Holy Basil, Batman!

So can I just say: the best thing about the encroaching spring is, hands down, the sudden cheapness and abundance of fresh basil at the market. Holy crap.

After having bought a large bunch on Friday morning, I realized that perhaps my absolute favorite smell in the whole wide world is, in fact, the smell of fresh basil. Needless to say I was pleased to return to my car and find that it had blossomed with the lovely warm smell of basil, like an herby bouquet, while I ran into the grocery store. So damn good.

And I of course had to make some pesto with it. Especially after my mom decided that, for the birthday dinner I had offered to cook for her, she wanted me to make her one of my tofu and pesto-mayo sammiches with my vegan mac n' cheez and asparagus with roasted garlic sauce. (Needless to say, I had to make fun of her (at least a little bit) for choosing--of all things--mac n' cheez for her b-day meal, since it's so 12-year old, but hey--it made life easier for me, so I couldn't make fun of her for TOO long.)

Not only did I realize this weekend that basil is perhaps my very favorite smell, I also realized that pesto may very well be one of my favorite recipes to make as well.

I love the smell of walnuts roasting. I adore the crisp scent of basil lingering on my fingertips. I like the meditativeness of peeling garlic and dicing it. I like the soft cloud of cheezy-smoke that wafts upwards as I toss in the nutritional yeast. I dig the hum and whir of the food processor as everything comes together just right. It's just so nice and calming to make for some reason. Maybe because it's so simple and yet yields a result that's so lovely and complex-tasting. And one that tastes EXACTLY LIKE SPRING.

Regardless, I dig it. And I dig the VwaV recipe for pesto in particular, which is the one I use each and every time, it's that good. The only strange pesto hang-up I have is that I like my pesto nice and thick, as you can see from the pics. So I tend to use as little olive oil as I possibly can while still binding it all together into a creamier (but thick) mixture.

End result: bliss.


See: Bliss!

My mom enjoyed it as well, along with all the other numbly sides and whatnot. I was not super-pleased with how the tofu came out (I tried baking it according to a recipe I found on the net, but--though the marinade was yummy, so I'm including the recipe here--the end result was a soggy tofu, even after a) having pressed it and b) throwing it into a frying pan after growing frustrated with its lack of firmness upon baking). Everything else though: *puffing a kiss from my fingertips* MAGNIFIQUE!

And what would a b-day dinner be without dessert? Not much of one.

So yes, I did whip up a yummy dessert. And yes, I plan on posting the recipe. But until then, I'll leave you with this bit of a teaser--what could it be? Oh, what could it be?!?



* * * * * * *

LEMON ROSEMARY MARINADE



INGREDIENTS:

• 1/4 c. fresh lemon juice


• 1.5 T. balsamic vinegar


• 3 T. soy sauce


• 1/2 t. dried rosemary


• 2 T. olive oil (though I'm thinking now that I may have forgotten to add this)


• Salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

Mix all the ingredients together. Use it as a marinade for tofu. Or seitan. Or mushrooms. Or your big toe, for all I care.

(Adapted from a recipe from Angelica Kitchen)

Braised and Coffeed Seitan with Pine Nuts & Punky Mashed Taters

Oh glorious anger when my blog entry somehow doesn't get saved.

*Pitiful sniffle*

Anyways, as I mentioned yesterday, I was in the mood to do a bit of fall-cooking this weekend. So, inspired by the coffee-marinated tofu and seitan that What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyways blogged about recently (yet one more reason I love you, Coffee!), I decided to track down some sort of coffee marinade of my own and do a bit of experimentation.

And there are a BUTTLOAD of coffee marinades on the internet, folks--who'da thunk it!

But after much roaming around, I decided to fiddle with THIS RECIPE. I had most of the ingredients, and it sounded like the kind of recipe that would make you feel all warm and cozy from the inside out.

I was not far off. If there's only one thing you take away from reading this little ramble about the seitan recipe I made this weekend, it's this:

IT TASTES LIKE CHRISTMAS!

I kid you not.

As I'm sure you can figure out, it's totally all about the cinnamon and cloves--they make you wanna sing carols and string popcorn around a Christmas tree.

I cannot wait 'til the holidays roll around, because I am *so* whipping this recipe out and wowing my friends and family with it. It is damn fricking good, ladies and gents. Damn fricking good. *AND* it's damn simple, to boot.

I was a bit leery at first, because it's a strange variety of ingredients. And after it marinated overnight, there was a weird film of scum along the top of the marinade (kinda like when Lake Erie is not looking so clean), and it had a strange kinda boogery slimey consistency (I can tell I'm *REALLY* getting your tastebuds going with *this* description). But lo and behold, this stuff knocked our socks off.

The seitan holds the marinade wonderfully, and it cooks up really delicately and tenderly. The final result is a rich and roasty, ridiculously tender seitan that will melt on your tongue with a wonderful Christmasy bouquet of flavors and put any fatty, gristly hunk of animal flesh to shame. Good stuff.

BRAISED AND COFFEED
SEITAN WITH PINENUTS



INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup strong coffee


• 1/2 medium onion, diced


• 1/4 c. balsamic vinegar


• 3 T. packed brown sugar (I used light)


• 1 T. soy sauce


• 1 T. teriyaki sauce


• 2 cloves peeled garlic


• 1/2 t. ground cinnamon


• 1/2 t. ground ginger


• 1/4 t. ground cloves


• 1/4 t. crushed red pepper flakes or to taste


• Two 8/12 oz. packs of seitan (or you can make your own)


• 1/4-1/2 C. toasted pine nuts

DIRECTIONS:
Toss all the ingredients except for the seitan and pine nuts into a food processor. Process until pretty well-blended. Remove marinade and place in large, sealable container. Drain seitan. Place seitan in marinade. Refrigerate overnight (or at least a few hours).
To prepare: Heat up a large pan. Scoop out the chunks of seitan and toss into pan. Add enough marinade to the pan that it covers the bottom and the seitan is sitting a tiny bit deep in it. Cover and heat at medium heat for about 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. (This is considered stovetop braising, apparently--alternately, you could braise the seitan similarly in the oven.) Serve topped with the toasted pine nuts.

Serves 2-4 (depending on how hungry you are)

PUNKY MASHED TATERS



INGREDIENTS:

• About 4-5 blue potatoes


• About 4-6 little white potatoes


• Soy milk


• 1-2 T. vegan margarine


• 1 clove garlic, diced real tiny or pressed


• Dried rosemary


• Pine nuts

DIRECTIONS: Cube all your potatoes (but don't peel the skins off!). Toss into a pot of water. Boil potatoes until tender (about 15 minutes or so). Drain potatoes. Mash them up with a fork (but not completely--chunky mashed taters are da best!). Toss in about 1-2 T. of vegan margarine and your soy milk (how much you add of the latter will depend on how whippy you like your mashed potatoes, so I've not included measurements). Add garlic and dried rosemary. Top with toasted pine nuts.

I don't really know that the blue potatoes taste any differently or better than normal potatoes, but they SURE IS PRETTY!

(I didn't originally intend this dish to have pine nuts since the seitan already did, but since there were leftovers of the pine nuts, I just thought I'd toss some on top when I went back for seconds. Holy mother of god--I never would've guessed that some simple pine nuts could add so much to a potato recipe!)

(Blue taters are the COOLEST--even if
they DO look more purple than blue!)
Serves 2-4 (also depending on how hungry you are)

Really and truly, this is a damn good cold-weather meal. So store it away in the back of your brain (or in the back of your recipe box), and when you get in the mood to get yourself excited about winter and Christmas, pull this baby out.

Merry seitan to all, and to all a good night!

Orange-Bourbon Shishkabobs w/ Tofurkey Kielbasa, Blueberry and Wild-Rice Salad, and Mint Juleps, to Boot!

As mentioned earlier in the week, Saturday night I had plans to party it up Mark-Twain-style, and so we busted out the barbecue, the mint juleps, and the Mark Twain and had ourselves a sweltering, church-going, plantation kind of night! Why, you ask? Well, mostly just because I wanted to try out this Orange-Bourbon Marinade recipe I'd stumbled across and wanted to use for shishkabobs, which meant buying some bourbon, which in turn meant finding uses for bourbon, which in turn meant finally trying a damn mint julep, which in turn meant (of course) reading some Mark Twain.

Saturday afternoon, I whipped up this extremely simple (but flavorful) marinade and tossed some baby 'bellas, onion chunks, and diced up tofu into it to marinate throughout the afternoon and into the evening. I also boiled up some red baby potatoes so that we could throw them on the skewers as well and they wouldn't take excessively-long to grill.


ULTIMATE INGREDIENTS OF THE SHISHKABOBS:

Extra-firm tofu, chunks of onions, and baby 'bellas, all marinated in the Orange-Bourbon Marinade
One red-pepper, chunked
One green-pepper, chunked
5 red baby potatoes (pre-cooked and sliced in two)

Orange-Bourbon Marinade: RECIPE

E also found himself with a hankering for kielbasa that afternoon, so he picked up some Tofurkey kielbasa for us to grill up as well, along with a homemade batch of peasant-bread that he'd made the night before.


To top all that off, I picked up some no-cook fresh ears of corn at the market on Friday--I love this corn way the hell up... It is so gloriously sweet and tender that you can eat it right off the cob without ever needing to cook it. If you haven't tried it, you must.

And finally, I whipped up a batch of Blueberry and Wild-Rice Salad that I'd also been eyeing all week, and damn was it good. The most complicated part about the recipe was the dressing, but it was well-worth the grating effort. The only adjustments I made (or would make in the future) were that I used a variety of dried fruit (since I didn't wanna spend $6+ on buying a bag of apricots and a bag of cranberries) and in the future, I would probably cut the amount of oil in the dressing in half (if not more) as it was much greasier than it needed to be, especially for a fruit and rice salad. But seriously, well-worth the time and effort as it was wonderfully flavorful and summery-tasting.


Blueberry and Wild-Rice Salad: RECIPE

And of course, the night wouldn't've been complete without some homemade mint juleps... Man alive, these babies were strong--I'd imagine there's a helluva lot of drunken southern ladies sitting out on their porches, fanning themselves desperately on a nightly-basis if these really are the cat's pajamas down south. =)


INGREDIENTS (For one mint julep):

Ice
3 oz Jim Beam bourbon
5+ sprigs of fresh mint
1 t. sugar

Mix and try to make it through to that last sip, as it is the best one.

All in all it was a very spirited and fun evening, and I'd definitely recommend both recipes for grilling out with friends or family. I'd've said all that in a mock-southern drawl, but you'd just end up making fun of me. =)

OBLIGATORY READING: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain