Belated Valentine's Dinner: Mushroom Wellington With Patty-Pan Squash and Potatoes

The mushroom wellington is a variation on this recipe from vegcooking.com. The major difference is that I used phyllo dough brushed with olive oil (5 sheets per wellington roll thingy) instead of puff pastry, since I couldn't find a vegan puff pastry. Also, I substituted olive oil for margarine, sweet onions for shallots, soy sauce for salt, and a mixture of crimini, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms for button mushrooms in the mushroom mixture. I also chopped up the fake beef strips and cooked them with the mushroom mixture so they'd take on the flavour (instead of adding them afterwards). I did the sauce a little differently too: I made a mushroom stock out of about a half cup of mushroom mixture boiled in about 1 1/2 cups of water with a little soy sauce and a good splash of wine, then thickened with a roux of flour and olive oil. The trick when using a roux is to have it at about the same temperature as the stock you're adding it to, and to stir while you're adding it. It comes out nice and smooth that way.

Side dishes were patty-pans, which I sliced and fried in some margarine and sprinkled with salt, pepper, and a little fresh lemon juice; and mini red potatoes, which I boiled in a little salted water and then tossed with margarine and chopped fresh parsley.

It was a delicious dinner, if a bit involved to make. The mushrooms take on a rich meaty flavour when combined with the onions and soy sauce, so they really are a good substitute for beef in this dish.

I also made a special dessert:



...vegan truffles.

Alas, they were kind of an experiment, and somewhere among the alchemy I lost track of how much of what I put in when. Next time I'll write things down.

I made two kinds: the ones rolled in ground macadamia nuts are plain, made with dark melting chocolate, non-dairy "cream" (like Rich Whip), and margarine; and the ones rolled in powdered sugar and cocoa powder are dark melting chocolate and peanut butter.

They were tasty, and if you're feeling intrepid, I highly recommend googling up a truffle recipe and having at it with whatever vegan substitutes you can find.

Another Quick Dinner: Chana Masala, Sort-Of

I haven't felt much like cooking the past couple of days, so this is another quick one. Unfortunately, it relies pretty heavily on a canned store-bought sauce. It seems pretty widely available from what I can tell; my apologies if you can't get it where you live. (As an aside, this recipe looks pretty good if you can get your hands on some garam masala and tamarind -- I haven't tried it yet, though.)

It's not really Chana Masala since I added potatoes, but it was yummy and quick, so here goes:

• 1 can of Patak's Balti Curry sauce (or other vegan curry sauce)
• 1 can chick peas, drained (or equivalent amount of the dried kind, soaked and cooked ahead of time)
• 3 small potatoes, peeled, diced, and boiled
• 1/2 c or so basmati rice, steamed (with cardamom pods if you can find them)
• optional: lemon juice, cumin

Stir the chick peas, potatoes, and curry sauce together in a pan on medium heat. Add cumin and a squirt or two of lemon juice if you like (I found the sauce a bit sweet, and the cumin and lemon helped, but they're not necessary). Heat through. Serve over basmati rice.

We also made some of these pappadums to go with dinner: you can make them in the microwave by brushing them with a little oil first, and they turn out pretty well.

I didn't time myself, but I would guess this was done in about a half an hour. We've been spoiled by the excellent Indian restaurants around here, but this still was a pretty good meal, especially given the time it took to make.

Bonus Heloise Tip:

Generally, cooking curry will only make your house smell strongly of curry if you make it from scratch, which involves heating the spices in oil first. But if you'd still rather not smell dinner after you've eaten it, try sprinking some cinnamon over a cup or so of water in a small saucepan and simmering it on your stove. Your house will smell like cinnamon, which complements curry rather than competes with it.

Tonight's Dinner: Faux Chicken Strips, Sweet Potatoes and Mixed Veggies

Tonight was a quick dinner. I had planned on veggie burgers with sweet potato oven fries, but the store was out of both veggie burgers and buns, so I had to improvise. What I did stumble upon were some chicken strips that were basically the Yves ones re-packaged with the grocery's store brand.

So we had those, sauteed in a bit of olive oil; sweet potatoes tossed with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and then roasted; and some mixed vegetables with a little powdered veggie broth sprinkled on them for flavour.

The chicken strips were okay; I don't think I would have liked them very much without the olive oil to make them crispy though. Sweet potatoes and veggies always go over well.

All in all it took about forty minutes to make, most of which was taken up by the potatoes roasting. Decent enough meal with minimal effort.

Tonight's Dinner: Breaded Seitan Nuggets

Okay, I forgot to take the picture before it was all eaten. Sorry 'bout that.

Thanks to a trip to the States this weekend, I had some seitan to play around with. I can't believe how hard it is to find seitan around here, I always thought it was a staple like tofu. I guess not. Oh well, thank goodness for Wegmans.

Anyway. I marinated the seitan pieces for an hour in a mix of the following:

• 1/4 c soy sauce
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp mustard
• 1 tbsp minced garlic

Then I coated them, shake'n'bake style, in some breadcrumbs (from the batch I made Sunday), brushed the nuggets with olive oil, and baked at 375F for about 15 minutes (more or less - I wasn't watching the clock so much as whether they were turning golden or not).

They reminded me quite a bit of chicken nuggets, but not as processed. My husband liked them a lot, too. (Believe it or not, the Husband is quite picky, so his approval actually means something. I've just had a good streak lately.)

Rounding out the meal were:

• potatoes, tossed with olive oil, paprika and seasoned salt before roasting at 400F (I put them in the oven 20 minutes before the seitan nuggets, and then left them in when I baked the nuggets); and

• kale, which I am quickly becoming addicted to, cooked as I did on Friday.

So it was a bit of a repeat, but still filling and tasty and all that. Easy enough to make and clean up after, too.

Tonight's Dinner: Eggplant Croquettes and Herb Roasted Potatoes

Tonight's dinner is kind of light, because we filled up on Superbowl snacks.

The eggplant croquettes are another one from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen. I really do use other cookbooks; this recipe just caught my eye when I was flipping through for the pasta e fagioli recipe.

It's basically baked eggplant pureed with garlic and breadcrumbs, rolled in herbed breadcrumbs, brushed with olive oil, baked, and topped with tomato sauce.

The herb roasted potatoes are pretty easy to do: dice some potatoes (I used 3 small and that was more than enough), and in a bowl toss them with with a couple teaspoons of olive oil, a little salt, garlic powder, and italian seasoning until evenly coated. Place them in a baking dish and roast them at 400F for about 20-30 minutes or until golden.

The croquettes came out really well; they took a little while because I had to make the breadcrumbs myself (see below) and they need to be refrigerated before you form them into balls, but other than that they were pretty easy. In the future, I'll probably let them cook a bit longer at a lower temperature because they were a bit mushy in the center -- but still tasty.

Making Breadcrumbs

I know I can't be the only vegan who has trouble finding breadcrumbs -- for some reason even the "unseasoned" varities all have cheese in them. Fortunately, making your own is really easy.

Just take a couple slices of bread and bake them in the oven or the toaster oven at the lowest temperature -- usually around 200F -- for about twenty minutes, or until the bread feels hard and dried out. Then, break the bread into big chunks, put it in the food processor, and pulse until you have breadcrumbs.

I actually like doing it this way, because I can use whole wheat and they taste a lot fresher than store-bought breadcrumbs.