Your Vegan Mom

Leftovers: The Sandwich

 

Take one slice of really good bread.  Slather it with vegenaise.  Pile on slices of tofurkey roast.  Mound a bit of stuffing on top. 

Take another slice of really good bread.  Slather it with vegenaise.  Mash on about a half a slice of jellied cranberry sauce.  Carefully flip this onto the tofurkey half.  Eat.  

How are you enjoying your leftovers?

The Unturkey Hotline... is not so open.

 

 I've got my game pants and clean apron on.  The baby's happily gurgling in his kitchen helper seat.  Paul packed Desmond off to the indoor playground for a day of fun.  And I am ready for perhaps my favorite holiday - Cook-All-Day-for-Thanksgiving.  

Unfortunately the comments here have been buggy for several days now, and continue to be so.  I would hate for you to type up your burning kitchen question only for it not to go through, so there will be no unturkey hotline this year.  I'm sorry.  I so enjoyed your company last year.  

Today I'm thankful for you.  

    

12 Days of Thanksgiving: Mashed Potatoes

 

Do you know this already?  Mashed potatoes aren't hard.  Really, the only labor intensive bit is peeling the potatoes.  So as far as I see it, you have two options.  1) Don't do it.  Especially if you use yukon golds that have a relatively delicate skin, and wonderfully buttery flesh, I don't mind the skin in there at all.  Or 2)Get somebody else to do it.  If it's just me in the kitchen on any given Tuesday, I'll leave the skins on, but if it's one of them big ol' family holidays with a whole bunch of idle hands, well then heck, get somebody peeling, and you can have smooth holiday potatoes.  

Basic Mashed Potatoes

serves 4

• 1 1/2 pounds potatoes (I really like mashed yukon golds, but russets are the classic mashing potato.) 
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1 - 2 tablespoons vegan butter
• salt to taste

Scrub the potatoes clean, and dice them into about 1-inch chunks.  (Or if you insist, peel them first.)  Put them in a saucepan (or a big old pot if you're multiplying and cooking for a crowd).  Cover them with cold water by an inch or two.  Bring them to a boil.  Turn down the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until a fork slips effortlessly into one of your chunks.  Drain.  Heat the milk and butter in a glass measuring cup in the microwave until the butter is melted.  Return the potatoes to the pan.  Toss them around on the heat to dry them out.  Drizzle in the hot milk and butter, and mash with a potato masher.  You might not need all of the milk and butter, stop when you're happy with the texture.  Season with salt to taste. 

12 Days of Thanksgiving: The Quick-Style Feast

Say you're not the sort of person that has spent months pouring over food magazines, cookbooks, and blogs deciding on the perfect Thanksgiving recipes.  Say you haven't been using your free time this past month polishing silver and labeling serving dishes.  You probably aren't hosting a big group.  Maybe it's just you, or you two, or at most you and three pals.  Do you have a couple hours?  You can still have a Thanksgiving feast.  You can even have pie.  Here's the plan:  

1. Start with the pie.  It will take you 5 - 10 minutes to get Susan V's crustless pumpkin pie in the oven.  I do not recommend fat free recipes lightly.  If this weren't objectively delicious, we would not be having this discussion.  (But don't use sweet rice flour.  All-purpose will be just fine if you don't have regular rice flour.) 
2. With your pie in the oven, it's time to defrost your Tofurky.  I know the package says that you're screwed.  That you should have planned ahead.  But that's just not true.  Fill a bowl with hot water.  Put your plastic-wrapped roast in a second plastic bag (So it will be water-proof).  Let it sit in the hot water while your pie bakes.  
3. Prepare your vegetables.  You're going to roast them with your tofurky.  They'll be in the oven for almost an hour and a half, so cut them into biggish chunks.  For Desmond, Paul, and I, I used a couple russet potatoes, a sweet potato, an onion, and a dozen brussels sprouts.  The brussels sprouts wouldn't fit in the pan, so I cooked them seperately.  Then, I figured that as long as I was cooking them seperately, I'd go ahead and do them a tiny bit different.  I tossed them with olive oil, salt, and three whole cloves of garlic.  So you do that too if you want, or if they'll all fit in your tofurky pan, just set them all aside now to nestle around your roast when the time comes.
4. Change the tofurky defrosting water periodically - keep it hot.  
5. Whisk together whatever you're going to use to baste your tofurky - I like the olive oil, soy sauce, and sage combo. 
6. When the pie's almost done, take your tofurky out of the plastic covering, put it into the roasting dish, surround it with your vegetables, and pour over half of your basting liquid.
7. Take the pie out of the oven and put the tofurky and vegetables in.
8. Set your timer.  You have an hour and fifteen minutes to relax, set the table, open up the cranberry sauce (We're doing this quick-style, canned cranberry will be just fine), sit on the couch and have an aperitif, heat up the gravy, play a round of scrabble, write a blog entry.  Actually this super-relaxed, easy-to-prepare feast is seriously sounding like the way to go.  

Bon appetit!

Your quick-style shopping list:

• tofurky roast with gravy (They're $9.99 at Trader Joe's.  Oh and they're already defrosted there, I think.)
• 1 can cranberry sauce (I prefer jellied.)
• Some good roasting vegetables, but this is also a good chance to clean out the fridge and pantry.  Use what you have.  Or buy whatever root vegetables strike your fancy.  And a little green is nice too.  Green beans and brussels sprouts both roast very nicely.  
• 1 15-oz. can of pumpkin
• a bottle of wine would be nice
• check on some pantry staples: soy sauce, olive oil, sage, corn starch, egg replacer, soy milk, pumpkin pie type spices

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.