Vegan Pozole Rojo

Pozole is like chili with hominy. Although it's made throughout Mexico, I think of it as a Native American (Indian) dish. We opt to make it with the most exotic sounding ingredients we can like avocado leaves and such. It makes us feel very fancy and we get to talk to the nice ladies at the Latino produce market who have given me lot's of tips and recipes over the years. Pozole is traditionally made around Christmas time. It requires a ton of different chilis pulverized into a paste using a morter and pestle, chilis like guajillo, ancho and chili de arbol. Pozole can be made white (blanco), green (verde), red (rojo) with beans (de frijole) or with corn and squash (elopozole). Hominy is made by a process called nixtamalization. Traditionally this meant soaking corn in lye until the hull is gone and the germ is left. Nowadays limewater is used (calcium hydroxide). This is the same process used to make tamale masa so now you know that tamales are essentially made with dried ground hominy.

I will post the recipe in full soon but I'll tell you another little tidbit. Achiote is a strange little tree/shrub that grows like a weed all over the southwest straight through to South America. I first encountered it in the Ecuadorean rainforest (I know that sounds exotic doesn't it) where the natives use it to dye their hair. It wasn't til I returned to the states that I realized it's culinary uses. Achiote is the same thing as annato which is the dye used to make cheddar cheese orange. I use this to to give the Pozole a rich color. This is a good tip for a vibrant chili as well.

Another thing we do with the Pozole is a little pork substitution using Shitake mushroom stems. We shred the stems so that they look like shredded pork and then we soak them in a little liquid smoke (which is actually a natural thing. They basically just condense water in a smoker and viola, liquid smoke). This is a labor intensive ordeal but we think it's worth it.

I first got the idea to make Pozole from a cookbook I bought at the American Indian museum in DC where I also puchased some dried blue hominy which really ups the fancy factor.

I think next time I'll make a Pozole blanco.

Breakfast Tamales

I've been making a lot of tamales lately. They've been a big hit at the Bayou City Farmers Market

This one is pretty cool. When people ask what's in the tamales I tell them that it's migas ( a Mexican scrambled egg dish) Then after they've tried it and said, "wow" or "yum", I tell them that it's tofu migas so it has no cholesterol. I'm surprised by the number of big burly meat eatting types who buy them anyway.

We make the tamales in three steps and we make giant batches so I'll try to estimate a smaller batch but it's not exact.

Start off by soaking your corn husks!

Basic Tamale Dough

2 cups Masa

1and 1/2 cups warm Vegetable Stock

1/2 cup Peanut Oil

3 teaspoons baking powder

4 teaspoons salt

1/4 cup cold water

Start by putting the masa in your mixer and turning it on. Add the veggie stock and let it mix for 3-5 minutes. Add the peanut oil and let it mix for another 3-5 minutes. While that's mixing combine the rest of the ingredients in a little bowl. After five minutes add the rest of the ingredients and mix again for 3-5 minutes.

The Creative Part

At this point in our tamale process we add some kind of vegetable. For the breakfast tamale I add about a half a can of tomato sauce and a half an onion ground up in a blender. I also add fresh sage to this tamale dough.

You can add all kinds of veggies to your dough. I've added onion, chayote, spinach, herbs, sweet potato and beets at one time or another to my different masas. I find that this does gives the masa character and tenderness so the masa doesn't come out dense like a hockey puck, or bland like a corn tortilla.

Tofu Scramble

about 1 cup finely diced onion, bell pepper and hot pepper combo (easy on the hot pepper, Tiger)

2 large packages of medium or hard tofu (crumbled up really good)

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

2 tablespoons miso

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1/4 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon each freshly chopped oregano and parsley (most herbs can be used here)

2 cloves fresh minced garlic

This can all be mixed together and it doesn't need to be cooked. It will steam in the steamer.

OK now your ready to assemble. Take a nice big corn husk and lay it out on the table. Spread a thin layer of masa onto the husk in a rectangular shape about 3" wide and 5" long. The masa should be about a 1/4 inch thick. Now add a strip longways down the middle of the tofu filling.

Now you want to fold the two exposed masa sides together so that in the end you have a tube of masa surrounding your delicious filling. Fold the extra flap of corn husk up and lay the tamale down so that the flap doesn't pop back up

Steam that tamale for 30-45 minutes.

I realize that this is going to require some better pictures so we will do that next time we do tamales (every week) so stay tuned.

One Vegan Night in Denver

Mmmmm vegan chocolate cake !

I've just returned from Denver where I was lucky enough to spend an evening with these two lovely ladies, Diva and Erin as they joined me on my vegan Denver adventure. Though not vegan themselves, they were completely open and awesome. They learned what seitan was and made up some cute jokes, like if you could make Devil's food cake with seitan. Very clever Diva, you go girl.

The first place we hit was the Mercury Cafe which is not completely vegan but more of a local sustainable organic kind of a place. There were all these cool flowers out in front and a compost pile. There was a bike rack in the front entryway and uber-cool toilets which I'll talk about later. http://www.mercurycafe.com/

The Mercury Cafe is not just a restaurant. It's quite subversive. They have extra rooms that they can do extra stuff in. They have an upstairs for dancing, yoga and what not and an extra room adjacent to the dining room for other stuff, like movies. When we got there they were watching a film about copyrighting but the girls and I decided that we had too much to talk about and we didn't want to disturb the other movie watchers.

We ordered the Vegan Grill (which I forgot to take a picture of until the end) and I must say it was some of the best tofu I've had. The flavor reminded me of chicken fried steak. It was served with a black bean sauce and a spicy kind of a duck sauce. Unfortunately, we wanted to keep the party moving but I know that anything else we would have tried would have been awesome.

The bar-none best thing about the Mercury Cafe was our fantastic server, Aimee (sp?). When we probed her about everything vegan in Denver she finally admitted her part in the soon to be world famous group Underground Carrot. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=270751408

This group of cool kids has an underground food delivery and weekend restaurant business that is totally worth checking out. They are trying to raise money to open their own place by hosting underground dining parties which are becoming more and more legitimate. I will definitely go to one of their double top secret temporary dining sites next year if they don't have their own place by then but I hope they do.

The other cool thing about Mercury Cafe is this awesome toilet which pours the water that is destined for the basin over the top first. That way you can wash your hands after you flush. The water is perfectly good for hand washing, tooth brushing etc...

The Mercury Cafe got three thumbs up!

The next place we went was to Water Course Foods.

This picture is the mural (or painting ) that they have in the front entryway. This place is all vegetarian / vegan friendly and had a huge selection of goodies. http://www.watercoursefoods.com/menu.php
This was our sweet server Jenn (hello Jenn!)
We tried as much as we could but the menu was huge. Pictured on top are the Vegan Buffalo Wings. One of the other servers was eating this and was kind enough to offer me a bite. The wings were very good but cold. I thought they had a bit too much black pepper. I prefer mine with Louisiana Hot Sauce and nothing else. The Ranch was great.

Then we tried the Seitan Philly, The Juan Wrap and the Country Fried Seitan. The Juan Wrap was the hands down favorite. Erin experienced vegan nirvana. It was fun to witness.
We then had to explore the dessert tray which had ho ho's cupcakes, tiramisu, gluten-free chocolate cake, apple pie, and so many goodies that we had to order four even though there were only three of us. My fave was the tiramisu which was even better two days later.

I also ordered the Green Chili soup which I thought needed some tvp for more body. Other than that I believe Water Course also gets three thumbs up from the gals.

The prairie dogs give Vegan Denver two tails up!

Green Avocado Gazpacho

In a hurry as usual, but I have this orginal recipe on file: contents are not neccesarily in this order.
Green Gazpacho
Onion
Cucumber
Celery
Bell pepper
Cilantro
Parsley
Basil
Garlic
Organic Pecans
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
Cumin
Celery Seed
Cayenne Pepper
Organic Lemon and Lime Juice
Little bit of olive oil
Avocado
Tomatillo
White Wine Apple Cider Vinegar The Garnish is Boscoli Italian Olive Salad, in a jar. Oh and an avocado wedge.

Moussaka

This Moussaka is a fave of mine. I made a bunch of this for my customers so you may want to cut back on the recipe.

For the sauce:

1 Onion
1 Package of Bob's TVP
1 cup water
1/4 cup Braggs Liquid Aminos
2 Cans Tomato Sauce
1 small can Tomato Paste
4 Cloves Garlic
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
1/8 tsp Allspice
1/2 tsp Ground Cloves or 3-4 Whole Cloves
2-3 Bay Leaves

Soak the TVP in the Braggs and the water for 30 minutes. Chop the onion and put it in a saute pan with about an inch of water in it. Add the garlic, the spices and the TVP and cook it for about 10 minutes, turning it often. Add the tomato sauce and the the paste and let it reduce for about 30 minutes and set it aside.

Eggplant and Potato:

I usually partially peel my eggplant. I leave little strips of skin for decoration. Slice the eggplant and the potato into 1/2 inch slices. Put the potato in water to keep it from turning brown and put the eggplant on a salted clean towel and then add more salt and another towel on top of that and then cover the whole thing with something flat like a cutting board. You can also put some junk on it to weigh it down. I use my blender or cans. It doesn't matter. Leave them for an hour.

Meanwhile boil those potatoes until they are just done. Douse them with cold water to cool them down then set aside.

Bechamel:

Make a roux of non-hydrogenated fake butter and whole wheat pastry flour.
1/2 cup fake butter
1/2 cup flour.

Cook this for 5 minutes on a medium to low flame.

Very slowly add Soy milk. Add a little, let it heat up and then stir it around. Repeat until you've used around 2 1/2 cups of milk.

Add:
1/4 cup lemon juice
Salt
pepper to taste

Once everything is cooled you can assemble the casserole:
Layer the sauce down first, then the eggplant, then the potatoes, then the bechamel. Sprinkle with Paprika and bake at 350 until hot and bubbly.

Vegan Chocolate Strawberry Cake

I remember looking at someones blog, I can't remember who's. They were complaining that they needed to get their cake layers more even and I was thinking to myself, Blogger dude, you're way too OCD. It looks good to me! Now here I am in the same boat. I want beautiful even layers too. While chocolate ganache covers a lot of mistakes we can improve with a tweek here and there.
I followed Paku Paku's strawberry Kake recipe here ttp://www.pakupaku.info/sweets/strawberrykake.shtml
with a few exceptions. I didn't have any black currant liqueur so I used Acai juice from Bosa Nova (wont' do that again, don't like the color) and I used a heaping cup of frozen blended strawberries instead of jam.
http://www.wabashfeed.com/index.htm
I used a charming cherry butter from the Wabash Feed Store for the layers and I put some in the ganache frosting as well. The frosting is one package of vegan choco-chips with 1/4 cup canola oil, 1/3 cup soy milk, warmed with 1/4 cup cherry butter, and a tablespoon vanilla. Warm up that milk, pour it over the chips, wait a minute and then stir it all together with the oil. When it is at a spreadable temp (slightly above room temp), and the cake is nice and cool you can spread it with a hot dry knife.


Here's the movable feast I took to my chief tester. He said it better be low-fat cause it's going to take him one day to eat it. I think that's a compliment.

Vegan Lemon Curd Tart

As usual I'm too busy to post the recipe right now. This is a lemon curd vegan tart with plum and Georgia peach slices for garnish. The crust is Vegan shortbread