are golden brown.

The muffins are a little messy because I cut up the strawberries, but they were pleasant.

Flourless Cashew Butter Cookies

I found this recipe for Flourless Nut Butter and Whatever You Want Cookies on vegweb and decided it seemed intruiging and ridiculously easy.

Ingredients

1 cup of cashew butter
3/4 white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 TB ground flax seed mixed with 3 TB water
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Dark chocolate morsels to top cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix everything until well combined.

Cover dough and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

Form 1 tablespoon dough balls for each cookie. Arrange on an ungreased baking sheet, spacing 2 inches apart. Press down slightly with a fork to make criss cross typical of peanut butter cookies. Top with chocolate.

Bake cookies until puffed, golden on bottom and still soft to touch in center, about 12 minutes. Cool on sheets 5 minutes. Transfer to racks; cool completely.

The cookie dough was amazing! I had no idea how much they were going to spread out, however, so I evidently smushed them too flat :( That or the recipe should have called for baking powder, not soda. I'm debating throwing them out, but I'm sure someone at work will eat them...

Spicy Roasted Cauliflower Soup

While my brother and his wife were in town, we ate at one of my favorite places to take visitors, Zaytinya, which is a delicious Mediterranean mezze (tapas) restaurant. One of the dishes we got was Roasted Cauliflower with sultans, caper leaves and pine nut puree, and it reminded me that I hadn't made my spicy roasted cauliflower in ages. I wanted a whole meal of more than cauliflower and today was ridiculously cold, so I went for a soup.

Ingredients

• 1 medium/large head of cauliflower
• 1 medium/large red onion
• 4-6 cloves of garlic
• Red pepper flakes
• Olive oil spray or mist
• 1/2 cup dark red kidney beans
• 1/2 cup barley
• Salt
• Parsley

Preheat oven to 375. Break apart cauliflower and place on baking sheet. Spray with oil, add salt and red pepper flakes (.5-1 TB maybe), and mix until coated. Cut red onion in half and slice into thin half moons. Place on separate baking sheet with garlic and spray with olive oil. Roast 20-30 minutes, stirring a few times.

Meanwhile, cook the barley and when it's done add kidney beans, parsley, and salt and stir. When the veggies are done roasting, add half to the barley and blend the other half with .5-1 cup water until smooth. Add the barley mixture, stir, and serve.

It hit the spot on a cold night.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'd been promising my brother and his wife the whole weekend that we'd make cookies, and we got just drunk enough last night for that to come true. I didn't have chocolate chips, just (non vegan) butterscotch chips and pecans. I'm pretty sure we would have eaten it no matter what I put in.

I found this recipe for Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies on vegweb and used it since I actually had all of the ingredients. I've used Enola in baking the past few times, mostly because I want to get it out of my pantry, and I've become the accidental food chemist. Through several baking attempts and random mental notes, I realized that Enola makes baked goods very crispy and not expand. A long time ago I made the best white chocolate peppermint cookies a few different times because they were so great, but they turned out different each time because, as it turns out, I used Enola once and another oil another time. So these chocolate chip cookies I made ended up like some of the others I've made with Enola- they don't expand and get unusually crispy. But not necessarily in a bad way, it's just different. And we were drunk so it really didn't matter.

Ingredients
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup applesauce (or 1 egg substitute)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup of some kind of chips, chocolate or whatever you prefer
1/2 cup nuts

Preheat oven to 375. Mix first 5 ingredients together. Mix flour, salt & baking soda in separate bowl, then add to the first bowl. Mix in your chocolate chips/nuts and drop on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for about 8-10 minutes.

You can't really go wrong with cookies.

Low-Cal Banana Muffins/Banana Bread

Since I have company in town I can actually make a lot of baked goods without fear that I'll eat them all before they have time to even cool. So I busted out an old recipe for Banana Muffins. I have no idea of its origin, but I do know that I changed it significantly from whereever I got it anyway.



Ingredients

• 1c white all purpose flour


• 3/4 c wheat flour


• 2 ¼ tsp baking soda


• 1/2tsp salt


• 2/3c sugar


• 1 TB ground flax mixed with 3 TB water


• 1 TB oil, I used Enola which is allegedly not all absorbed by your body


• 2 TB unsweetened applesauce


• 2 TB vanilla soy milk


• Vanilla extract, I omitted this becuase I have none


• 2 mashed bananas, I used 2 from my freezer that I let thaw on the counter for an hour


• 1/2c chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts, etc)
  

Mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Mix the wet together in a small bowl. Add the wet to the dry and mix until batter forms. Bake on 350 for 25-30 minutes if making muffins (recipe makes 12) or for 45 minutes if making bread. Each muffin has 140 calories without nuts and 175 with nuts.

The apartment definitely smelled amazing while these baked, and they turned out nicely. They were moist on the inside and had a nice crust on the outside. It seemed, though, like they could have used more salt or maybe a little more banana.

Guiness Cupcakes with Macadamia Frosting

Guinness = delicious, and cupcakes = delicious. So Guinness cupcakes should be stellar, right? A good friend who is a fellow Guinness lover had a medical procedure done where he couldn't eat/drink for awhile, so I thought I would make him some cupcakes for when he got home. And I figured it would be ok to make a dozen of them since my brother and his wife came in later that day. The point being that I knew I wouldn't eat them all because I had enough people to help me.


I found this great recipe on Dulcedo for Guinness Cupcakes with Baily's Irish Cream Frosting and I had to make it. Evidently it's actually from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which was an excellent gift from a great friend for my 10 year cancer survivorship anniversary. I must have been too busy ogling the hazelnut cupcakes to notice the stout cupcakes.



Ingredients for Cupcakes

• 3/4 cup soy milk


• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar


• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour


• 1/3 cup unprocessed cocoa powder (original recipe calls for Dutch-processed)


• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder


• 1/4 teaspoon salt


• 1/4 cup Guinness


• 3/4 cup sugar


• 1/3 cup canola oil


• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I omitted this because I'm running low)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a small bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.


In the bowl of an electric mixer, whisk together the soy milk and the vinegar. Add the Guinness, sugar, oil, and vanilla to the soy milk mixture and beat until foamy. Add the dry ingredients in two batches and beat until well incorporated.Fill your cupcakes containers of choice 3/4 full.


Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean and the top springs back when lightly touched. Transfer to a wire rack and allow cupcakes to cool completely before frosting.


Icing

I got lazy and made a simple icing:

• 2-3 cups confectioner's sugar


• 2 TB macadamia liqueur


• Splash of vanilla soy milk

Mix together and enjoy.

These were solid chocolate cupcakes. I think I overdid it with the icing- it's incredibly sweet and may detract from the cake. There was a nice thing crunch on top where I evidently overcooked them, but I think it made them better. And you cannot taste the (very minimal amount of) Guinness.

Easy Bean Dip and Mashed Basil Garlic Cauliflower

I got home late because I stupidly stopped by the gym after work. Why is that stupid? Because it was gorgeous outside. Back to dinner, I wanted something easy.

The bean dip is easily the best thing I've made in awhile and perfect for a party. I blended together:

• 1 cup dark red kidney beans (I'd cooked some dry beans weeks ago and had extra, so I threw them in the freezer and they came out ok but a little mushy- perfect for a dip)
• 1 TB Better Than Cream Cheese
• .5 tsp chipotle powder (maybe a little more)
• .5 tsp chili powder
• Lime juice
• Cilantro

I ate it with 3 pieces of toast and would have eaten it off my floor.

The cauliflower was easy. I steamed a medium head of cauliflower and realized when it was almost done that I meant to roast some garlic. So I threw 3 cloves into the steamer for a few minutes. Then I removed the cauliflower but kept the garlic in while I chopped up some basil. I added the basil and 1TB Earth Balance margarine and mashed, then chopped the garlic and mashed in as well. Delicious!