Pasta and Peppers

It is currently 39 degrees according to the weather man on our balcony. I don't doubt it... It's so hot that my greedy cats haven't asked for food since 11am...












...and my poor nasturtiums on the balcony have gone from being all perky this morning to wilted and cooked this afternoon.






What a perfect time to make a cold supper. Unfortunately, the cold supper I decided to prepare required boiling and baking which are not the best activities on the hottest day of 2015 so far! Oh well, hopefully it will be yummy.

I have two bags of mini peppers and while I love them raw, I decided to roast a few. The result is delicious!

Roasted Mini Sweet Peppers





20 mini sweet peppers
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Put parchment on a baking sheet and place the peppers in a pile on the parchment. Drizzle olive oil on them and mix them around so they all glisten. Spread them out, sprinkle with salt (I used the new trendy Maldon salt flakes and proceeded to spill the container all over the counter and floor while I had oily fingers), crack black peppers over top and pop into the oven for 30 minutes. Take them out and eat hot or let cool but be forewarned that they will be very hot inside! When they are in the oven, they will still be all puffy but they will collapse once they start to cool.






I baked tofu at the same time as the oven was on as we needed something more than just roasted peppers! Tofu bakes for 60 minutes.

I also decided to make a pasta salad since Corey had been saying how much he was craving pasta salad and the one at IGA is certainly not vegan (or really that good in my opinion.) Why not just boil water while the oven is on??

Creamy Pasta Salad (it never makes a good photo!)





In a large bowl, mix:
4 cups cooked pasta
Celery
Peppers
Carrots
Any other raw veggies you like

In the Nutribullet or blender, blend:
1 pkg soft silken tofu (although medium or firm would be fine but not the banana flavoured kind)
3 tsp chopped fresh dill
2 tbsp dijon mustard
2 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp agave syrup
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

Pour over the pasta and veggies, mix, and put in the fridge until you eat! Pasta salad always tastes better the longer it sits. Well, not weeks but hours or a day.

And while the oven was on for the extra half hour for the tofu, I decided to make the rhubard loaf I wrote about last week except I made into muffins. They took 40 minutes to cook.

Not my proudest energy-conscious day as now the air conditioner is going full blast.

Have you tried this olive oil? It smells delicious and has a nice flavour.






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I love lasagna!

I used to make lasagna quite often but gave this wonderful one-pot meal up when we became vegan. I really don't like many of the soy cheese products and I try to avoid as much wheat as possible but when I came across this recipe in the Accidental Vegan cookbook I just bought, I could not resist (with a few modifications of course!) I was having good friends over for dinner so I decided they could be my guinea pigs. That's what good friends are for!

There are several steps for this recipe because you make all three sauces but each one is made quickly so the overall time is not a big deal. You could melt soy cheese on top but as we have recently discovered, some brands have casein from milk in them. Check your labels carefully.

I use the instant lasagna noodles because I hate fighting with lasagna noodles that stick in my pot when I am boiling them and then fall apart as I transfer them into the lasagna pan. It limits my options for "flavours" of lasagna noodles but for these rare occasions, I don't mind just eating plain white semolina flour noodles.

Spinach Pesto Lasagna

1. Spinach Tomato Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried oregano (been to Abby's yet?)

2 tbsp dried basil
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp pepper
6-8 large tomatoes skinned and chopped or just chopped fine
1 pkg frozen spinach, thawed

Heat the oil in a saucepan, add onions, garlic, herbs, spices and salt. Fry on medium heat until the onions start to become translucent. Add the tomatoes, lower heat, cover and let simmer 30 minutes. (This is when you make the other sauces.) Squeeze the water out of the spinach and mix it into the sauce. Let it heat through.

2. Pesto
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, reconstituted in boiling water
2 cloves garlic
3 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves
1 cup shelled walnuts
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup fresh parsley
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Put the garlic cloves in the food processor and chop finely. Drain the tomatoes and add all the ingredients to the food processor. Process until finely chopped and well mixed.

3. "Cheese" Sauce - nothing like cheese at all really except the creaminess of a cheese sauce
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (great source of B12 - one of the only sources for vegans)
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp prepared mustard

Gently heat oil over medium-low heat. Add flour and yeast and whisk until it is all mixed together. It will be a combined crumbly mixture. Add the water, raise the heat to medium and whisk continuously until the sauce boils and thickens to the consistency of pea soup. It will burn fast so it is important to whisk it all the time. Remove from heat and whisk in the salt and mustard. 

LASAGNA

1 pkg express lasagna
1 pkg soft tofu, drained and crumbled into a bowl
the 3 sauces above

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix the pesto into the bowl with the crumbled tofu. In a 9x13 pan, spread 1/3 of the tomato-spinach sauce. Layer noodles onto the sauce. Spread 1/2 the tofu-pesto sauce on top. Add another layer of noodles. Spread 1/3 of the tomato-spinach sauce on top then cover with the rest of the tofu-pesto sauce. Another layer of noodles. Cover with the rest of the tomato-spinach sauce. Pour the "cheese" sauce on top, cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 15 minutes. Take out of the oven and let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Each of the sauces are good on their own for pasta. I boil macaroni then fry onions and tomatoes together, toss in the macaroni, add the "cheese" sauce, put it in a baking dish, cover it with breadcrumbs and bake it for 20 minutes. Makes a great lunch!

My Search for the Perfect Vegan Pad Thai - Recipe #1

I LOVE pad thai. It is my favourite dish at the Mon Thong by the movie theatre. I always ask for no shrimp and extra tofu (and no green onions either - yuck) but I am sure that there must be shrimp paste lurking in there anyway. Almost all my vegan recipe books have pad thai recipes. It was my goal to have a pad thai week over the Christmas break where we would eat nothing except pad thai until I found the ultimate recipe but I never ended up even making one. Finally tonight I decided to try. I was going to be lazy and use a bottle of vegan pad thai sauce that I had bought at the Asian supermarket but (1) it had expired 2 months ago and (2) there was more sugar than anything else. I decided to not be lazy, cooked a package of flat rice noodles, and went in search of my first pad thai recipe in my cookbooks.

Pad Thai #1 - Modified from The Tropical Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein

1 package of dried, flat rice noodles cooked according to directions then drained and rinsed in cold water. These cook fast so don't leave them for more than 5 minutes.
1/2 tbsp tamarind paste mixed with 1/2 cup water
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tbsp tomato ketchup
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 1/2 tbsp ketjap manis (if you have none then add another 1/2 tbsp each of soy sauce and brown sugar)
2 tbsp canola oil
1/2 tsp crushed red chili flakes
1 tsp minced ginger
1 pkg firm or extra firm tofu cut into 1/2" cubes
1 cup snow peas or cabbage or peppers or carrots or a mix of them all
1 cup bean sprouts rinsed and blanched in boiling water to wash off any salmonella yuckies
1 green onion (yuck - this is entirely optional)
1/4 dry roasted peanuts

Mix the tamarind, water, soy sauce, ketchup, lime, sugar, sesame oil, and ketjap in a bowl and set aside.
Heat oil in a wok and when the oil is hot, toss in the chili flakes and ginger. Stir that around a few minutes then toss in the tofu and let the sides brown a bit. Add the veggies, toss, cover and let them steam cook themselves until they are of your desired crunchiness. If water develops in the bottom of the pan, let that evaporate before adding the tamarind liquid mixture. Mix into the veggies and bring that up to a boil. Toss in the noodles and mix it all together.

In your individual bowls, place a pile of bean sprouts. Serve the Pad Thai on top. Garnish with green onions (yuck - really, you don't have to) and the peanuts. Eat with a fork. The Thai don't use chopsticks.


My review... yummy but not the pad thai taste I am searching for. It's the right texture although it's a little too wet. I could have let the sauce cook down more. I would certainly make it again and Corey really liked it. He isn't a pad thai fanatic so his ability to compare to restaurant versions is limited.