easy crockpot corned seitan "beef"

So.. In the spirit of St. Patty's day, I spent some time perusing vegan blogs looking for cooking inspiration.

I seem to eb and flow with my interest in looking at blogs, and paying attention to my own. Apparently I was even the winner of a cookbook on Vegan Appetite, and didn't check blogger quick enough and it was re-gifted (re-won?) boo! So is this a guilt-post?

So... I found this recipe for Corned Seitan on Vegan Planet  here is the--> recipe. It looked like a fairly simple recipe for making seitan using the crockpot. I really have absolutely no memory of ever eating corned beef before I was a veggie person, but the thought of making seitan in a crockpot sounded mighty tempting. (I have definitely not had good seitan-making luck in the past)

seitan before cooking

 
The recipe calls for making the seitan in a big crockpot, and adding lots of veggies: potatoes, cabbage, carrots, etc.. Well, I didn't have any of those veggies, AND I only have a small 4 qt crockpot. So I used the basic seitan recipe, and added saurkraut under and along the sides of the seitan dough. The dough came together really easy, then I was able to put it in the crockpot, and walk away! How wonderful!

after 5 hours in the crockpot

The recipe said to cook for 7-8 hours on low. I put my crockpot on high for 4 hours, then on low for about 1 more hour.  It felt firm and smelled awesome... so we decided to eat then!

Didn't it come out pretty? Looked so yum!
We ate this with some mashed potatoes, and some steamed broccoli and cauliflower.

We ate this on saturday... and we're thinking tonight its reubens for dinner with the leftovers!

yellow split pea soup w/ mushrooms and chipotle

*

I've been on a serious soup kick lately... soup is so satisfying and warming on cold winter days. It's also super easy to make; I find soup foolproof, it's the type of food that can be mostly ignored on the stove, and especially when kept simple, is always delicious. This one bubbled away on the stove for most of yesterday's lazy Sunday afternoon. This was inspired by a bag of yellow split peas that's been living in my dried bean basket for a while now :) I flavored it with dried porcini mushrooms and chipotle, nice and spicy without  burning.

I topped each portion of soup with a little crumbed tempeh bacon. The hubby and I each really enjoyed this and gobbled up the leftovers at lunchtime today.

Yellow Split Pea Soup

ingredients:
-1 bag dried yellow split peas
-2 cubes veggie bouillion 
-1 cup dried porcini mushrooms
-1 chipotle pepper in adobo
-1 clove garlic-smashed
-6 cups water
-2 cups frozen broccoli stems (this was mostly to use them up, potato would do the same job)
-2 tsp cider vinegar
-salt, pepper, curry powder to taste
-crumbled tempeh bacon for garnish

-In a heavy pot, add peas, buillion, mushrooms, chipotle, garlic, water and broccoli stems. Bring to a boil, turn down heat and let simmer until the peas start to break up, this took me atleast 90 minutes.
-Use an immersion blender and blend soup until creamy. I added a little more water, cause mine was a little thick at this point.
-Once happy with consistency, add the cider vinegar and season with salt, pepper and some curry powder.  
-Garnish each bowl with some tempeh bacon crumbles.


*it's really hard to get a good picture of food during the winter!!!!

african peanut stew

African Peanut Stew over brown rice

So.. winter has finally hit Upstate NY, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I am totally under the weather and feeling junky, and needed some soul food to warm me up and make me feel better.

This is some stew I made, full of veggies and some good spice to clear out my head and fill me with goodness. Very hearty and satisfying. I love the combination of the peanut butter, chipotle pepper and root veggies. I made a huge pot full to feed us for a couple meals, cause mostly I want to be hiding under a blanket, watching Felicity. Hopefully this healthy food will heal me.

This isn't really the type of dish/meal/recipe I'd worry about making sure I have the exact veggies, or amounts of each veggies suggested, I just use what I have in the fridge that needs to be used up and seems like it would work. Same with type of hot pepper, this time I used a chipotle in adobo. (Last time I opened up one of those lil cans, I froze the extra in a tray, so now I have lil chipotle icecubes. most of the time you only really want one, not all six or so that come in a can, right?)  If I didn't have any of those, I might have just used pepper flakes, but I was pleased with the smokiness the chipotle added to the stew. Maybe if I didn't have chipotle, I'd use some liquid smoke.


African Peanut Stew

ingredients:

1/4 onion- diced
1 tsp cumin seeds-crushed
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp turmeric
1 chipotle pepper in adobo- chopped 
1 can tomatoes (i used canned whole tomatoes, and roughly crushed them/squeezed)
1 potato- diced
2 sweet potatoes- diced
2 acorn squash- (i had some i already roasted, so i just scooped out the flesh. peeled, raw squash would be great too)
2 carrots- chopped
1 clove garlic- pressed
1-1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas
1/4-1/3 cup natural peanut butter
dash vinegar (i used ume plum vinegar-cause it's way yummy)
pinch Indian chili powder
1 package frozen spinach

cooked brown rice

directions:

-start cooking onion, cumin, coriander and turmeric in a lil water, when starts to get fragrant (1-2 min), add in the chipotle pepper, cook for a min then add tomatoes, and their juice, all the root veggies, the chickpeas, and the garlic. 
-add water to the pot until it's a soupy consistency/almost covers the veggies. turn up heat and bring  to a simmer. turn down heat to a low simmer, cover pot and cook until it's thickened up a bit and the veggies are starting to get tender (20-25 min).
-add in the peanut butter, and stir it around until incorporated, this can be a lil tough if the peanut butter is thick, if you cover the pot for a min, it'll start to break up and you can incorporate into the stew. taste and season with a dash of vinegar and hot Indian chili powder, you might even want more peanut butter. 
-once it tastes yummy, add in frozen spinach, stir and cook until the spinach is thawed and all mixed throughout the stew.
-eat over rice (it would also be really good with some bread)




 

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!