Catchup

Good things I ate (or drank) in the second half of 2014:

From Vedge, Broccoli Rabe Philly Style (seriously bitter homegrown broccoli rabe [which I cut with gai lan to tone it down a bit], roasted red capsicum, porcini mayo)

 Pizza and roasted cauliflower at Pizza Domenica in New Orleans:

 Birthday/journal acceptance cake (Chocolate/root beer):

Asparagus pizza:

Enchiladas Especiales Tacuba style (wish I'd had poblanos; made do with green chillies and used rehydrated yuba sticks as chicken, and cashew cheese)

Pasta with a pureed caramelized onion / nutritional yeast sauce and cubed smoked tofu:

Pumpkin and pecan pie(s):

Home brewed saison:

Smoked carrots

I made this dish from Vedge: spiced little carrots with chickpea sauerkraut puree. It's a play on a reuben -- the carrots are roasted with a spice mix inspired by Montreal-style smoked meat. I smoked the roasted carrots (10 minutes, then left in the smoker box until cool). It was really nice. Unsurprisingly, the leftovers made a good sandwich.

Chili oil

I am still daydreaming about this avocado on toast I had for dinner last night.

It all started with a post on The Hungry Tiger a couple of months ago. Said post described a sandwich very much like this one. I was especially taken with the idea of chili oil infused with ginger, Szechuan pepper, star anise and other delicious things. Then I forgot about it, until I was racking my brain trying to come up with some homemade Xmas presents. I made the oil, and then tested it on this sandwich. Perfect! (Note the chili flakes: I couldn't even wait to strain the oil before using it, it smelled so good.) (The oil recipe is from Mark Bittman, who apparently got it from the proprietors of Szechuan Gourmet. But, like the Hungry Tiger, I left out the scallions.)
Xmas present problem solved. But now I need to make more!

Seeduction

Our big natural food grocery store sells this bread called "Seeduction," which isn't vegan (I think it has an egg wash at least, and maybe some honey), but it is mighty tasty. They make these little rolls, too, which are perfect for sandwiches. This is a leftovers lunch that I photographed because I thought it was such a brilliant use of the little bits in my fridge/freezer.
While I was making it, I had the unfortunate experience to say something that immediately made me think of Homer Simpson. Okay, here it is: "I loooove mayonnaise." So there.

Sometimes, We Need a Nice Sandwich and a Novel

The real treat here may be the soup (in the glass jar). Saute 1 onion, add lots and lots of sliced zucchini, and pour in some water with bouillon (not enough to cover zucchini). Steam/cook the squash until it looks soft. Add one small bunch chopped dill, puree, and serve room temperature or even cold. Delicious.
I believe I had this lunch, with a cloth napkin, while I was reading "Elegance of the Hedgehog." An excellent way to spend two days.
(I scored these plates - 4 - at a "moving sale" hosted by a woman I barely know who was moving to Scotland. I doubled my plate count.)

Righting injustice

Today we found ourselves dogless*, sodden**, and hungry in NYC. I had the bright idea to go to Pukk, a vegetarian Thai place I've heard some good things about. But could we find Pukk? We could not. (I blame the rain falling in our eyes -- Google maps says it's right here.)

Anyway, we tried to console ourselves with lunch at nearby Kate's Joint, but it ended up sucking for two reasons:

1. Given the startling advances in vegan cheese of recent (Teese and Daiya, for instance) what kind of vegetarian/vegan place serves "non-dairy" cheese that's not vegan?
2. I ordered their reuben***. It was not good. I hate wasting food and I couldn't eat it. (I think the main problems were that I was really craving a tempeh reuben, while this sandwich had fake deli meat like this, and that the thousand island dressing tasted weird -- I think it had BBQ sauce in it.)

So, I had to right some wrongs:

Baked tempeh along these lines, sauerkraut, mozzarella, thousand island dressing (vegan mayo, ketchup, plus some ajvar****) on a light rye bread. Yum.

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*He left for Australia today.
**It was raining, and waking at 5am to take one's dog to the airport does not incline one to remember things like umbrellas.
***On the menu it's called the Monte Mount Cisco. The sandwich that they call the Not Reuben has mustard rather than thousand island dressing.
****An untraditional but good addition.

VBLAT!

It makes me think of a sound effect from a Batman comic, but VBLAT is what our local vegan-friendly breakfast joint calls their take on the BLT. It's the Vegan Bacon Lettuce Avocado Tomato sandwich.

They use tempeh bacon, but when I make VBLATs at home I prefer to use crispy seitan bacon (recipe from have cake, will travel). (Things I have learned about the seitan bacon recipe: it makes about 1 cookie tray's worth; it burns fast so you should check on it before the time is up; the best way to spread it thin is to put a piece of plastic wrap over it and spread the mixture out with your fingers).

Banh mi

Dinner on a hot day: banh mi -- seitan with vegan mayo, cilantro, cucumber, quick pickled carrot, and just for the hell of it, the last of the artichoke pesto.

Reuben

I've been sort of obsessed with sauerkraut recently (see also, here). This obsession morphed into a need to make reuben sandwiches.

The seitan marinade was inspired by a recipe printed in Vegetarian Times -- the Radical Reuben from Chicago Diner. For the rest of the sandwich, I basically followed the Tempeh Reuben recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. There was no rye bread to be found in town today, so we had to make do (ha!) with spelt bread from the Hungry Ghost.

This was a great sandwich. I think that the subtleties of the seitan got lost amongst the sauerkraut, avocado and Thousand Island dressing, though. So the overnight marinade was kind of a waste of time. But on the other hand, it was bright pink and looked great against the green of the avocado.

By the way, how's this for a specialized blog? They review all the vegan reubens available in Portland.