Richard Blais's Potato Linguine Veganized

Serious Eats had a recipe for Richard Blais's (top chef) Potato Linguine with Conch and White Wine.  click here

No Conch here- but there is white wine and some briny black olives with Herbes de provence. And garlic toasted panko crumbs. Amazingly awesome!

I am already thinking of other combinations - loaded potato linguine, chickpea and black pepper, picatta linguine.......What combination would you make? 

Another Holiday

Wow, time flies. I didn't realize Thanksgiving was the last post and now here it's Easter!
Menu included black olive biscotti, portobello carpaccio, garlic smashed potatoes and green beans with crispy shallots and roasted rainbow carrots. 

Dessert was carrot cake minis and Roberto Martin's Black Beast. (pics to follow).

The plate:

 The table:

Polenta, Sausage and Mushroom Stuffing

This stuffing is from Nava Atlas' Vegan Holiday Kitchen 

I doubled the amount of polenta, and I wanted crispy pieces, so I pan fried the additional polenta instead of oven roasting. And of course I had to change the seasonings a little.

Here is half of the polenta, mixed with mushrooms, Field Roast Italian "sausage", celery and red onion.

 After mixing it all together, it gets roasted again. Then put into a large serving bowl and sprinkled with toasted pine nuts.

 Look at that beautiful crispy "sausage"!

 

Sundried Tomato Quinotto

I heard you could cook any grain in the risotto style - dry saute then keep adding broth until done- so that's what I did with quinoa. It turned out great  - plus you could tell when the quinoa was done by the little curly q's they have when they open up. 

Not really a recipe, but here's what I did:

 I had a jar of this sundried tomato paste that I thought would be good to mix in. First I sauteed a few cloves of garlic and some shallot in a tiny bit of olive oil. Then I added dry quinoa (about 2 cups) to the pan. It's a large flat non stick pan with high enough sides that everything stays in the pan - not all over the stove.  Stir the dry quinoa for a few minutes until it gets toasty - I also added about 1 T Earth Balance so it wouldn't burn.

When toasted, I added a little less than a cup of white wine and stirred some more. Then you add veg broth (2 or 3 cups?) one ladle at a time until all is absorbed and quinoa is done. About 20 minutes or so. The quinoa didn't absorb the same way as rice, but it was fine in the end. Once the quinoa was cooked, I stirred in the jar of tomato paste and added some fresh chopped basil. A little salt and pepper. 

Serve either by itself

Or top with some balls. They really went well together.

These were "My Balls" from the Sexy Vegan cookbook. Made with walnuts and tempeh - Recipe here

I am still looking for the best balls. Could it be these? More balls 

I had some delicious balls last weekend made by a local restaurant. I don't have the recipe but I know they are made with mushrooms and potato! Sounds like I will be playing around with more balls soon.

Sexy Vegan Balls -tasty!

No, not those kind of balls! Really? It's a food blog. Not that they couldn't be tasty.....

But no, I mean these- 

 This recipe is "my balls" from the Sexy Vegan cookbook. They sounded really good so I doubled the recipe. And they were better today than when I baked them last night. Tasty, as I said. But I'm still searching for the ultimate vegan balls. 

More on that tomorrow along with Sundried Tomato Quinotto recipe I've had in my head for a while and finally got around to making. 

Pom!

On sale at a local market - huge pomegranates! Didn't know how long they would last, so I cut it up and took out all the seeds:

 Don't they look like jewels?

I figure if they keep like this at Trader Joe's, they should last til the end of the week. 

(unless I eat'em all first).

Mofo Chopped Challenge- Brunch!

The Challenge: brunch!

The basket ingredients: 

 Butternut squash, popcorn, rosemary and apricot preserves.

The Result: 

 Rosemary and Popcorn Flour Socca Brunch Sandwich with Apricot Glazed Tempeh

Here's what I did:

 First I popped the corn in a small amount of olive oil. I added a sprig of rosemary to infuse the flavor a bit. Then I put the popped corn in the vitamix to make "flour".

 It was very fluffy but I used half popcorn flour and half quinoa flake "flour" because it was too fluffy to work on it's own. I got the idea for tarts here: K's Veg Recipes. I mixed up the flours with salt, chopped rosemary, almond milk, apple cider vinegar, and water. I forgot the oil- but it still worked.

 Tofu egg slice from this blog: weeklyveganmenu

 

Glazed tempeh - apricot preserves, Braggs, and a dash of liquid smoke. Fried in nonstick pan and added a little water to deglaze. This was sooo good! 

  I roasted the squash in the oven, but it wasn't a sweet squash- in fact it was more yellow than orange. So after they came out of the oven, I sauteed with some maple syrup.

Almost ready to put together- the sauce in the middle is hummus, sun dried tomato paste and a tiny tiny spoonful of Veganaise. 

Assembled! Socca, sauce, tofu egg, butternut squash, glazed tempeh, arugula and socca top.

 

Delicious!