Vegan Pork And Beans

A very simple, easy vegan dish is the vegan version of pork and beans.

Here's how you make it:
Take a can of vegetarian beans. Red beans work well, but you can use whatever you like. Then take a vegan hot dog or two and cut the hot dogs up into chunks. Heat up the beans, add in the hot dogs, and voila! You're done! Eat it with rice or toast.

I decided to showcase here a slight variation of veggie pork and beans. I make this version often.





Ingredients:
1 can of spicy navy beans
2 Italian flavored veggie sausages
1 cup of cooked macaroni noodles

Prearation:
Heat everything up in a pot on the stove for about five to ten minutes.


Another variation I like to make is the caserole version. Take the pork and bean mixture and pour it over crackers or toast in a caserole dish. Top with crackers or toast and bake for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees F. You can even add a bit of shredded vegan cheese on top if you like.

Chili impromptu

Chili can go together with a few basic ingredients, plus odds and ends. The variety makes it fun and possible. You can throw this one together in 20-25 minutes.

Chop up a small onion. Saute in a little neutral oil until soft, a couple of minutes. Chop up a few other veggies if you have them. I used some zucchini and carrots. Throw those in, cook for a couple of minutes. Toss in a 14.5-oz can of beans (in this case I used Cuban black beans, which means they come with some nice extra ingredients well suited for chili), a 14.5-oz can of chopped or stewed or diced tomatoes, and as much chili powder as you like. I used maybe two tablespoons. I also added a healthy shake of cumin for that extra smokiness.

In a pinch, use frozen chopped onions or dried onions or onion salt, add dried veggies and skip the saute steps.

Heat until it all until hot. Break up large pieces of tomato if you like. I served it over brown rice, which I had in my freezer. When cook rice, I make big batches in my rice maker and freeze serving-size amounts in freezer bags. They microwave perfectly in about two to three minutes.

Preparing apples

Sometimes we find ourselves with apples. Fresh apples. And while eating them fresh is a good thing to do, sometimes we want to make something with them. This can lead to paring and coring and slicing. Here I offer the quickest way I have found to do these things.

Paring. Start by slicing off the two ends.



Then pare the rest of the apple, from end to end:





Cut the apple in four pieces, through the root ends. Then, angling the knife, cut the core out of each of the four pieces.



Chop or slice, as needed. Slicing goes quickly if you use a chef's knife and just run through the pieces. Watch a cooking show for the technique. In fact, I gleaned all of this from various cooking shows.



Incidentally, it's wise to position the fingers of your non-knife hand, the one holding the apple, so that the knuckles face the knife rather than the finger ends. I have done it wrong in this photo, but I'm careful.

Another tip from cooking shows: use a paper towel, piece of plastic, bowl or something else for the scraps. Then you can dump it all later - preferably into your composter.



It's a lot faster than running to the wastebasket with every handful of scraps.

Southwest Vegan Enchiladas

Ingredients:

* 1 package of tortillas (corn or flour, whatever you like. I prefer corn.)
* 1 can of vegan baked beans
* 1 large jar of salsa (I like mild or medium southwest style.)
* 1/2 bag of frozen veggies (southwest mix or corn and peppers)
* 1-2 cups of shredded vegan cheese (I like Monterey Jack flavor)

Preparation:

Mix beans, veggies, lots of salsa, and most of the cheese in a bowl. Pour some salsa into your baking dish (I like a rectangular casserole dish). Arrange your tortillas sort of like tacos opening upwards. If you have a round baking dish or just a few tortillas, make a pie instead by lying the tortillas flat on the bottom of the dish. Scoop your bean and veggie mix into the tortillas (or on top of them if making an enchilada pie). Then roll up the tortillas and dump more salsa on top (or layer again with tortillas if making a pie, then spread salsa over them). Spread the salsa around with a spoon or rubber spatula so all the tortillas are smothered in salsa.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 25 minutes.

Then sprinkle a little more cheese on top and bake another five minutes or until cheese is melted.

You can serve it with vegan sour cream, guacamole, rice and beans, or alone. It's a yummy, easy meal that almost everyone enjoys.

Tofu, Quinoa, Artichoke

The tofu: I took a 16 ounce chunk of tofu and cut it up into 6 large slices. I marinaded it in teriyaki sauce and then stuck it in the oven at 350- 400 degrees F on a greased baking tray for 30 minutes. (You can broil it too to get a crispier texture.)

The quinoa: I put half a cup of dry quinoa in the rice maker with 1 cup of water and turned the rice maker on. Quinoa is incredibly easy to cook, you can make it like rice or polenta. It's super high in protein and good for you; it's basically a vegan power food.

The artichoke: I cut off the stem, the leaf tops, and the outer leaves of an artichoke. Then I boiled it for 30 minutes (you can steam it instead), cut it in half, scooped out the fuzzy stuff and dropped a dollop of margarine or vegan mayonnaise inside.

Vegan Groceries Online

Shopping for groceries on Amazon sounds weird, but it's definitely easy and convenient. Here are some vegan selections:

A Work in Progress: Roasted vegetables en croute

The real cook will test and retest, work on a recipe until it's just right, and only then present it to the world. But I'm not a real cook. I want to share the steps along the way to the finished product. The trials that maybe aren't perfect.

I read a review of a restaurant recently that noted one of the specialities: roasted vegetables and cheese layered on top of an olive tapenade, wrapped in a flaky puff pastry. I thought I could come up with my own version. This is my first try. I'll describe what I did, how it came out, what I learned. If you have comments or suggestions I'd love to hear them!

I used:

puff pastry - frozen
vegetables: in this case carrots, onions, zucchini, portabello mushrooms, green bell pepper
olive oil for roasting veggies
seasonings for veggies: rosemary, parsley, oregano
tapenade: in this case green olive

First, I roasted the veggies. I cut them into strips, placed them in a casserole dish along with sprinklings of olive oil and the seasonings, and covered the dish. I roasted them in a 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes. When it looked like they were about done, I took off the casserole top and let the veggies brown up a bit and let the steam escape, about ten minutes.

Wonderful alternative: Trader Joe's (and some other markets) offers roasted vegetables in a package, all ready for you!

I just guessed at amounts. I think, though, that the total bulk of one bell pepper, two carrots, two largish portabellos, and a medium onion is about right for this dish. More on that later.

When roasted my veggies looked like this:



When done, I let them sit a while to cool down.

After I put the veggies in the oven I took out the puff pastry to defrost. I took one sheet out of the package.



When it was defrosted (40 minutes) I rolled it out a bit.





I fit the pastry into my pan, having determined how much to roll it out by how large the pan was.



Then I started layering. I used up what was left in my jar of tapenade.





It is spread rather thinly there. Then I attempted to layer by color:





Some veggies did not cover.



I finished with the scrapings of onion and bits.



I folded one side of the crust over and the other on top of that, and pinched it to the side. On top, then, were two layers of puff pastry.



I baked it at 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes, until puffed and golden.



I let it cool a little and then sliced into it.



Not bad but there were issues. Here is what I learned:

* Use more tapenade, make a real layer of it. I couldn't even taste it.
* Cut the veggies into smaller pieces and cook enough of each color to make a full layer. When I bit into my piece it was not as neat as we might like. I think smaller pieces would make it more layered, it would look more elegant, and it would "eat better".
* Don't overlap the crust. I found that two layers had some trouble. Both did not puff fully.
* Use a cookie sheet or other large pan with lips (to catch any spills or oil). I think this will allow it to blossom and will take full advantage of all of the pastry.

I also believe that this is the type dish that does well served at room temperature, could be made in little packets rather than in one big layered dish, and could even be the basis for an alternative Cornish pasty. I want to explore those alternatives in the future, and when I do you'll be sure to hear about it.