MoFo 9: Quick Lo Mein

Robin Robertson has a much prettier photo (and the recipe!) for this dish on her blog. This is another winner from Vegan on the Cheap. I used wide rice noodles in place of the spaghetti/linguini because I had them and I thought they'd go better with the flavors anyway. While it is my firm belief that just about anything can taste great covered in sriracha and sesame seeds, this is abnormally good. I got a "you can definitely make this one again" from the boyfriend. That usually indicates it as a winner! This also packed up perfectly well for lunch the next day.

Posts to check out:

1) I love soup. It's usually fairly simple, filling, and makes a lot so it's great for leftovers. So great for the weather we're having right now...in fact I made soup for dinner tonight...not from a can! I made this one that Sofia blogged about from Viva Vegan! (post to follow eventually). So, here's a soup recipe roundup from LunchBoxBunch!

2) Our Veggie Kitchen has a recipe inspired by a food cart in Portland (blast them and their abundance of vegan food carts). It's for a tofurkey cheesesteak and it looks yums!

Win! Ricki from Diet, Dessert and Dogs has a giveaway for Lucini Cinque e' Cinque. Click over to her blog to find out what that is and how amazing it looks!

Spicy Tortilla Casserole with Roasted Poblanos and Chile-Lime Corn on the Cob

This dish from Viva Vegan! sounded like it had so much promise and I couldn't wait to make it. With spicy in the title and pine nut crema baked on top it sounded like it couldn't go wrong, but it did. It just wasn't anything special; it's the first recipe from this book to make me feel that way, so that's not too bad, but it was disappointing. It was dry and even with the roasted peppers, homemade sauce using fresh ingredients, pepitas and the crema, it was a bit bland. If there had been some sort of enchilada sauce to go on top this might have been alright. I just doused it in hot sauce/salsa, but unfortunately we didn't touch the leftovers. Next time I'm in the mood for something like this I'll make up the whole enchilada casserole from Vegan Fusion World Cuisine, that one's so good. Here are some in-progress shots of the sauce:



With the casserole I served some fresh summer corn, boiled and then served with squeezed fresh lime juice and chile powder. I got the serving idea from Fat Free Vegan. It was awesome, the flavors went so well together; I like it better than with Earth Balance. Pretty sure this will be my new favorite way to eat fresh corn. Although, I recently went to Gracias Madre and they had their own amazing version: chipotle cashew cream and cilantro--wow. Alright, there are lots of good ways to serve up some corn, but I'm loving this whole spicy thing.

Latin Feast: Arroz con seitan, Braised Brazilian Shredded Kale, and Black Beans

Oh. My. God. This rice dish is one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten. It tasted like it came from an amazing restaurant, but even better because it came from my own home. The beautiful coloring came from achiote paste, and the addition of green olives and capers gave an unexpected flavor combination. I used the steamed white seitan for this dish. So yeah, it's amazing and if you or a friend has Viva Vegan! I suggest you make this right away. Let's see a close up of this beauty:



Served alongside was another recipe from the book, braised Brazilian shredded kale. It was also very good, with onions and nice smoky flavor from the addition of liquid smoke. To round everything out we also made the black beans from Veganomicon. I like this simple recipe because it doesn't take much: a can of black beans, an onion, a bay leaf, and that's about it. The beans can just sit on a burner while you're busy cooking other things.

Seitan and Broccoli in Spicy Orange Sauce

So, I made my own seitan! For the first time ever! I'd been a little intimidated, but after hearing that it really is easy and since it's so expensive in the stores, I went for it. I followed the recipe for the red seitan from Viva Vegan! to fabulous results. It's a little messy in the beginning, but then I ended up with 4 loaves like the one above. It was absolutely delicious. So much more flavor than the packaged variety, a better texture too. I'm converted, I will always make this from scratch now if possible.

My original plan for dinner was to make pecan-crusted seitan from The Kind Diet (on loan from the library), but that needed to marinate for three hours and I just didn't have the time for that. I did plan accordingly later in the week, so that will be coming up.


Instead I made the seitan in spicy orange sauce from Vegan Fire & Spice. I steamed some broccoli and threw that in near the end as well. This dish was nice and simple, tasted great over rice, but was nothing amazing. I would have liked if the sauce got a little thicker. It had corn starch in to thicken it, which it did, but it was still pretty runny even after cooking for a bit. I didn't want to overcook the broccoli that I had already added, so I pulled it off and served it as is. I also didn't think this was spicy at all, so I added sriracha to mine.

Sauteed Plantains

While at the Mexican supermarkets the other day I picked up a ripe plantain to try my hand at cooking one up. There's a recipe in Viva Vegan but it uses a lot of oil, so I followed the instructions I found at Healthy.Happy.Life instead, which is the same thing I realized just using less oil. It's pretty simple, but it was my first time, so I was approaching with caution. Having never made plantains before I thought that this would be more dessert-like than it was, but no, it's definitely more a side or mix-in for a main dish instead. Although, I bet doctored up with some sugar, nuts, or chocolate it would be a fantastic dessert.

Kathy (H.H.L.) has some fabulous looking recipes using plantains (this Mexican Couscous Power Bowl looks great) as does Terry in her cookbook, so next time I'll try something a little more complex.

I just realized there were a whole bunch of firsts for me recently: jicama, hijiki, chia seeds, and now plantains. Fun stuff! My friend Kelly over at Kohlrabi and Quince is trying one new food a week (this week is hominy) and blogging about it, maybe I've been inspired!

Oven-Baked Chimichangas and Mango-Jicama Salad

I just got Viva Vegan! in the mail and couldn't wait to bust into it. Unfortunately for a lot of the recipes some hard-to-find ingredients (for me, if you are blessed with a bevy of ethnic groceries then you could be in luck) are needed. However, these items are mostly pastes and spices, so once acquired they should last awhile and allow for lots of delicious Latin eats. I scoured the local Mexican supermarkets and found a few things, but a handful of others I needed to order online (AmigoFoods has a great selection). So, while I wait for the rest of my items to arrive I made this salad to go with chimichangas from 500 Vegan Recipes. Both of these were very good. This was a little bit of a high-maintenance salad, seeing as both jicama and mango are not the easiest thing in the world to prep. Terry has a great primer on cutting mangoes in the book, and I watched this video to see how to tackle the jicama since I've never prepped it myself (the lady is a little creepy, but they get the job done). However, once that's taken care of it's simple with just some lime juice, mint, and cilantro. The chimichanga recipe was so good. The fillings were a tofu mixture, black beans, and salsa-cheese sauce.


The crispy tortilla was the best part though. So tasty, and luckily deep-frying as per usual chimi's wasn't necessary to recreate that. Great dinner!

Taco Night

These tacos (Chipotle and Beer marinated Seitan and Potato) are from the October 2009 VegNews. The recipe is by Terry Hope Romero and I imagine it would be included in her latin cookbook due next year (working title: Viva Vegan!). These are really fabulous; the flavors are amazing. Next time I will double the amount of chipotle though, these were nowhere near spicy enough for me.

The seitan marinates while the potatoes roast, and then both get cooked up for the main filling. We served them up taco bar style with all the fixin's: lettuce, tomato, cilantro, refried beans, hot sauce, and Tofutti Better then Sour Cream. These are messy, but they're lick your fingers good!