Seth is back, braving the vegan wilds. And coincidentally, the main event is tempeh again.
Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe with Rotelle
By and large, this is a great recipe. Great interplay of flavors, textures, a little on the dry side, but if that doesn't bother you, you should be happy here. I just have a couple of quibbles.
First of all, typo alert. In the instructions for the tempeh steaming liquid, the vinegar is omitted, so don't forget to add that 1/2 teaspoon of vinegar to the tempeh liquid.
Secondly, I+T seem to think that broccoli rabe is the same thing as broccolini, and I disagree. The vegetable I've seen sold as broccolini has a broccoli rabe appearance but unlike broccoli rabe, it is very mild tasting, like American broccoli.
Seth commented that this dish was very familiar-tasting to him, reminding him of the sausagey version. That bodes well for the SFO score....
SFO: 7
Even though this rang a happy sausage bell for Seth, I'm still downgrading a bit, because I think dyed-in-the-wool meat eaters will still balk at the tempeh substitution.
Maple-Mustard Dressing
In my opinion, this dressing carries an overly heavy maple wallop (not unlike that crazy pesto), but at least this is edible. And paired with the right salad fixin's, it satisfies. But don't kid yourself. This dressing is sa-weeeeet. Not something I see myself repeating, FYI.
SFO: 10
Chewy Chocolate-Raspberry Cookies
This is a dense little cookie! As I+T say in the recipe, there's no spreading when baking, so whatever shape you create when you put them in the oven, that's what you'll be taking out of the oven.
The flavor is good. Good. Not great, but good. And strangely, the raspberry participation is all but obliterated by that loudmouth, chocolate. We had to fight hard to find any berry presence.
SFO: 10
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)
Silken Mayo Dressing
Yet another example of the magical powers of I&T to transform a bunch of unsuspecting ingredients into a whole new thing. With a little help from oil and vinegar, a block of tofu becomes mayo! Amazing!
Now, if you haven't already figured out by looking at my name (or the name of this blog), I'm Jewish, and therefore I'm mayo-resistant. It must be a cultural thing. The only times I've ever used mayo are to make chicken salad or tuna salad, or maybe to add a teeny tiny amount to cole slaw or to stir into a much larger amount of mustard on a turkey sandwich. So unfortunately, the wonders of this recipe are wasted on me. I now have 2.5 cups* of mayo and nothing I want to put it on. I forced myself to eat a salad dressed with it, so it wouldn't have been for naught. I would NEVER have put mayo on a green salad, but this was actually okay.
If I were comparing this recipe to commercial mayo, I'd say that it's almost identical in texture (a little more pourable) and color, and it skews sweet, something I've never liked in a mayo. Next time I make this, I think I'll ease up on the agave nectar.
But here's the thing: the caloric difference between this and commercial mayo is crazy! My math may be off, but I think 2.5 cups of Hellmann's mayo is about 3600 calories, and 2.5 cups of Silken Mayo Dressing is 700 calories! And a lot of them are protein! I mean... come on! Give it up for I&T!!
(For those of you out there who are not vegan and have never experienced homemade mayo, you need to try it asap. It bears no resemblance to Hellmann's. It's deluxe and delicious and tastes like France, and even this mayo-hater was entranced. I should mention, 2.5 cups of it are 4920 calories, but they're worth it.)
SFO: 7
(Close enough to mayo and far enough from tofu to convince a meat-eater, but not quite a slam dunk.)
*Typo alert: Opposite of yesterday's overstated Marinara Sauce yield, this dressing makes almost twice as much as the 1.5 cups I&T says it yields.
Applesauce-Oat Bran Muffins
My cousin Stacey is in town this weekend, visiting from Washington DC, and I'm having her and her clan over for lunch on Monday. Since there are three chilluns on the guest list, I thought Mac Daddy, i.e. Mac and "Cheese," would be in order, but Stacey suggested that a better idea might be to serve Mac with the "cheese" on the side. Uh oh! Sounds like a challenge! Perfect SFO judges, right??
Always one to tempt fate, I'm going to make the Mac Daddy anyway, but I'll have a safety stash of plain macaroni ready to go, in case the Daddy doesn't go down. And just to be sure they don't go hungry, I made a batch of these muffins!
Here's another easy-to-assemble, lightened-up baked goods recipe, very light on the oil, heavy on the good-for-you (oat bran, applesauce, and whole-wheat pastry flour). Really, this recipe comes together so quickly, there's no reason not to whip up a batch of muffins anytime you think of it!
The result is moist and delicious. The only caveat is that there's a hefty dose of ground cardamom in this recipe: it's an unusual spice, and if you're not familiar with it, I could understand if you were put off by that unfamiliar taste in an otherwise familiarly-flavored muffin. Personally, I prefer cardamom in savory applications, but even so, it doesn't ruin these muffins for me. I'm just going to take off a point or two when it comes to the SFO.
For the record, I baked these with the convection setting on, and they were done a little earlier than I&T's 28-30 minutes. As my friend Barbara taught me, when they start to smell, they're probably done, or almost done.
SFO: 9
(One point off for the big cardamom presence.)
Leftovers dinner! And no one better to serve it to than my dear friend, Adinah Alexander, who loves and appreciates good, homemade food as much as I do. She's my favorite guest because she oohs and aahs and loves to talk about what she's eating and how it was made. Plus she'll eat anything.
So she got to taste all the goodies I've been cranking out these past few days. Everything got a hearty thumbs up, and interestingly, her favorite dish was the lentils and rice from yesterday, albeit with a healthy salting and prettied up with a side of steamed green beans. It really did taste amazing.
Of course, I had to make at least one thing special for her, so I picked:
Miso Tahini Dressing
This is so easy and so delicious, I can't believe I've never made it before. Two ingredients and tons of flavor. Since I'd be serving it over a simple salad, I took one of I&T's "get experimental" suggestions and added some lemon juice. In fact, I put a whole lemon's worth of juice in there, and the acid balanced out the saltiness really nicely. I can imagine using this dressing for a hundred different purposes - I'm going to go dip some cucumber slices in it right now!
SFO: 10
P.S. Look for Adinah in the cast of this coming season's new Broadway musical, Kinky Boots! I saw a rehearsal of it back in the summer, and it looks like it's going to be amazing!
P.P.S. I just bought a new and improved blender, so I'm going to give that heightened hummus thing another try. I also got a tip from my childhood friend, Marjory, who actually lives in the land of hummus, i.e. Israel. And she said, "Put much smaller amounts at a time in the blender and it works perfectly," which makes total sense. It might mean tinkering with I&T's instructions a bit, but I'm determined to experience this extra-smooth hummus they've been crowing about.
Secondly, I+T seem to think that broccoli rabe is the same thing as broccolini, and I disagree. The vegetable I've seen sold as broccolini has a broccoli rabe appearance but unlike broccoli rabe, it is very mild tasting, like American broccoli. 
This is a dense little cookie! As I+T say in the recipe, there's no spreading when baking, so whatever shape you create when you put them in the oven, that's what you'll be taking out of the oven.
