Mango Sauce

This sauce is great for teff waffles, crepes, pancakes, and vanilla Coconut Bliss "ice cream." It's super easy to make, which always helps.

Mango Sauce
makes enough for 2 hungry pancake eaters, or 4 ice cream bowls
6 oz (appx 1 cup) chopped mango (frozen is fine)
2 TB lemon juice
2 TB orange juice
3 TB maple syrup
1 TB tapioca starch

Put the ingredients in a small sauce pan, except the tapioca starch. Turn the pan on to medium, and while the pan is heating up, put the tapioca in a small bowl with enough water to liquefy the starch. Put the starch in the pan and stir occasionally. Once the mixture has gone from cloudy to clear and a little gooey, it's done!

Today is a short, easy post. It was my first day back to work for a full work week and waking up at 5AM to catch the bus. Lance had the day off, and I can tell he and Annie had a lot of fun because she is so tired. And bugging me to sit down and pet her. Lance is her fun time buddy and I'm her snuggle buddy. It all works out.

Pet me, hold me, DO SOMETHING!

Coming soon: Adventures with eliminating tree nuts! A lot of my cookie and breakfast recipes are tree nut free, but I've come to rely on them with cakes and cupcakes for that wonderful, buttery richness. They really help achieve a superior texture, which means I'll be tinkering around with new techniques.

Vegan Mofo Day 10: Raw Vegan Private Chefs and Raw Wraps

Annie and I getting ready for TV time.

Tonight Lance and I fixed our dinners and sat down to watch The Private Chefs of Beverly Hills. I love this show. I still watch non-vegan cooking shows to get ideas for my own food (and I love DVR because I can fast forward through some parts). Sometimes there are some really creative combinations out there that can translate really well to vegan and even raw vegan. Sometimes I just get to sit there and be a little bit horrified.

Tonight I watched Chef Jesse and Chef Brooke uncook for a crowd of people. They were so mystified by the whole thing! My husband and I were pretty entertained and I cringed as I watched them put their first courses together. I felt bad for them! You don't go to culinary school to learn how to appreciate a Vitamix, dehydrator, and food processor. And I just about died when I watched Chef Brooke make dehydrator sweet potato chips without any oil or the sliver thin cutting ability of a mandolin slicer. Sweetie, it happens to the best of us! I've made rubber chips too. I love, love, love Chef Jesse and was happy to see him succeed in the end, and Chef Brooke's dessert looked very fabulous. If y'all ever need an allergy expert who knows how to do funky things with food, look me up!

I don't understand why someone would hire professional chefs who spend their times cooking traditional, high-end meals to produce a raw vegan spread. The techniques are completely different and it takes a lot of experimentation to get the flavor combinations down. Flavors combine to trick the mind into thinking you're eating something you are not, and a lot of times the flavors you are combining sound gawd awful to the newbie. Things taste so different to me cooked than they do raw. Garlic, for example. It's almost sweet to me cooked and I can't get enough, but raw is a bitter, overpowering experience if you don't use a light hand.

I've spoken with a lot of people who are new to raw and frustrated with kitchen failures. It takes a lot of practice and a few throw outs, but after you get used to the basics, it's a breeze. I was strictly raw for about a year, and after the first couple months of experimenting, I moved on to accepting that things were different and appreciating foods in their whole state. Now I'm back to cooked vegan and loving that as well, but I try to keep a lot of fresh, whole, uncooked foods in my diet.

Some Easy Raw Wraps
Raw can be really easy - it's all about what kind of food you are craving at that minute. I really enjoy wraps because there's a nice, satisfying crunch and usually a rich sauce to combine with the wrap ingredients. Below are a couple quick recipes and wrap combinations I enjoy on a regular basis. I have to thank my friend, Catherine, for the miso spread recipe. She listed off some ingredients she likes to combine one day, and I ran with it.

Ginger Miso Spread3 peeled carrots, cut into 1 inch lengths
1/2 inch peeled ginger
2 Tb tahini
1 clove garlic
1 pinch salt
1/2 lemon, juice
1 heaping TB of Soy Free Miso
3 TB minced red onion
1 rib of minced celery

I was SO excited when I found out that soy free miso existed. I ate it for 8 straight meals - I kid you not. South River Miso makes an excellent Adzuki Miso that I highly recommend. It's a bit sweeter than a Chickpea alternative that I also love by Miso Master. Miso is probably not considered raw by purists, but tahini can be raw if it's slowly processed. There are commonly available brands, like Artisana, that are raw. You can also make your own if you have a slick enough blender and enough patience. As I've said before, I have zero patience.

I don't bother grating the carrots. I throw all of the ingredients except for the onion and celery into a Cuisinart Food Processor and just whir away until I have a well combined spread. This is a super tangy sauce and works well in lettuce bundles with cilantro, sprouts, and cucumber.

Lettuce Rawcos
My favorite thing about raw? The prep time is non existent. I'm cutting and chopping and suddenly I'm eating. The cook time and waiting around is gone.


Guacamole
2 large avocados
1 shallot, minced
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
1 lime, juice
salt and pepper to taste

Mash the avocado and then combine the rest of the ingredients, mixing well.

Remoulade/White Taco Sauce1/2 c macadamia nuts
1/2 c water
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cumin powder
pinch of dill

Combine the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Salsa1 beefsteak tomato, diced
1/2 Serrano chili
1/4 white onion
handful cilantro
pinch salt
pinch pepper
garlic clove chopped, optional
Mix.
Throw the Salsa, White Sauce, Guacamole, and some sprouts on top of some lettuce leaves and enjoy! The less you think about raw preperation, the better the food will be. Breakfast today was a couple hand fulls of mandarin oranges (which will be better in a couple months...made a note to myself - they aren't quite in season yet, and you can tell).

Vegan Mofo Day 7: Stir Fry with Peanut Sauce

Lance and I had a busy day today. We went to watch a few races (men's and women's 10k running) with the dogs. Lance had intended to run, but his hip flexor has been bugging him since Wednesday's work out, so we were all spectators.

After the race, we went to The Chocolate Shoebox in the north Phinney/Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. The store is one of the only stores I know of in Seattle that exclusively sells vegan shoes, purses, wallets, and belts, and they also carry a small assortment of chocolates. I honestly wasn't very impressed with the local chocolates - most of them had corn syrup, or some other filler. Overall, I liked the store and the staff was very friendly. The shoes were kind of middle of the road for me - they had some cute quirky stuff but I'll probably keep looking online for more work shoes. I'll be back - but what I was super excited about was the nail polish! It was formaldehyde free, so I bought a couple bottles on an impulse.

After some light shoe shopping, we all headed over to the Capitol Hill farmer's market. I was on a mission for kombucha or fermented veggies. We didn't see any and the dogs were a little on people overload after a busy race and crowded market, so I just stopped by an organic farm stand and got some beautiful arugula, turnips, and a few other veggies.

By the time we all got home, we were pretty hungry, so I cooked up a big stir fry with peanut sauce. The sauce had a decent amount of fat in it, so by the time I had eaten my fill, I was ready for a nap!

I always try to poke around the Internet and learn new things from other vegans out there. Hyper-Nerdy Veganism had a great recipe post emphasizing the importance of mise en place. Mise en place is one of the first things that a culinary instructor will teach. It's the process of gathering all necessary ingredients and preparing them in a clean and orderly fashion. The idea is to make it easier to follow food safety by keeping certain ingredients separate (not as much of an issue for vegan dishes), and keep them in their place. I try to use bowls for each stage of cooking - which used up quite a bit of bowls today.


The peanut sauce would go well as a satay dip or over spinach and rice. It doesn't need to be mixed into a stir fry.

Peanut Sauce
1 minced Serrano Chile, de-seeded (unless you like a lot of heat)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup Coconut Milk
1/2 cup + Creamy Style Peanut Butter
1/2 a lemon, juiced
pinch of salt

Put a small amount of olive oil in a sauce pan over low medium heat. When the oil is warm enough to elicit a little sizzle out of the garlic, add the garlic and Serrano chile. Do not have the heat very high - I made the mistake of nearly burning everything to a crisp, and then when the peanut and coconut are added things will separate quickly if the temperature is too hot. It's important to cook this over a heat that is lower than medium. Add the coconut milk and peanut butter and just cook long enough to get a bit of bubbling.

Stir Fry
1/2 package phad thai style rice noodles
1/2 an onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic
2 carrots, peeling and julienned
3 ribs of celery, sliced
1 large bunch spinach, washed
1 cup mung bean sprouts
pinch salt
Cilantro to garnish

The trick to non-soggy rice noodles is to soak them in cold water several hours prior to cooking. I put them in a large bowl with cold water in the fridge in the morning before work before I use them.

Heat up a wok over medium heat and add a couple tablespoons of grapeseed or peanut oil. Add the onions, carrots, celery and garlic, stirring and cooking until they begin to sweat a bit. Add the noodles, spinach, and bean sprouts, stirring frequently. Squeeze half a lime over the top and add the salt. After the spinach has cooked down, add the peanut sauce and continue to stir the ingredients together. Spoon into a bowl and put a little cilantro on top as a garnish.

Fresh Tomato Sauce (and why to avoid canned)

There are a lot of reasons to avoid canned tomatoes, but if you want only one, let it be the bisphenol-A that is in the resin that lines the cans. Bisephenol-A (BPA) is a synthetic estrogen that is linked to many health problems. Because tomatoes are acidic, they leach the BPAs from the lining and it enters our food. Canned tomatoes can also contain citric acid (from corn!) and high sodium. Making your own is extra work, but if you have a little spare time on the weekend and a lot of tomatoes, you can make a batch for use throughout the week.

I don't have a formal or even informal background in Italian cuisine (I'm on the West Coast, if that tells you anything), so this is just some information on how I make my sauce. This is not marinara, or a final product even. This is a sauce I add to other recipes (like marinara, vegan jambalaya, curry etc.). The flavors are pretty mild to ensure I can mix and match across different cuisines.

8 cluster/vine tomatoes translates to about 2 1/2 cups of sauce, so keep that in mind when purchasing your tomatoes.

Peeling Tomatoes

Peeling tomatoes is quick and easy. It only takes about 30 seconds. First, put a pot of water on to boil. Once it get to a rolling boil, take a tomato and remove any green/leaves and score the tomatoes on the bottom and make a little "X":


Carefully lower the tomato in the boiling water and leave there for 20 seconds. The skin should start to visibly split up the sides:
Remove the tomato with a wide, slotted spoon:
Simply tug at the skin to easily peel by hand:

Making the Sauce

After the tomatoes are peeled, get a pre-heated 3 quart sauce pan and put a little olive oil on the bottom - just enough to prevent the tomatoes from sticking. Remove the hard area around the stem, and rough chop the tomatoes. Add 1 tsp of dry basil and a pinch of salt.




Stirring occasionally (I walked away and did a little blogging between stirs), let the tomatoes cook down until there is a thick consistency (about 45 minutes).



Tomato Sauce
yeilds appx 2.5 cups
8 tomatoes, peeled, trimmed, and rough chopped
1 pinch kosher salt
1 tsp dry basil
3 tsp olive oil

Use the olive oil just to barely coat the bottom of a 6-7 quart heated pan over medium heat. Add the other ingredients and cook, stirring occasionally for 45-60 minutes.