Day 13 - Mediterranean Olive Oil and Lemon Vinaigrette, Cheezy Sauce, Mac Daddy, and Spaghetti and Beanballs

This was a big day for Veganomenkrantz! Two meals, with two different sets of challenges!

PART ONE - The Cousins from D.C.

My first cousin, Stacey, is in town, visiting from Maryland, with husband David and children Sam (12), Ben (11) and Hannah (8). It so happens that they keep kosher, so the good news is, a vegan meal takes all the guesswork out of it. Everything's kosher! And Stacey and David are very open-minded eaters (unlike another of the cousins, I'm told). It was going to be interesting to see what the kids would and wouldn't eat. Macaroni and "cheese" seemed like a good bet, but I had a lot of emergency back-up plans in place.

Mediterranean Olive Oil and Lemon Vinaigrette

At the last minute, I realized I needed a dressing for the simple salad I put together. Luckily, I had all the ingredients on hand for this. It's very straightforward, very herb-dense. I would say that while the juice to oil ratio is on the healthier side, it's not a dressing that will emulsify like an oilier version. (A little mustard might have helped with that.) Also, it's relentlessly tart - a blip of agave might mitigate that.

SFO: 10 

(really, n/a)

Cheezy Sauce

This is the big sauce for the Mac Daddy, and I was very anxious to see how I&T approximated cheese sauce. It's very convincing! I used a very orange-y vegetable broth (actually half broth, half water) so my cheezy sauce was quite orange. There's a big garlic presence here. And the mustard, though only a small amount, really stands out flavor-wise.

I don't know anything about nutritional yeast (although I just googled it), so I was curious to see it in action. The flakes basically melt into the sauce, and I'm guessing what they provide is flavor and maybe color. So the main thickener here must be the flour, although it's interesting that I&T are able to get away with a 4:1 ratio of flour to fat. I thought the standard ratio was 1:1 for thickening. Yet another way in which I&T have come through for the fat-averse.

All in all, I'm impressed. It's not cheese sauce, no one will ever suspect it's cheese sauce, but it's a great-tasting, similarly-textured alternative. Cool!

SFO: 6

(I think this could be a tough sell because it's hard to explain what exactly it is. It can be scary when the main ingredient is something most people haven't heard of...) 


Mac Daddy

Here is the casserole itself! The components are a pound of extra-firm tofu, seasoned and crumbled to ricotta consistency, 3/4 pound of cooked macaroni, and two recipes worth of Cheezy Sauce. It's very easy to assemble, and the look is almost right. (Obviously, the sauce doesn't behave in the oven like a real cheese topping would. Maybe a crumb topping would have helped here.)

Flavor-wise, I'm going to say the same thing about this that I said about Cheezy Sauce. It's not a perfect imitation, but it's a "great-tasting, similarly-textured alternative." (Maybe that needs to be an acronym here. GTSTA. Or NAPIBAGTSTA. I'll get back to you on that.)

Now the real test was going to be the children. The first to taste it was Sam, who was already grooving on the smell from the oven. He gave it... a perfect 10! Wow!! Next was Ben, who was a little less excited ("7") but still happy to eat it. And then there was Hannah: "2. No wait, 1."  Ah well, it would have been too easy if they all liked it. For the record, the adults were pretty satisfied. That's Sam with a mouthful. :-)

SFO: 7

(This is the rough average of all our ratings put together.)


 



And here's Hannah with her fall-back-plan muffin. (Which she said was a 10.)






 


And here's the whole family (that's Ben with the book). It was so great to see them all and to share this food adventure with them! Thanks you guys!!








PART TWO - Tracy C.

One of my all-time best friends, Tracy C. has a very unique attitude about food. There are things she's really happy to eat, and things that are completely out of the question. Which I guess describes everybody, but Tracy has some pretty basic things in the second column, i.e. pretty much anything that could be described as a sauce, condiment, dressing, or creamy in any way. So cooking for her presents specific challenges... Luckily, tomato sauce is one of the few loopholes, and spaghetti and meatballs is one of her favorite things. So trying this recipe on her was a no-brainer. And there's no one better in the role of SFO barometer.


Spaghetti and Beanballs 

After my experience with the Black Bean Burgers, I had really high hopes for how these beanballs would turn out. The burgers' combination of mashed beans and wheat gluten was really yummy and the texture was excellent! Alas, similar ingredients here resulted in a much different outcome....

There must be a typo or mistake in this recipe, because the consistency of these is all off. They don't hold together in the pan. The first issue points to the beans department. The recipe says to use a "20oz can of kidney beans, rinsed and drained, (about 3 cups)." First of all, I could not find a 20oz can of beans. So I found a 25oz can of beans, drained them, and used 4/5 of them (by weight). This did not equal three cups of beans. It was probably closer to two. Would more beans have helped here? I'm guessing no. I think the number that's off is the amount of wheat gluten. Or the bread crumbs. Also, must they be dried bread crumbs? Because I used fresh....

I knew something was wrong when I was kneading. It was quite wet, and I wasn't seeing any of the gluten-y strands forming. It's dense enough that the balls can be shaped successfully, but it's certainly not firm, as I&T say it should be. So when you try to brown them in oil, they start disintegrating. Boo.

My next issue is what could only be described as a missing instruction in the pan frying version of the recipe. You are told to pan fry them in 1/4 inch of olive oil (see photo). Then, you add 1/3 cup of sauce to the pan with the beanballs, cook them fifteen minutes longer, and then serve them with "sauce." Can you picture it? That "sauce" is one part marinara to 10 parts olive oil. No one wants to eat something swimming in that!?! The missing instruction must be to drain the oil off, right?? I got out my baster, and sucked as much out of the pan as I could.

Meanwhile, the only way to get the beanballs to hold a shape was to fry them to the point of burnt. At least the burnt ones had some flavor to them... that's right: to add insult to injury, these are not  particularly well-seasoned either.

Geez, I feel like I'm being so harsh, but I had such high hopes for these being a happy introduction to vegan food for Tracy. Is there an official I&T recipe correction? Or do they stand by this recipe as written?? Hmmm.

Look at Tracy - she's being such a good sport. She even ate the beanball!

SFO: 0

(not even safe for vegans)