Review and Indian Dinner: WK Pacs

Chola Curry, Peas & Potato Sabji, Coconut Rice

When I crave Indian food, I usually go to a cheap food cart downtown.  I'm talking SW 12th and Yamhill.  There's a lot of murmur recently about the new management of the original India Chaat and the curiously opened Bombay Chaat House next door, which an old owner opened - but I'll save that for another time.

Indian food hasn't made it into my regular cooking repertoire.  I've made curry and samosas at home before but it's a special occasion thing when I do.  When the folks at Waverly Kitchens offered to send me some Indian meal spice packets that promised quick, authentic meals with the addition of a few fresh ingredients, I was intrigued and made two of the three packets they sent on Friday night - the Curry and Sabji you see above.  The coconut rice is based on the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance.  I also received a packet for Pineapple Raita to make with soy yogurt.

TIME TIME TIME

When it comes to dinner time, I don't mind putting in an hour's worth of work into most meals, it helps me relax and focus on my own life after a day at the office, ha!   While I rarely find myself eating packaged dinners other than the few times a year I pick up Trader Joe's craptastic Soy Nuggets, I don't mind the notion of using pre-mixed quality spices in my own cooking, which this basically was.  I buy cajun and chili spices in bulk.  The WK pacs don't contain scary preservatives - what they do have is authentic spices, simple instructions and a shopping list on one side of the packet with the few vegetables you need for dinner for two.  

For example - for the Sabji I needed a bag of frozen peas, two potatoes, lemon juice and cilantro. Yeah, I skipped the cilantro because I'm a hater.  I can handle it very well mingled into salsa and Indian food, but I gleefully left it out here since it just garnishes the dish.  On Friday night I started the coconut rice in my rice cooker, dropped the first set of spices in canola oil for the curry, and within 30 minutes, all three dishes were done. 

There are two sets of spices in the one packet for each meal that I made - the top half has the spices that cook first:

After a couple minutes, you move onto the next step.  Easy.  Add garlic (and onion or onion powder) for the Curry:

White garlic from the farmer's market

A can of chickpeas and spices from the bottom of the the packet-

.....and you've got nothing left to do but simmer.  The Sabji didn't require any sauteing, just two diced, peeled potatoes and frozen peas that I've had in my freezer waiting for a day to shine. The final products were impressively flavorful for meals not only made quickly, but a type of cuisine I enjoy but don't bother to cook at home.  Two thumbs up!  I have to give the packets street cred for not ripping, or at least canvas bag cred, because I carried them around with me for a few days so I wouldn't forget to make them.  

I was curious which type of oil to use and opted for canola, and my only criticism is that I wish I had two paks of the curry, in particular!

They have starter kits available on their website here and they are all vegetarian, and can be made vegan with nondairy substitutions.  Definitely keep an eye out for these, I was really happy with my dinner.  

An Italiany Post

A collection of meals with an Italian vibe to them....
or at least tomatoes, or pasta or garlic or all of the above~

Exhibit #1:

Baked Chickpea Cutlet Balls served over fusilli pasta with homemade tomato basil marinara. With sauteed mushrooms and spinach with garlic, and garlic bread.
Carb-attack-amazing.

Exhibit #2

Pesto-Cheezy-Italian pasta bake.

This was made for a PPK Picnic this past weekend, and consisted of a silken tofu ricotta with pesto and chopped, fresh spinach, more tomato basil marinara, some almond ricotta, mini shells pasta, a miso-almond cheezy sauce, orange tomatoes and fresh basil on top.

Exhibits #3 and #4: Homemade pizzas.

The pizza above was marinara sauce, Teese, orange tomato, sweet corn and spinach.

This pizza has cremini mushrooms, orange tomato,pesto and almond ricotta.

Baked:
(sorry for the craptastic lighting)

Exhibit #5

Leftover pizza from It's a Beautiful Pizza, with tomato sauce, FYH soy cheeze (they're switching to Teese in a couple months, FYI), sundried tomatoes and black olives.

Exhibit #6

Mini grilled teese-basil-tomato on french bread.

Tamari Roasted Chickpeas

From Dreena Burton's Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. A book I've made a few things from, but should really break out for more often! The broccoli burritos have been calling me for too long.

I've made this a few times now, and I like how simple it is.
Roasted chickpeas were one of the first easy recipes I tried as a new vegan, years ago. I remember dumping Emeril's spice mixs, sea salt and oil onto them and hoping for the best.

I added a little nutritional yeast this time around, and tend to bake them for an additional 15 minutes because I like them really crispy. I used a bit of misted olive oil instead of the called for oil.

Great on their own as as snack, or over salad greens. Cheap bulk chickpeas, cheap spices, you're set.

Heart of Tofu

I could start out this post inserting 'tofu' into cutesy love songs that include the word 'heart', but I'm not that type of gal. Well, Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' is in my head right now but tofu just isn't fitting in.

I've done the cookie cutter tofu thing before over the past few years, and have also done so with the infamous chickpea cutlets before baking, and it just felt right the other night.

I took my block of fresh firm tofu from Ota, drained it, pressed it, carefully sliced it, whipped out the heart-shaped cookie cutter (which actually used to be a circle), put it in some VWAV/Veganomicon Italian marinade and then baked.


Sesame seeds were added during the last 10 minutes of cooking. I've been enjoying them a lot lately. The baked tofu is served with some more chickpea quinoa pilaf (with white and cranberry beans) and some kale raab I cooked in the extra Italian marinade.

More PumpkinOSITY.

Major props to Julie Hasson~ I made two of her recipes on Wednesday evening, both involving pureed pumpkin, and both simply delicious.

Pumpkin cake with raisins, and chocolate chips all ooey-gooey on top. I prefer my chocolate chips on top of cake ever since making VWAV's raspberry chocolate chip blondies last year.



For spices, I only had cinnamon and nutmeg in the house (oh my), and I also cut the oil in half by simply using a little extra pumpkin. I often cut some oil with applesauce as well, but never all of it. I don't swing that way.



Julie's Smokey Pumpkin Hummus - used my homemade pureed pumpkin and the chickpeas I soaked over a week ago and had just a bit left of. Julie recommends using toasted sesame oil in this, fyi. I knew I'd like these recipes, a I sampled Julie's homemade versions of them at the Vegan Holiday Festival earlier in the month.




At the demo, Julie added candied pumpkin seeds on top, and since I had seeds myself, I toasted some in a pan with a touch of maple syrup, cayenne, sea salt and a wee bit of canola oil.



This is the dinner that used the rest of my purple cauliflower.
Maybe I'll get more cauliflower at the farmer's market tomorrow - maybe.
If I do, I'll probably be cheaper and just get white. This is a meal I made using what was in the house - simply roasted a veggie, reheated some baked yam fries and made those famous chickpea cutlets for a who-knows-how-many-nth time.
On the side is some Nomicon cheezy sauce and roasted garlic marinara.



P.S. My toes are now orange from all the pumpkin consumption.
P.P.S. This time next week, I'll be on day one of my Boston/NY trip, woo!

Chickpeas EVERYWHERE.

Behold! I mentioned making two dishes on my last couple posts and they actually came to fruition! Or roasting. When does that ever happen?

Tamari Roasted Chickpeas, from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan! Easy and tangy and salty. 3 big points for that! The lemon flavor is equal to the tamari in these, and I enjoyed them in a salad today as well as warm from the oven, yesterday.



Thomas made this panini for me at his new coffeeshop in NW Portland - ciabatta roll, kalamata olives, mustard, spinach, tomato, pear, walnuts and balsamic vinegarette. Vanilla soy latte, too.


My work lunch on Friday: sliced apple with sea salt, romaine lettuce with raspberry vinagarette (TJ's) and Smokey Baked tempeh from nomicon. nom nom.



Saturday night's dinner: we relaxed, started watching Best in Show (watched Waiting for Guffman the evening before) and dined on chickpea cutlets, mushroom gravy (made with maittakes and creminis), grits, roasted purple cauliflower and yukon golds.
A lovely post-farmer's market feast~



Yesterday's lunch from Taqueria Los Gorditos Vegan Sunday: Mulita with rice and beans (minus the cilantro and onions...just saying!)



Tonight, I've got more purple caulifower and a newly soaked batch of chickpeas on the brain....what's on yours?

Tired of Leftovers?

I am freaking tired of leftovers. I normally put up with them since I'm cheap and it's economical, and on the occasion, look forward to leftover tempeh taco filling or something almost on that level.
Thomas and I have been doing our part in eating thanksgiving leftovers, and now we're freezing a couple things (like how I almost had enough pumpkin pie filling to make another pie). There's still two pieces of tofurkey in the fridge, but I just can't do it - I might just freeze them and get the strength to put them in a potpie in the future.
In case you're curious, the biscuits went first, out of everything, followed by the green beans and mashed potatoes.
The majority of the food you are about to see is actually from prior to Thanksgiving, but what the hell, here it is. We did go out to eat both Friday morning (Junior's, dee-licious) and Saturday for lunch (Bay Leaf).
Fried tofu in Soy Vay Chinese Marinade, plus a bunch of crushed red pepper and garlic. Served with garlickly purple broccoli florets, brown rice and steamed delicatta squash. I used Trader Joe's super duper extra firm tofu for this - and it gets high ratings from us.
More Soy Vayed tofu - baked with crushed garlic, on top of saucy brown rice and oh my, formerly frozen organic broccoli. I'm really not in love with Soy Vay, but it's easy, a mutual like in the household, and satisfies a part of a chinese food craving.

Grilled 'cheese' and garlickly tomato rice soup with green beans. I'll be straight up, I threw the sandwich in the microwave for a few seconds to start the melting, then grilled it. This cheese isn't exactly cheddar, but it worked. Thanks Wiebke, for the recipe link~

The grilled Real Food Daily cashew cheese. Basically if you have agar, cashews and nutritional yeast, you can make this. I made a batch for the second time last week - half of it regular, half 'smoked'.
Nutrional yeast, sea salt, oregano and olive oil roasted chickpeas. My imitation of the Vegan Lunch Box recipe description.
Purple broccoli adoration. Next to it is my first head of elephant garlic.
From a couple weeks back when I was cleaning out the fridge - whole wheat pasta, chopped tomatoes, garlic, spinach, portabella slices and pine nuts.
Another PPK testing recipe - cornbread, big muffin style. It's topped with toasted corn and chopped jalapenos. We had these with chili on Sunday.
Elbows tossed with PPK testing 'cheez sauce', waiting to be casseroled.Mac n cheez casserole - with Real Food Daily cashew cheddar, spinach and garlic, elbows (I wish elbows had ridges) and PPK testing cheez sauce. Topped with whole wheat breadcrumbs and freshly ground pepper.
Ancho chili and sea salt yam fries, organic ketchup and a balsamic glazed portabella slices sandwich on ciabatta bread.
The balsamic portabella recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance, and I was skeptical to try it, since I know how to cook mushrooms - but I had not thrown the garlic in just when Isa does before - and it's fantastic and toasty.My lunch from Bay Leaf. Thank goodness it came with hot and sour soup. Mustard Greens and pan seared (burped??) tofu with whole chiles. Another thank goodness that I can appreciate a plate of boring greens. I did eat a whole chili, and I like heat, but the dish just didn't pull together for me. Not what I was expected, not 'bad', but no sesame tofu. Here's to trying something new...and being sick and wanting more soup.

Do you like food?

Chickpea cutlet (again from the upcoming PPK book) with bbq sauce, garlicky chard, a nutritional yeasty/garlicky/eb twice baked potato and corn on the cob. Mushroom medallion - another test recipe. This was obviously Thomas' dish with carmelized Walla Walla onions on top. You can't really see them, but this was served with VWAV Cajun oven fries.One of our old favorites that we hadn't made in ages - bbq tofu with local red bell peppers. On the side is short grain brown rice (finally restocked that since the move) and a simple side salad. I think Consorzio recently discontinued the 'spicy' version of this sauce I adored because I can't find it anywhere, so we've been using the original one. I should get around to making my own again..Trip to Fubonn. Vegetarian chicken patties, silken tofu, firm tofu from Washington (used in the bbq tofu), lychee gummy candies, coconut essence, coconut cream and coconut milk.Yo - I've really been loving my food processor. I've used it for dough, pesto, salsa verde and a caponata type spread. Pictured above is the pesto from VWAV, made with pine nuts instead of walnuts.Pesto rolls! With pesto, earth balance, pizza dough and FYH mozzarella. These were really tasty, bizarrely almost sweet, but I used a little too much oil in the pan so some bottoms had to be forgotten. Oh well, I learned my lesson. Isa pizza from VWAV, minus the tofu ricotta, plus red peppers. Make this.PPK coffeecake with Italian prune plums. Made with Michelle for a vegan cook-a-long post - check out this group, it's really neat and something a lot of you guys might be into~

I wanted to link to Susan's Fatfree vegan blog, because it's really inspiring me to eat big lunch salads with tofu. I'm penciling in hummus and grilled veggies as well to go on top. Thank you! Plus, keep an eye out on this bagged spinach fiasco.

I'll be in PA and NY next week, for a busines conference and then a few days of vacation. Ahhh.. This time I will not upload my trip photos to Jenny's computer so I can actually share the meal experiences on the blog. I might post one more before I go.. Any suggestions, dining/travel for Philadelphia or King of Prussia?