Your Vegan Mom

Roasted Cauliflower

 

Totally addicting bar snack or nutritious side dish?  You decide.  I am completely fine with it being both.  Incidentally, Desmond loves this as much as Paul and I do.  We tend to eat it with our fingers before dinner.   

Roasted Cauliflower

• 1 medium head cauliflower
• about 2 tablespoons canola oil
• about 1/2 teaspoon garam masala
• about 1/2 teaspoon salt
• about 1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro (optional)

Heat the oven to 400.  Trim the cauliflower into medium florets.  Spread out on a rimmed baking sheet.  Drizzle with oil.  Sprinkle with garam masala and salt.  Mix it around with a spatula to evenly distribute the seasonings.  Roast for about 45 minutes, until well browned in spots.  Toss with fresh cilantro if you like - it looks pretty and adds a nice fresh note, but it is equally delicious without.    

Sun-dried Tomato Cashew Cheese Spread

 

I'm going to have to make this quick.  Paul went back to work yesterday, so it's just me and these two maniacs.  I know the flip side of that statement is that I am pretty freakin' lucky to have had him at home for the first three and half months of Felix's life.  But now...now I'm going to have to relearn how to live.  On my own.  Without my partner, dish washer, diaper changer, toddler entertainer, and the only member of our household not prone to breaking into dramatic fits of crying.   

Snacks will be essential.  I always try to have some kind of spread in the fridge to dip crackers in or smear on bread when there isn't time to otherwise feed myself.  I mentioned this cashew-yogurt cheese a few months back, but it bears repeating.  With four ingredients in the base recipe, about 5 minutes of prep time, innumerable variations, and rich, delicious flavor, I think it deserves to be as trite as hummus in the snacking lexicon.  Make it so.  

Also, while I eat it straight out of the repurposed yogurt container in the fridge, it would be easily fancied up by, you know, putting it in a bowl, and maybe even busting out that tiny cheese knife that you never use.  You could add a garnish of chopped basil and call it a chiffonade.  Surround it with some fancy crackers or toasted slices of baguette and your New Years Eve cocktail soiree is served.  

Sun-dried Tomato Cashew Cheese* 

• 3/4 cup raw cashew pieces
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• scant 3/4 cup plain soy yogurt (or 1 6-oz. container)
• 1 clove garlic
• about 6 small sun-dried tomatoes

In the bowl of your food processor, grind the cashews finely.  Add the other ingredients, reserving a couple pieces of the tomato, and process until smooth.  Add the rest of the tomato and process again to leave some identifying chewy red bits.   

You can serve right away, or chill first.  This spread will thicken up in the fridge.  

Happy New Year!  

*Thank you Mezzetta for the sun-dried tomatoes and other party snack supplies!  

12 Days of Thanksgiving: Sweet Potato Puffs

My mother-in-law is famous for her bourbon yams.  Amongst the Bierys, the boozy sweet marshmallow topped sweet potato casserole just says Thanksgiving.  

The Jaconis don't have a requisite sweet potato dish.  (My mom can't have Thanksgiving without sweet pickles and olives.)  But one year, circa 1985, my mom made a casserole topped with corn flakes and pecans that I've been thinking about ever since.  She, on the other hand, has no memory of this and cannot reproduce the recipe.  

Fortunately, it finally occurred to me last week to turn to the Internet.  And now I know that everybody makes a corn flake and pecan topped sweet potato casserole.  There are 33 variations on this cooking site alone.  

So armed with about 52 slightly different recipes, I set about to marry the two family casseroles.  I took the bourbon from Cecile's dish and added the corn flakes and pecans from my mom's mythical casserole, cut way back on the sugar that they both called for, and wound up with a thoroughly ho-hum amalgam of the two.

Then I scrapped the whole idea, considered not having any sweet potatoes at all.  Perhaps ever again.  (Though I'm already thinking about a simple savory gratin for next year.  Creamy.  With thyme.  And maybe roasted garlic?)

But in my search for the perfect casserole, I came across a perfectly kooky dish that is just such an unlikely marriage of our two family traditions, that I couldn't pass it up.  

Sweet Potato Balls (in Mrs. Olive Brown's recipe from Talk About Good!  The cookbook of the Junior League of Lafayette, Lousiana) or Sweet Potato Puffs (according Mary Birchard of the La Canada Presbyterian Church Cruiser Club).  They are essentially the same recipe - a ball of sweet potato puree with a marshmallow smooshed inside and the whole thing coated in corn flakes.  

Perfect.  And I seriously hope that this is not what my boys pine for.  

Sweet Potato Puffs

Makes 12 puffs

• 1 cup sweet potato puree
• 2 tablespoons vegan butter
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
• 1 tablespoon soy milk
• 1/4 cup flour
• a pinch of nutmeg
• 6 marshmallows, cut in half (You can buy Dandies at Locali.)
• about 1 cup crushed corn flakes

Cream together the butter, sugar, corn starch, and soy milk.  Add the sweet potato puree, flour, and nutmeg.  Beat until well combined.  Chill for about an hour.  

Heat the oven to 450 and grease a baking sheet.  Place the crushed corn flakes on a plate.  Spoon about a tablespoon of the sweet potato mixture out onto the corn flakes.  Press a marshmallow half into the center of the sweet potato blob.  Gently scootch some of the surrounding corn flakes up the sides of the sweet potato blob, push the marshmallow down a little more, and scootch the corn flake covered sweet potato to cover the top. You should now have a nice little ball of corn flake covered sweet potato with a marshmallow hidden in the middle.  Place on the prepared cookie sheet and repeat with rest of the ingredients.  Spray the tops with a quick mist of cooking spray, and bake for 10 minutes.  

Today, obviously, I'm thankful for the moms.  

Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Treats

Desmond is 2 years 8 months.  He has an imaginary friend.  Or five.  Five baby monsters.  He feeds them and bathes them and makes sure they take naps.  Last night he bought them toys from the toy store (the wicker basket in the living room) and then brought them outside to play.  

He also likes to build robots (or robops) from the blocks that we made him for Christmas (cereal boxes and whatnot, paper mached with newspaper, and painted with acrylic paints, which we really should have sealed with something, but we're not quite as crafty as we aspire to be, and also I think we made all of these blocks between the hours of bedtime and midnight on Christmas Eve).  He constructs these towering creatures, gives them a kiss, then knocks them down.  Paul calls it the kiss of doom.  I have no idea where this game came from, but I blame the boy's father.  

His language has exploded in the last couple months.  Much to the grandparents' and occasional strangers' concern, he really wasn't saying much before then.  Yesterday in the car he was practicing some recent acquisitions.  I could hear from the back seat this seemingly unrelated list:  caulking gun, stapler, peach tart, transformer.  Those Transformers, man.  He got ahold of the Toys R Us ad from the Sunday paper, and now he wants it read to him 24 hours a day.  I just can't find the narrative excitement, in "fast action battlers or deluxe figures, sale 9.99 each," but he never gets tired of it.  We had no idea that this happened so early.  We don't even have a TV.  

And somewhere he picked up, "right now," as in "I want rice crispy treats, right now."  Though we're working on the manners, with the sentiment, I completely agree.  

And this recipe is so, so easy, that those two-year-old cravings inside of you can pretty much be satisfied.  This is a classic recipe.  If your mom didn't make these for you as a kid, I bet one of the neighborhood moms did.  But with corn syrup.  And white sugar.  I like to pretend that these are moderately nutritious as far as sweet treats go, but you'll probably want to eat the whole pan, and then I guarantee you won't feel like you've been eating health food.  Not that I know this from experience or anything.  But do consider yourself warned.

Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Treats  
6 c. crisp rice cereal (I like the Erewhon brand Crispy Brown Rice.) 
1 c. brown rice syrup 
1 c. sugar (when I say sugar, I'm always talking about the unrefined stuff, that you can find labeled as evaporated cane juice.  I know we haven't talked about this in a while)
1 t. dark molasses (or you can just sub 1 c. of brown sugar for the molasses and sugar)
1 c. peanut butterpinch of salt (if your peanut butter's not salted, then add another couple pinches)

Lightly grease a 9 by 12 inch baking dish.  Pour cereal into a large bowl.  In a sauce pan over medium heat, stir together the sugar, brown rice syrup, and molasses until just melted and beginning to bubble.  Stir in the peanut butter and salt and return to a boil.  Pour hot peanut butter mixture over cereal and stir to combine.  Press into prepared baking dish.  Let cool for about 5 to 10 minutes.  Cut into squares.  You can eat them at this point or let them cool completely.  Do not chill.  

 

(Aren't my new curtains cute?)

Crock Cheese

This recipe came about as an excuse to eat more bread.  My pal, Vegyogini, gave me a copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day for my birthday a few weeks back, and I have grown annoyingly evangelical about it.  I'm sure you've heard, or already know first hand, how brilliant this book is, but here's the thing.  The real secret to bread making, like most things, is just doing it, over and over, until you're really good at it.  This book helps you fit bread making into your daily life, holds your hand while you do it, and makes you an expert.  I am so flippin' pleased with the bread that has been coming out of my kitchen.  (Which I'm sure you've heard if you have been unfortunate enough to have seen me recently.  Also, sorry if I didn't return your email/call/pleasant greeting - I was busy baking.)  

So while I really like nut butters and jam and earth balance and mashed avocado with a pinch of salt and maybe a squeeze of lemon juice, I was ready for something else to spread.  Something that merited my delicious homemade bread and rivaled its simplicity.  This is it.  

 Cashew Chive Cheese Spread

The rich, creamy yogurt-cashew base is endlessly malleable.  You can easily adapt this recipe to your favorite combination of herbs and spices, but I really like the fresh chives here.  And also, I happen to have two big pots of them on my back porch.  Use what you have or what you like.  Oh, it's also good on crackers.  

3/4 c. raw cashew pieces
scant 3/4 c. (or one 6 oz. container) plain yogurt 
1/4 c. nutritional yeast
1/2 t. salt
about 2 t. minced chives

In the bowl of a food processor, grind the cashews to a rough powder.  Add the nutritional yeast and salt and pulse once more to combine the dry ingredients.  Add the yogurt and process until smooth and creamy.  Add the chives (or other herbs) and pulse once more to combine.  

Serve at once or chill overnight for a slightly firmer texture.  This keeps well in the fridge for several days.

Makes about 1 1/4 cups of spread.