Your Vegan Mom

Super Easy Homemade Baked Applesauce

I am surrounded by apples.  The preschool just completed their fall fundraiser apple sale and shelves and drawers and bowls are now spilling over with fragrant red and yellow fruit.

And I just finished reading The Orchard by Theresa Weir.  Have you read it?  It's both a memoir of her time living on an apple farm in Henderson County, Illinois in the seventies and eighties and a parable of the dangers of conventional farming.  She experiences firsthand the effects that pesticides and other farm chemicals have on the families whose livelihood is raising our food.  The book reads like chick lit - it's a quick, easy read - there's romance - but at the same time, it makes real what for many is just a vague idea - that there is a human cost to that piece of cheap flawless fruit in the grocery store that is far greater than what we are paying.  

And then my weekly produce box showed up, with more apples.  

So when I came across a recipe I wanted to try that called for applesauce, I thought, there is no flipping way that I am buying a jar of flipping applesauce. 

And I love Amelia Saltsman's technique for making it at home.  You cut the apples in half, roast them, and then scrape out the soft flesh.  It could not be easier.  She suggests you roast the apples with thyme and use a smidgen of calvados or cider to deglaze the pan, and that makes me want to throw a Hannukah party for grown-ups.  But my day to day applesauce needs are for the 2 to 5 year old set and their simple palates.  I did throw a few beautiful yellow pears into the mix that had recently fallen prey to a dangerous game of fridge jenga, and they added a nice floral sweetness to the sauce.  Also, it's important to note - if you use a red variety of apple, your sauce will blush a beautiful rosy pink.  That color, and the smell of roasting apples filling your house, just cannot be bought in a jar at Trader Joe's.  

Pancake Taco

Start with Paul's Buttermilk Pancakes.

In a small bowl, stir together some almond butter and maple syrup with a fork.

Spread a big dollop of the sweet almond butter onto each pancake.

Arrange slices of fruit on one half - pears or peaches or raspberries or whatever you have are all nice.

Fold in half and devour.  

Fig Tart

Our best pals are in town, and I am beside-myself excited.  I made a tart this morning to celebrate - my favorite tart filled with my best pal's favorite fruit.

I remember a few years ago in the LA Times food section, Russ Parsons talking about how easy it is to make frangipane (that puffy almond-y paste) in the food processor, and when I looked at the recipe I realized that it would totally work with flax-y goop in place of the egg, but it took me until now to actually try it.

It works.  Beautifully.

So, here's Your Tuesday Tip:

Any vegan can tell you that 1 tablespoon flax meal + 3 tablespoons water = 1 flax egg, which works well in most baked goods - cookies and muffins and pancakes and such.  If you let it sit for about 5 minutes and then whisk it up, you will see that it has created an egg-like gel that will work as a binder. 

But you should also know, that if you need to replace an egg yolk, in say a sweet tart dough, you can just cut the water in half.  So 1 tablespoon flax meal + 1 1/2 tablespoons water = 1 flax egg yolk.

Armed with flax eggs and vegan butter, a half dozen figs and a bag of almond meal from Trader Joe's, you have everything you need to veganify and fig-ify, Dorie Greenspan's excellent tart recipe.  

Coconut Mashed Sweet Potatoes and More Thanksgiving Possibilities

Three weeks ago, my pal came over to bake.  Armed with a new vegan boulangerie cookbook, we set off on the quixotic task of making egg-white-free macarons.  Still not possible.  But over the course of our disappointing (and expensive) kitchen mishap, we had time to catch up and share the details of the meals we'd eaten recently.  She told me about the noodles she loved at Shojin and the pre-Thanksgiving feast she enjoyed at Madeleine Bistro.  I pumped her for details.  She obliged.  And I have not been able to shake the idea for this side dish since.  Much like how other people get songs stuck in their head, and how the German word for breakfast was stuck there for the weeks previous, I have found myself, for the past 21 days, mentally stuck on the idea of coconut mashed sweet potatoes.  

On Tuesday I finally did something about it.  With plenty of time to think it through, here was the plan - mashed potatoes - but with sweet potatoes in lieu of russets, coconut butter for the fat, coconut milk for the creamy liquid, season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg.  

But I never got around to it.  Because the first thing I do when I'm hitting the kitchen without a previously proven recipe is to google it.  No point reinventing the mashed-sweet-potato-wheel.  

Especially when Eating Well already published a perfect recipe 4 years ago that turns out to be a traditional Hawaiian dish called piele (Really?  I can find no outside confirmation of this.  I hope I'm not just perpetuating internet misinformation.  But in slightly related news, if you're interested, my Hawaiian dictionary does say that pelena means crackers, piku is fig, and piki is the word for both beet and peach.)  

Coconut Mashed Sweet Potatoes
adapted from Eating Well magazine

• 3 pounds sweet potatoes (or 6 medium - look for ones that are similar in size and shape for even cooking)
• 1 1/2 cups coconut milk (light will totally work, and bonus they sell it at Trader Joe's)
• 2 tablespoons grated ginger
• 1 teaspoon salt

Heat the oven to 425.  Wash your sweet potatoes and poke them a few times with a sharp knife.  Place in a baking dish and roast until soft, about an hour. 

When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, slip off their now loose skins, place in large bowl with the coconut milk, grated ginger, and salt, and mash.  

That's it.  

But I'll add that you might enjoy them with a lentil pot pie (Thank you Julia!) and some simple roasted brussels sprouts:

And homemade jellied cranberry sauce.  (Why didn't anyone tell me how easy it is to make jellied cranberry sauce!?  Well you did, Canal House Cooking, and I thank you.)

As does my Thanksgiving recipe taster.  (He was wild for the cranberries and sweet potatoes, not so much the brussels sprouts or lentil pie.  Desmond snacked on the salty, crunchy brussels sprouts while he watched Kipper and I finished making dinner.  He was not hip to the pie on its own, but when I mixed in some sweet potatoes, he polished it off.)

 And you, what are you making?

Blueberry Upside Down Breakfast Cake

 
(Hey!  This picture is totally not representative.  I'm going to fix it asap.  Your fruit will sit on top like a traditional upside down cake.)

On our first day of vacation, early in the day, before I had bought groceries, or even finished my first cup of coffee, I foraged through our borrowed kitchen looking for something I could whip up for breakfast.  There were some basics.  I found cornmeal and a small sack of flour and some baking powder that expired in 1993.  Delving deeper I found a relatively fresh canister that was somewhat more reasonably dated 2008.  This could get us cornbread.

But I also had a beautiful pint of blueberries that had joined us somewhere along the journey.  And I had a feeling that those berries could turn that simple cornbread into vacation breakfast - an easy to prepare treat worthy of a sunny porch and cool salty air and freedom from responsibility (and a really good cup of coffee). 

Blueberry Upside Down Breakfast Cake

• 2 cups blueberries or mixed berries
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons non-dairy butter
• 1 tablespoon flax meal
  
• 3 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1 cup, minus 2 tablespoons non-dairy milk
• 1 cup white whole wheat flour (or all-purpose if you don't have it)
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1/2 cup unbleached sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/3 cup canola oil (or other mild cooking oil)

1. Cream together butter and sugar and spread evenly over the bottom of a 9-inch round cake pan.
2. Arrange berries over butter and sugar.
3. In a small bowl, mix together flax meal and water.  Set aside to thicken. 
4. Place lemon juice and zest into a glass measuring cup.  Add soy milk to make 1 cup.  This lemony soy milk will curdle and thicken.  Leave it to do its thing, but stir before adding to the dry ingredients. 
5. Position a rack in the middle of the oven and heat to 400.  
6. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.
7. Make a well in the center and add the flax mixture, oil, and lemony milk.
8. Stir to combine. 
9. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 20 - 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, and the top is a rich golden hue with cracked edges.  
10. Immediately invert onto a plate before cooling.