Vegan 'smoked salmon' pasta

In the last few months I have been focussing mostly on new culinary adventures, using earlier neglected vegetables, legumes (ahoy puy lentils!) and soyproducts, and on learning new techniques. But the time has come, my friends, to start a new project. Sometimes I will succeed, sometimes I'll have to take my defeat as a self proclaimed kitchen heroine, but there is no way around it. It is time to start veganizing some of my own 'before-vegan' staple dinners. There are a few dishes I always used to come back to, in times of no inspiration, lack of time or because I had guests coming over and wanted to stay on the save side. Or mostly, because I wanted to crawl into their loving comfort food arms and purr like a pussycat.
One of those dishes was a pasta dish that simply asked for sour cream, mushrooms, smoked salmon and a heap of fresh dill. And pasta, ofcourse, otherwise ceci ne'st pas une pasta dish. A difficult one to veganize, for googling 'vegan smoked salmon' did NOT get me a lot of ideas, other than creating 'vegelox', which involves carrot pulp and dulse (seaweed) flakes and did not sound all that appealing. So I decided not to substitute the actual salmon, but to use the combined flavours of the original dish as a starting point. Please give a big hand of applause to smoked tofu, salicornia and oat cream. And yes people, I can truly say, my first veganizing mission was more than accomplished. I hit gold. (and future dinner guests, you will know I love you if I decide to serve you this)

Vegan 'smoked salmon' pasta
(2 servings)

1 block of smoked tofu (200 gr)
250 gr brown mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 red onion, minced
2/3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 hands salicornia (about 1 1/2 cup)
250 ml of non-dairy cream (I used oat cream and that worked out great)
white wine (optional)
1 large bunch of fresh dill
seasalt
black pepper
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 portions of your favourite pasta (I used spelt penne)


Slice the tofu into thin strips, about 1/2 cm thick and then cut them in half. Fry the tofu strips in sunflower or coconut oil until goldenbrown on either side and season with some seasalt and black pepper. Take them out of the pan and place on plate covered with kitchen towel. In the same pan, use the remaining oil to sautée the chopped garlic, onion and mushrooms over medium heat. In the meanwhile, boil up some of your favourite pasta. Add the non-dairy cream to the mushrooms (and some white wine if you really want to get this dish a gold medal) and bring to a soft boil. When your pasta is almost finished, add the salicornia, fried tofu strips and chopped dill to the sauce and season with black pepper and salt to taste. You won't need a lot of salt because of the natural saltiness of the salicornia. Serve on top of the drained pasta and finish off with a squeeze of lemonjuice. Try and find your marine-themed plate to make it look even more fishy and EAT!

Some kind of wonderful weekend

I am still in recovery from this crazy weekend. As in: I am lying in bed drinking detox tea and planning a lot of trips to the gym. Yeah, planning that is, I am not quite ready to get up and actually GO there. Luckily, planning my gym visits already make me feel fit so I can just stay here under my blanket, guiltfree and watching movies while the rain is throwing a legendary party outside.
The wedding on friday turned out to be the only sunny day this week so it was no less than perfect. The party was organized (by yours truly) as an 'American style BBQ' so everyone brought in loads and loads of food and drinks. People even brought a lot of vegan food so instead of chewing only a few pieces of cucumber I had about two whole pumpkinbreads with 3 kinds of hummus, 21 vegetable kebabs and two buckets of olives. AND a very small piece of non-vegan wedding cake. AND, because it was such a festive day, ofcourse I had about a bottle of cava per hour to wash it all away. Oh, the joy of marriage.

Saturday I woke up slightly (right) hungover but also happy and excited because I was going to perform at a very big festival called the 'Zwarte Cross'. Long story short: it was my best performance ever up to this day. We did a tribute to Janis Joplin and the crowd was crazily enthousiastic, singing along and cheering. I have some video proof. The food at the artist catering? Not that great, but there was a salad bar and I wasn't in need of a lot because of the food fest I had allowed myself the day before. The rain was, again, going out of it's way to just keep on keeping on so we decided not to stay at the festival. I was not really feeling the whole 'camping in the mud' thing, and sunday morning I was very pleased to be waking up in my own bed with my own hot shower and my own favourite whole foods store just a 5 minute walk away. My new ideal is to really listen to what my body is craving and give it just that. This particular sunday, everything inside me was opting for green lentils, garlic and fresh pesto. Yeah, I have a body that talks about food like that, I don't really know how it got that way. Anyway, I made a simple pasta and it was all divine goodness and managed to please my culinary snobbish stomach.

Green lentil comfort pasta & homemade walnut/sunflowerseedpesto

Pasta:
250 gr. brown mushrooms
1/4 cup dried green lentils
1 red onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 can of diced tomatoes
2 tbsp capers
dried thyme
dried oregano 
dried rosemary
seasalt, black pepper
whole wheat pasta (I love spelt penne)


Pesto:
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
Leaves of 1 whole basil plant
1 clove of garlic
olive oil
seasalt


Cook the lentils in a pot until tender, mine took about 35 minutes. In the meantime, slice up the mushrooms. Chop up the red onion and garlic, but not too small, you want to keep the chunks kind of 'rustic'. Bake the mushrooms in a large skillet with some fat or oil (I use coconut oil). After a few minutes, add the garlic and onion and keep stirring. Then, add the chopped tomatoes, capers and seasonings to taste. Go easy on the salt, the capers already add a lot of saltiness! Finally add the cooked and drenched lentils, put a lid on it and keep the whole thing on very low heat. In the meantime you can boil some water for your pasta and make the pesto by putting all the ingredients in a foodprocessor. I like to add only a little bit of olive oil to keep it low-fat and chunky but you can make it as runny as you like.

Stir in your pasta with the tomatosauce and serve with a good spoonful of pesto. Enjoy with a simple movie, leave the dishes for tomorrow and happily fall asleep.