(thursday) food round-up

Hi everyone and welcome to the weekly food round-up. This week, it comes to you on Thursday instead of Friday, because this is going to be a very busy weekend. On Friday, I'm headed to New York City, and then on Saturday, I'm headed to Boston for VegFest! I hope to have good stories and photos from both trips to post for you this weekend.

With the exception of one or two, most of our meals this week came from an intensive bout of batch cooking that we did on Sunday. This allowed us to eat well while having an extremely busy week.

However, the week started off on this lovely note:

Daiku has perfected a Moussaka recipe filled with good stuff (eggplants, mushrooms, tomatoes) without the bad stuff (uh, lamb). We ate this decadent yet surprisingly healthy dish for dinner with an arugula salad topped with a orange-balsamic glaze and a hearty Shiraz wine.

This dish is incredibly easy to make, here is the recipe:

Daiku's Vegan Moussaka: (4 large servings)

Ingredients:

• one medium eggplant, cut into 1/2" slices
  
• 1.5-2 C. your favorite tomato sauce
• 1 cup mushrooms of choice, sliced (we used cremini)
  
• 3/4 C. whole wheat bread crumbs
• salt and pepper to taste
  

1 C. Bechamel Sauce:

• 2 TB Earth Balance margarine (or vegan non-hydrogenated margarine of choice)
• 2 TB flour
• soymilk as needed
• salt to taste
  

Instructions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Slice your eggplants into 1/2 inch slices and sprinkle with salt. Have your eggplant, mushrooms, tomato sauce, and bread crumbs ready to assemble before you make the Bechamel sauce. To make the sauce, melt margarine in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan on medium heat. Carefully add the flour and whisk until a light roux has been created. Carefully add soymilk, stirring constantly until mixture comes to a soft boil. Add more soymilk gradually until you have achieved a thick but pourable consistency. To thicken, continue to heat, to thin out, add a bit more soymilk. Salt to taste.

To assemble Moussaka, spread a small amount of tomato sauce on the bottom of a medium casserole dish. Follow with a layer of eggplant (salt rinsed off and patted dry), then another layer of tomato sauce. Top with mushrooms and about 1/3 of your bechamel sauce. Repeat, starting with the eggplant, until you have assembled all of your ingredients. End with remaining tomato and bechamel sauces, and top with bread crumbs. Salt and pepper to taste.

Bake for 55-65 minutes until the top is brown, the sides are bubbly, and the eggplant is tender. This is a flexible recipe, sometimes we splash on a little red wine before adding the final layer of sauce. Enjoy!

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The next night, I made a tofu egg salad with: firm tofu, chopped celery, fresh dill, vegannaise, pickles, onions, and spices.

We had this for a smorgasboard-type supper with sliced baguettes, olives, vegetables, grapes, and some more red wine. (On the right, you can see that Daiku also had some cheese: a hunk of Saint Nectaire, a French cheese that is so stinky, even our cats won't come near it!)

Over the weekend, we picked some leeks from our garden.

They had not thrived in our climate (some were smaller than scallions!), but they were too nice to let go to waste.

The first plan was to make a Vichyssoise, a cold leek and potato soup. However, since we were a bit low on potatoes, and still had a variety of squash from the previous week, we decided to make ... Squashyssoise. We roasted a butternut squash in the oven while makeing a soup base with the leeks, homemade leek and vegetable stock, carrots, and spices. (I added a hint of cinnamon, because I love the squash/cinnamon combo). We blended the squash and the soup together and made enough soup for several servings. This soup was good whether served warm or cold.

What are some other things we made in large batches?

New Orleans Red Beans + Rice:

Thanks to his years of living in New Orleans, Daiku has a large repertoire of Cajun/Creole recipes. Unlike most other ones, this one is vegan to start out with, and doesn't need to be modified in any way. The secret is to cook the beans for a long time (we had them on the stove for over 8 hours while we cooked other things) so that their proteins break down and you get the tell-tale "gravy" that makes this style of red beans so distinctive.

Dilled Potato Salad with Green Beans:

I combined roasted red potatoes with steamed green beans, chopped onion and celery, fresh dill, and a dressing of vegannaise, Dijon and yellow mustards, apple cider vinegar, and a dash of olive oil. I just love potato salads of all kinds, and this one absorbed the flavors really well because the ingredients were warm.

2 more batches of pesto:

Several people had blogged about making pesto with pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and so I had to try that! Since our basil plant has survived its move inside the house, I took advantage of it to make and freeze 2 batches of pesto for the long winter, when we will be desparate for a taste of anything green! Here are the pine nuts and the pepitas toasting.

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The Battle of the Roasted Vegetables:

Usually, Daiku and I work pretty harmoniously in the kitchen, but every once in a while, we just butt heads. One night, we wanted to roast some vegetables for dinner, but we couldn't decide which ones to make or how to make them. We finally decided to make two separate batches, each roasting our veggies just the way we wanted. Bazu's sweet potatoes had olive oil, pepper, cinnamon, jerk seasoning, and just a touch of brown sugar. Daiku's brussels sprouts had olive oil, raisins and some fried shallots. They ended up going pretty well together.

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Green Tomato Update

Thank you so much to everyone who gave us suggestions and sent us links about what to do with our green tomatoes. We used your ideas for quite a few things.

Some of the green tomatoes ended up ripening:

We made some into fried green tomato sandwiches. I can not believe that I had never eaten this amazing delicacy before! Tart-sweet green tomatoes breaded with cornmeal, fried up and eaten on sliced bread with nothing but a touch of vegannaise... so dreamy.

Shelly had suggested the dill green tomato pickle recipe from the Ball Blue book, which we followed to pickle some of the tomatoes. Well... we didn't actually pickle, since we don't have a canner and don't really know what we're doing. We followed the recipe and put them in jars and then... stuck them in the fridge. They smelled so good- can't wait to try them! We modified the recipe (which called for fresh dill, bay leaves, and garlic) in some of the jars by experimenting with adding peppercorns, peppers, and celery seeds.

We still have some green tomatoes left! These last babies might go into a green tomatoe salsa of some sort.

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Ending with a cliffhanger...

Guess what I received in the mail...

And I've already gone out and bought a ridiculous amount of paraphernalia...

Stay tuned in future food round-ups for a slightly rounder and happier Bazu to bring you creations from... [with apologies to Tania for copying her picture idea]

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(thursday) food round-up