More Than I Can Chew

Oops! I've been taking an unexpected blog break, sorry for that! Life's been busy and I've been trying to (as Donny Hathaway sings) hang onto the world as it spins around. I've been singing, swinging, working, AND cooking a lot. I am also very pleased to announce that I've been hitting the gym again and (inspired by The Fruit Pursuit's Sabine) finally decided to try out Bikram Yoga classes starting this monday. For those of you who are not in the know: it's 90 minutes of doing 26 yoga poses in a heated room (approx 40 degrees celsius). Yep. I'll let you know how that went, IF I survive and don't drown in my own puddle of sweat.

All very well and all, let's talk FOOD. Good, lovely, comforting and nourishing veggie food that makes you feel like you've been hugged by a fluffy unicorn. I don't feel like typing out recipes so you'll have to do with a bunch of pictures. Food porn, as we bloggers like to say. Well if my pictures are food porn, I do hope they are on the classy side, not the cheapo german mustache kind.

We vegans love our tofu scrambles, this one's with tomato, mushrooms, garlic and fresh parsley.
(crumble tofu, fry in a pan and season with salt, pepper, turmeric and nutritional yeast)

My friend Marieke came over and because I love her very much I made her raw zucchini pasta with cashewsauce, grilled eggplant and oven baked sweet potato fries.

I visited my sister and because I love her very much as well I did a rerun on the raw zucchini pasta. She watched and learned and is now as hooked as I am.

Almost every single day I start off with a Green Monster. Yeah, that's the kind of health freaky girl I am. This particular one was a spinach, banana and coconut water mixture.

Some days my Mexican roots speak up and scream in my ear about baked black beans, guacamole, jalapeno peppers and cilantro (and green beans, and vegetarian nuggets). There is no escaping those cravings, so there.

And last but not least, a pasta (actually, a very fancy wild garlic spelt spaghetti) with parsnip, rocket salad, tomato and sunflowerseed pesto.

That's it for now people, I'll try and be a better blogger and be back soon.

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!

Magical Healing Black Bean Soup

Wow, it's been a week since I last posted. Time flies, especially when you're busy and having (a little bit too much) fun. It was a crazy week, with working, singing and volunteering in a kitchen at a vegan dinner for 150 (!) people, which was amazing. But I'll post about that later. Also, seeing this amazing speech by Gary Yourofsky inspired me to work on a post that goes a bit deeper into my transition to vegan, my no-doubt-about-it keeping up of this lifestyle and the questions and comments I got in the last few months.

But, save it for another day, right now it's all about food. Yesterday I wasn't feeling too well, to say the least. My throat hurt and I just wanted to sleep all day and stay under my blanquet, waiting 'til everything got better. And I wanted magical healing soup. Coming from a Mexican father, I am a sucker for black beans (and cilantro, ofcourse) and I think this simple and classic dish really has magic powers. You know, I might put it up behind a mic in a candle-lit room and have a healing session. For an adequate entrance fee, ofcourse, that is how these things work. For all you believers, here's the recipe.

Magical Healing Black Bean Soup

1 can of black beans
1 can of peeled tomatoes OR
3/4 fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 red pepper
1 lime
1 tsp ground corianderseed
1 tsp dried epazote OR
1 tsp dried oregano
pinch of salt
1 ripe avocado
fresh cilantro
Chop up the onion, garlic and red pepper and sautée in some oil. Add the tomatoes, black beans, corianderseed, salt and epazote and let simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes. Mash it up (I used a hand-held blender) until soupy but still chunky. Sprinkle with limejuice, avocado and cilantro.


This afternoon I was feeling a lot better and I had two recipes to try out so I went to work in my tiny lil' kitchen. I made the baked pistachio falafel by Green Kitchen Stories and some creamy hummus using Vegangela's amazing tip (it's all about taking them skins off!). It was all very yummy and tasty, paired with steamed carrots with a drip of buttery canola oil, sundried tomatoes and slices of raw red beet in lemonjuice and vinegar. Just have a look and tell me you wouldn't be a happy camper when presented this rainbow platter.

Now, I'm off to work on my new blogpost, cleaning up the kitchen while listening to Amy Winehouse in preparation of an amazing tribute I'll be performing at this sunday together with about 14 other singers. Amy, I will not drink to you but I WILL sing to you.

Seitan vs. TVP: The Satay Showdown

Today the game is on. In an ultimate battle, two chunky meat replacements fight for the top spot.

OR: I wanted to make some nice vegan satay and I couldn't decide if seitan or TVP would be better, so I decided to make both. As always, the whole idea started with a vegetable and a craving, in this case a big bag of fresh organic green beans and an unexplainable wish for spicy satay sauce. Yesterday, during Tuesday Juiceday Schmuesday, I made some fresh seitan, soaked some TVP chunks and let them marinate overnight. I am not sharing a whole recipe here, mostly because in all my enthousiastic and instinctive cooking I didn't think to write down exact amounts of what I threw in the bowl. I was way too busy singing along with some Aretha Franklin and pretending to be a TV chef whirling around the kitchen, with all the neat little bowls of ingredients and all. But let me tell you that the marinade I made consisted of shoyu, lime juice, agave, ground corianderseeds, ground laos, lemongrass, garlic, ginger, shallots and a real hot red chilli pepper, all mixed in the foodprocessor. 

An unexpected advantage of vegan cooking is that you have to be a lot less scared about cross contamination. Ain't it great that I used the marinade as a base for the peanut sauce? I just sauteed the whole lot on a medium fire with some extra garlic and onion, added some organic peanutbutter, coconut cream, ginger syrup and shoyu and there was my perfect little darling calorie bombing sauce. 

 Now for the Satay Showdown: as I was putting the TVP chunks on the sticks I already noticed they were a bit 'tough'. As for the seitan, it was still nice and moist. I had my grill on high heat and everything was ready in just a few minutes (after a slight accident with my grill catching flame and me not being able to see because of al the smoke, but let's not talk about that). Result time!

The seitan had really taken in the flavours, the texture was juicy but a bit on the chewy side. Also, it didn't respond too well on the hot grill and the little amount of fat. Frying might have been a better option for this baby. I'd rate it at a 7.

The TVP was taking the grill love a lot better and looked pretty promising. But after the first bite I knew it would not be able to compete. Marinating it overnight had not made it soft and flavoury, but tough and chewy. No good honey, no good! So much for good looks, ladies and gentleman. I'd say: an astonishing 4 for effort. 

In the next few weeks I'll be trying some more of the same style grilling with tempeh, tofu, kebabs from De Vegetarische Slager (The Vegetarian Butcher) and more. And then let the best of the best battle in a big finale with a whole testing panel! And some tv camera's and me in a new dress! Yeah! 

Today's actual winner was the green bean & peanutsauce combo. And the sweet and sour cucumber/raw zucchini salad I paired it with. Another victory for greens! (And yes, that is cilantro sprinkled on top, ofcourse)

Tuesday Juiceday Schmuesday

I really needed to do some detoxing and balancing out after all the food & alcohol last weekend. Luckily the scale didn't go all ballistic on me, but as we know weight is only weight and not an indication of health. So today I blessed with the name of 'Tuesday Juiceday Schmueseday'. Nothing but green monsters, fresh fruit juices and raw vegetables today. Let's see if I can do this on a weekly basis!

This morning started with a very friendly Green Monster consisting of fresh spinach, banana, blueberries and water.

It gave me plenty of energy to go and get a fair amount of vegetables, herbs and spices at the Albert Cuyp market, and pick up my bag of organic vegetables from my subscription. AND, while I was at the 'Blokker' in my ongoing search for a good and not too expensive salad spinner (in which I failed again, this is becoming a real quest) I picked up a lot of spice jars that were only 50 cents each. It's official now, I'm getting old, I get excited by just organizing my kitchen cabinets and putting labels on spice jars. And then taking pictures of them and putting them up on Facebook. This is not good, people.

Now I'm off to work, with a tupperware bowl of fresh tomato and bell pepper gazpacho. Tomorrow I will be back with a very special something something for which I just put some homemade seitan and some TVP chunks in a very spicy marinade. The game is on, and tomorrow, there will be only 1 winner. I'll let the tension build up from here...

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.

'Almost Perfect' Broccoli Burger & Baba Ganoush

There was a large eggplant in my vegetable subscription bag this week, and it must have found it's way into my dreams because this morning I woke up with the irresistable urge to make baba ganoush. So at ten o'clock in the morning I found myself roasting the incredible vegetable in the flames of my gas stove. After putting all the lime & cumin flavoured goodness in the fridge to rest I had to think of something to pair it with for dinner. Something falafely. I also wanted to cram in as many vegetables as possible knowing I would probably not be eating home for the next three days (and I predict a lot of fun but not a lot of greens on the upcoming wedding bbq and music festival). I decided to create a broccoliburger. Yep.

Actually, it turned out great, green and delicious, with a nice bite because of the TVP (in Dutch we call it 'sojabrokjes' which sounds even more appalling than 'textured vegetable protein'). The taste was what I had been craving since morning (and probably what I dreamed about last night). Only thing is, the damn burger would not stay together. It fell apart while baking, so next time I'll make it a bit less moist by adding some chickpea flour. It will work, the burger will see my power and submit to my will! You can see on the picture how I niftily got the deconstructed burger out of sight by bringing in some slices of cucumber. Looking good, aaight?

Broccoli Burger (4 patties)

1/2 head of broccoli
1/4 cup red lentils, cooked
1/2 cup TVP, soaked & drained
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
1 small red onion
1 clove of garlic
2 flax 'eggs' (2 tbsp of ground flaxseed, combined with 4 tbsp of water)
juice of 1/2 lime
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 tbsp harissa paste
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tbsp chickpea flower

Baba ganoush:
1 eggplant
1 tbsp tahin
juice of 1/2 lime
ground cumin
cayenne, salt

For the baba ganoush: punch some holes in the eggplant with a fork. Then stick the fork into the bottom and put directly into the flames of a medium gasfire. Keep turning around until all blackened. Then put in a bowl with a lid on it for about 15 minutes, and after the skin should be easy to peel off. Chop up or process in blender with tahin and lime juice, and season to taste. Let sit in the fridge for at least a few hours.

For the burgers: chop the broccoli and put in a foodprocessor with the cooked lentils, cilantro, onion and garlic. Put in a bowl. Then let the foodprocessor work it's magic on the tvp and flax eggs. Mix everything together in a bowl with the remaining ingredients and form into 4 patties. Bake for 5 minutes on either side, in sunflower- or coconutoil. Serve with the baba ganoush on some salad or in a whole wheat pita.

Here to stay

So there we are. One more foodie adding to the pile of blogs. I've been thinking about it a lot, since changing my eating habits drastically in april this year. I've been wanting to write, about the why and how of vegan food and my temperamentful love affair with healthy eating. I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to inhale chocolate. Only a few months ago I was an omnivore, a meateater, a sugar addict and a frequent drinker of wine, gin & tonics and full fat cappucino's. Hell, I even used to smoke, which is pretty darn crazy for someone who wants nothing but to go through life as a professional singer. I also used to weigh about 11 kg more than I do today. I used to feel tired and unhealthy. I had been using make-up on my face almost every single day since I was about 18 years old. And I used to close my eyes for the fact that I was munching on dead animals, produced in an industry that has nightmare-like proportions.

And one day it hit me. I still don't know what really happened as it went so quickly. I was fed-up with my weight and inspired by a friend to do a 10 day lemonade fast. You know, 10 days of nothing but water, lemonjuice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. I pulled through and I dropped some pounds but more importantly; it got me thinking. Your mind tends to change during a fast, and mine sure did. I read about 'Skinny Bitch', bought myself a copy (best gift I ever gave myself) and devoured it in two days. I cried. I finally opened my eyes to what is happening in the world. The horrors of factory farming. The craziness of modern food industry. The diet hysteria that makes us scared of carbs. The way we stopped thinking for ourselves. The way we are slaves to alcohol, sugar and caffeine. Then I read 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Safran Foer and my mind was made up. I was going vegan overnight.

People around me thought I was 'going through a phase'. Some of my best friends called me 'crazy', and a fanatic. I had a hard time explaining myself while trying not to be preachy. Ofcourse, it was a bit strange for people to accept the sudden and extreme changes in my lifestyle. God, before I was a drinking bulldozer, a hamburger baking rock 'n rollster. I used to think of vegetarians as 'smelly people' and I wasn't that big an animal fan (honestly, I am still not that fond of horses). And there I went, all idealistic and glowing with health, talking about animal rights and the future of the planet. For some friends, it was a bit hard to believe. 'Who are you and what have you done to Laura?'

Today, I couldn't be feeling better. I don't eat any animal products, I try to eat no refined sugar at all, quit the coffee and sold my espresso machine and I seriously limited my alcohol intake. I visit food festivals, meet other vegans, follow a bunch of vegan/vegetarian foodblogs and became a regular at my local whole foods store (Biomarkt). My kitchen cabinets are filled with dried legumes, healthy oils and whole-grain pasta's. I have a this really nice 'groentenabonnement' that gets me a bag of organic fruits and vegetables every week. And who knew I would start to love all soy products? One of my foodie friends Hiske now lovingly calls me a 'Tofu Warrior' (or a Teenage Mutant Vegan Turtle).

I love it. And I need a place like this to share my ideas and recipes, and to connect to the big vegan scene in the United States (the reason I write in English). You better recognize, because this Veggienista is here to stay.