roasted eggplant muffaletta on homemade ciabatta bread and crunchy broccoli salad

Tonight's dinner was totally amazing, if I may say so myself! :) The hubby says so too.

I've been craving ciabatta bread (and having frequent day dreams in regard to one I made maybe a year back) following a recipe I found somewhere online. Well, I did a little searching and found the recipe again. I remember this bread being pretty fool-proof to make (I'm not generally very good at making bread). I located the recipe --> here.

I had a stay-at-home sunday today, the perfect kind of day to let some dough rise on the counter while lounging around trying to stay warm (and smell fresh bread in the house!). This bread is so easy to make, definitely as easy as I remember!!! The only snag was the directions call for measuring by weight... I don't have a scale so I kinda guessed with measurements. I used 4 cups of flour (Organic Unbleached White All-Purpose), and about 2 tsp salt, but then the dough was too dry and I needed to add way more than the suggested 2 cups of water. I probably used around 3 cups of water total in order to create a real goopy wet dough/batter/mixture. I'd def recommend adding water until the dough is the consistency of slightly thick pancake batter.

Also, I baked mine on a pizza stone. I was hoping that would assist with nice thick crust ( and it did!! Score.). This came out way way yummy! The inside was chewy, flavorful and full of delightful big bubbles, with a thick, chewy crust.  With such yummy bread, dinner just needed to be sandwiches. I decided to roast some eggplant, and use other sandwich fillings like olive salad and roasted red peppers.

Great dinner. I served them with our most favorite side dish: crunchy broccoli salad. I didn't really set out with any recipe in mind, but I'll post what I did this time. This was my type of dinner, slightly indulgent (what's more indulgent than fresh bread??) and hearty, but still full of veggies!


roasted eggplant muffaletta sandwich

ingredients:

1 loaf fresh made ciabatta bread 
1 eggplant, sliced into thin rounds
olive oil
balsamic
spices
roasted red peppers (I used jarred)
muffaletta chopped olive salad mix
vegenaise

-set oven to 425 degrees
-marinade slices of eggplant in olive oil balsamic and spices (i used a garlic herb spice mix) for 1/2 an hour
-roasted eggplant for 10 min, flip then roast for 5 more minutes
-slice bread, slather with olive salad and vegenaise, then stack on veggies!! yum :)


(most amazing) crunchy broccoli salad

ingredients:

2 crowns broccoli, broken into small florets (don't use stem, save for something else! OR ELSE!)
1/4 sweet onion, sliced into thin ribbons
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup roasted peanuts
1/3 cup bacon bits (obviously vegan variety, the store brand around here just happen to be vegan anyway)
vegenaise, mustard, poppy seeds, agave nectar

-mix dressing together (i didn't really measure, 1/2-3/4 c. vegenaise + 2 Tb mustard +1 Tb poppy and  squirt of agave), season with black pepper and salt
-add with everything else (except bacon bits), let sit in fridge for at least 30 min, add bacon bits at last minute so they stay nice and crispy
-WARNING: this stuff is addictive! 

Enjoy :) 

Make the bread! Do it!

Vegan MOFO day 16- Smokey Cheez Sauce, Yellow Cauliflower, Broccoli and Brown Rice

Tonight we really wanted to get some burritos with friends, but they needed to reschedule, so we decided to save money and make ourselves dinner instead of going out just the two of us. The hubby and I had one of those back and forth conversations.... "What do you want for dinner?" "I dunno, What do YOU want for dinner?" UGH! After a completely unproductive 5 minutes, we looked in the fridge and decided to heat up leftover brown rice and eat some vegetables.

We decided to cook up some veggies we got at the Greenmarket, we bought a beautiful head of broccoli and some yellow cauliflower. I've never had yellow cauliflower before, but our farm stand guy said it was creamy and sweet and delicious, so we bought some.

I steamed up the veggies while the hubby whipped up some cheez sauce. He used the Smokey Cheez recipe from 'The Uncheese Cookbook,' this recipe was a variation of the Melty White Cheez. This sauce called for no added oil, so we weren't convinced that it would be cheesey and satisfying, but it totally was. It thickened up and had a nice complex flavor, perfect on the veggies. I told the hubby he is officially the cheesey-sauce cook of the house :) This would be really good on some macaroni. ::hint hint::

Vegan MOFO day 1 - "Steak" and potatoes a la hubby

The name of this blog is Vegan Yummy by Peggy (in case you forgot). Yet tonight's entry *GASP* is brought to you by me, Danny (aka "hubby" in previous posts). Peggy had a tough day and I wanted to cheer her up, so I decided to cook up some yummy (heh) marinated tempeh and baked potatoes. I kinda doctored a recipe I found in the Veganomicon and made my own vegan equivalent of a hearty steak-and-potatoes feast.

Tempeh "Steak"
1 (8-ounce) package 3-grain tempeh
3/4 c. red wine (I used leftover cabernet sauvignon.. thanks Elissa!)
2 Tbsp bragg's liquid aminos
2 Tbsp bragg's apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp liquid smoke
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp pure maple syrup
3 cloves crushed garlic

I started by slicing the tempeh in half width-wise, then again into triangles. I DO love me a good triangle. This yielded 4 hearty triangles. Bring a medium-sized pot of water to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Drop those triangles on in! Wait 10 minutes. What to do? Read a short story? File your taxes? No! Whisk together above marinade ingredients in a bowl large enough to fit 4 triangles of tempeh.

The tempeh plumped up quite nicely in the 10 short minutes. I let it soak for about 90 minutes, turning occasionally. Meanwhile....

Potatoes take forever. I threw these in the oven like, last week. Just kidding. Probably the same 90 minutes at around 350F. Not C. That'd be CRAZY hot. When they were done I topped them with a little Vegenaise and "bacon" bits.

Back to the land of tempeh "steak". Fry em up in a little peanut oil in a cast-iron skillet over medium/medium-high heat. Took about 10 minutes, turning occasionally and drizzling with remaining glaze.

Oh. I steamed some broccoli too, garnished with a little nooch. This whole meal was awesome. One might even say... YUMMY! And it made Peggy happy. :)

-Hubbs