Moroccan Inspired Quinoa Salad

It's hot. Muggy, rainy, sweltering hot. I knew when I was grocery shopping yesterday that I'd want to make a quinoa salad. They can be packed with nutritious things and enjoyed cold or room temp for days. I have had zero luck with mangoes being ripe of late so the beloved black bean mango quinoa salad was out. Besides, it was time to take off the training wheels where quinoa salad recipes go and come up with one of my own!

I had the pleasure of having friends over for dinner, one of which would be bringing a slow roasted cauliflower and white bean curry soup. Wanting something to compliment the curry my brain went straight to Moroccan. Why? I have no idea, but the results were fantastic!

I am terrible at measuring when creating something new so as to share a formal recipe, but here's basically what I did (I knew I should have snapped pics for each addition, had a feeling this would be worth sharing!):

Cook one cup of dry quinoa in vegetable broth. I always keep a mix of red and white quinoa in my pantry in the same container as I love the way it comes out visually and the red keeps its form a bit better than the white. I used Better Than Bullion Vegetable base in water for my broth.

While that cooked I took out a small bowl and zested one large lemon, and squeezed out all the juice into the bowl. I smashed and finely chopped two cloves of garlic and added that to the dressing. Next I added a heavy pinch or two of course sea salt, maybe a half of a tsp of ground cumin, about a scant half tsp of Hungarian paprika (that and smoked is all I ever have on hand), two dashes of cinnamon, and a tsp or so of agave nectar. Stirred that up and whisked in 1-2 T of olive oil (I am not a fan of extra virgin except for bread dipping so mine is the extra mild variety), and set that aside.

Once the quinoa is cooked, remove from heat and set in refrigerator while chopping other ingredients. How much of each? Well, that's entirely up to you. I tend to chop, add, toss and make sure it looks like there will be a bit of each ingredient in every bite. That said, I added:

fresh cilantro

fresh parsley

fresh mint

(I'd say, finely chopped, there was a total of 1/8-14 c. of herbs added)

red onion, chopped fine

pitted and chopped kalamata olives

organic raisins

organic grape tomatoes, quartered

chickpeas, rinsed, drained and outer skin removed (for me, eating leftover salad, I enjoy the chickpeas best if their texture is not full of that skin)

chopped almonds (raw and unsalted)

I added the dressing, tossed, and let it sit out, covered until we were ready to dine accompanied by bread, more olives, roasted garlic hummus, dried tomatoes cured in olive oil, and that amazing cauliflower and white bean soup. Best meal ever after grocery shopping and running errands in torrential downpours mixed with moments of pure muggy.

The texture of the salad was full of slight crunch and soft bites and the flavors hit all the things I love about Moroccan flavored dishes. It paired perfectly with the curry in the soup and is even better the next day (oh yeah, best lunch right now while I type!). I suggest eating it at room temerature when the flavors can really shine.

Vegan Coconut Rice Crepes

My entry (that almost wasn't!) for Vegan Chopped, Desserts!

Coconut Rice Crepes filled with Macadamia Creme topped with Mango Banana Pudding accompanied by Candied Beet Chips and Beet Syrup Candy (whew!)

When I knew Isa would be holding another Vegan Chopped I knew it would be fun to do again, especially without a time constraint. This was exceedingly important as a couple of my original ideas failed and I had to keep tinkering to get something that would still turn out worthy of capturing in a picture (or at least interesting in a picture. Does that beet syrup candy up there remind anyone else of the Sentinels in the Matrix movies?) AND still be really yummy to eat.

Mystery Ingredients: Crisped Rice Cereal, Fresh Bunch Beets, Fresh Mango, and Dried Unsweetened Coconut.

Here's my very 'wake up in the morning, totally not stressed that I haven't even bought the ingredients yet, or that I should be cleaning and packing for a trip, or that I've never attempted more than half of the ideas I thought would be just perfect for this challenge' layout.

I would soon trek to the health food store and grab the very last bunch of beets, get to the grocery store and find that none of the bananas or the mangoes were near ripe enough to use today and get ideal results. yay! Unphased (at this point, anyway) I first worked on the crepes as the recipe I was using as a guide for GF coconut flour crepes (that is nowhere in my history now, sorry!) stressed chilling the batter for a couple hours. First I ground the already fine dry unsweetened coconut and the rice cereal each into as fine a powder as I could in the bullet.

It took maybe a cup of rice cereal to get a 1/2 cup of 'flour' and maybe 3/4 cup of coconut flakes to get a 1/2 of coconut 'flour'. I mixed those with a pinch of salt, 3/4c. of lite coconut milk and 1 cup of water, 1 T of Florida Crystals, 1/2 tsp of cardamom, 1/4 c. melted organic Smart Balance Spread. I covered it and put it in the fridge for a couple hours.

Meanwhile, I worked on the beets as they would also take a long time. I found a recipe on Martha Stewart's site for Candied Beet Chips that sounded too good not to try. Beets were trimmed and peeled and sliced with my (extremely crappy) mandoline. They were simmered in a mix of 1 c. water to 1/2 cup sugar for 30 minutes then transferred with slotted spoon to parchment lined baking sheet and baked in a 250 oven for an hour.

Did I mention that my mandoline, it is the sucketh? yeah. Those three beautiful, perfect, disintegrate in your mouth in a sugary burst of earthy beet goodness were the ONLY three that came out like that. Granted, the other, thicker slices that came out more like jelly candies were pretty amazing (I have the stomachache and beetsintheteeth from eating most of them to proove it), but they wouldn't work for this creation. So I stared at the beautiful beet colored sugar water and decided to make a syrup. Except that I got distracted by a four year old and a yellow lab who felt the need to wrestle at that time in the kitchen and my syrup turned super thick super fast. In a moment of hopeful genius I grabbed a spoon, relined the baking sheet with new parchment, drizzled the sticky red sweet stuff all over the place and set it on the counter in front of a fan....then stuck it in the freezer as it's hot as all get out in here today!

I've been making Katie of Chocolate Covered Katie's agar starter to make a pudding every morning for weeks now. I alternate between making it with lite coconut milk one time then almond milk the next. I use 2 tsp of agar powder (the recipe uses flakes that I have never been able to get my hands on) to the 2 3/4 c. almond milk it calls for. I had made the almond version last night and it had been cooling in a large mason jar, covered in my refrigerator every since. I took it out and added one large (totally not ripe enough) banana one beautiful (but totally two days away from worth anything) mango to it and grabbed my stick blender. I blend the bejeezus out of that stuff until it looks like a pretty thick pudding. Tasted it. Then proceeded to add a tablespoon (or two) of powdered sugar. It still had that 'not all that ripe' fruit taste but it was sweet enough and the texture was perfect and I totally won't mind eating it with my protein smoothie mix added in every morning for the next few days, so....win?

On to the Macadamia Creme! When I heard the secret ingredients and knew i would be making crepes, I thought I'd make the pudding thicker like a custard and then want to top it with some sort of vegan whipped creme. I didn't want to use more coconut milk and cashews weren't right by themselves but macadamia nuts, THAT sounded perfect! Good luck finding unsalted macadamia nuts! No bother tho, I just rinsed them really well and they were barely salty. I took 1/2 cup of macadamia nuts and 1/2 cup of cashews and soaked them for about an hour. I drained and whirred in the magic bullet then added 3/4 c. almond milk (I could have added a bit less), 1/2 tsp vanilla, and a T of Florida Crystals. I grabbed my immersion blender and blended that stuff for five solid minutes. I then covered it and stuck it in the freezer in the hopes that would also help it firm up a bit as I planned to use it in the next 45 minutes or so. It did...kinda.

The crepes......sigh. I was all ready to make them and when I dropped them in a hot pan with a light coat of coconut oil? They bubbled. And bubbled. And bubbled.....and never became anything.

My kitchen was a mess, I had packing to do, I was tired, and I kinda just thought, eh! whatevs!

I had really hoped these crepes would be gluten free, and I almost made some flax eggs to see if that would fix it, but for whatever reason, I grabbed some flour, mixed 2 cups of my original batter with one cup of unbleached organic flour, 1 heaping tsp of baking powder, and some unsweetened coconut and some crushed macadamia nuts that I'd toasted for garnish and threw them in (yeah, I have no idea why either). It worked!

Granted, I tried cooking one and it just wouldn't cook thru, even tho they were so thin. So cooking the crepes went something like this: pour batter in pan. walk away, do a couple dishes, get distracted cleaning up after the four year old, and when I smelled 'something coconut cooking' I flipped. Repeat.

The plating I'm terrible at but I just knew all these things would taste great together no matter what they looked like. That turned out to be a good thing, because I live in Florida, and not just any part of Florida. The part of Florida best known as 'The Swamp'. Right now it's SERIOUSLY swampy out there (i'm not kidding, i currently have bath towels stuffed under the cracks of our porch's screen doors so that the hundred mosquitos bumping against them vying for a spot on my sweet orange tabby's coat get NOTHING). Yeah. So this means that the pretty beet syrup candy that was all stringy and sparkly and gorgeous started to melt and sweat and look less like garnet gossamer threads and were starting to resemble arteries or Matrix Sentinels. The light and fluffy macadamia creme was quickly becoming macadamia milk, and the thick mango banana pudding that was almost a custard was just another pudding.

(yeah, I'm not even editing that hot mess!)

But I ate that shiitake up in lieu of dinner and know what? I totally was kicking myself that I didn't make two plates worth! Though I supposed they'd be adorned with Beet Gummies instead of Candied Beet Chips.

Oh, and here's my much less zen layout of how it all went down.

Hope everyone else had as much fun (and as much yum!) as I did!

And a shout out to Isa, thanks for inspiring me for doing more than deciding which cookbook to pirate my meal from AND making it okay for me to have dessert for dinner!

Vegan Chopped!

If anything could get me back on the blogging wagon, a good vegan cooking contest could! This post is inspired by Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Vegan Chopped contest, judged by some of my favorite vegan bloggers. I've been gone for quite a while, but have been cooking up vegan fare the whole time and been looking forward to getting back into blogging. Now that my daughter is about to embark upon preschool, this contest has inspired me to use my new-found time more wisely and get this place back up and running. Lots of changes in the works, so I hope you'll be back to see what I transform DGMGV to in the near future!

I should apologize for the quality of the pictures. Seems it's been so long since I dusted off the Nikon we are no longer getting along. Plus, with the stopwatch ticking (oh yeah, I totally timed myself ;) it was easier to just snap pics at the end with my phone.

So, without further ado, here is my entry for the Vegan Chopped Contest,

Seitan Mignon & Black-Eyed CaulPeaFlower Mash under Chocolate Pinot Gravy

with Broiled Peach & Blackberry 'Chutney'

Prep time: 38 minutes, 24 seconds. whew!

What you'll need:

For the Seitan Mignons I use this recipe, a family favorite, but made some adjustments*

I made mine the morning before and just took it out of the 'fridge this morning, let sit in the cooking liquid to room temp.

For the Sauce:

A good Pinot Noir, I used Castle Rock's as it's vegan, inexpensive, and tasty and, according to my Wine/Pairing Guru Friend Dan, should work perfectly for this recipe

1 cup cooking liquid from Seitan Mignons

leeks (i sliced thin the white part of a large leek, enough to blanket the medium saucepan)

2 cloves garlic, sliced thin

2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, broken up (I used a 70% cacao variety)**

Smart Balance (I love the Organic SB in a tub)

For the CaulPeaFlower Mash:

1/2 large head fresh cauliflower, choped into florets, rinsed well and drained

1 cup canned black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained

onion powder

nutritional yeast

Smart Balance

sea salt

1 large bunch fresh spinach, chopped

2 cloves garlic, slivered (i love some paper thin garlic in my greens!)

For the 'Chutney' (okay, okay, it's more a salad):

2 peaches, sliced in half, pit removed

1 cup fresh blackberries

1 cup grapes, sliced in half

1/4 cup loosely packed mint leaves

2 T. Florida Crystals

couple generous pinches ground ginger (or fresh grated if you have some!)

Preparation:

Open bottle of Pinot, empty into decanter to breathe. Or just skip the whole 'use cooking with wine as an excuse to drink copius amounts of vino' and let it breathe in the bottle until needed for recipe ;) I will strongly urge you, however, to turn up some of your favorite music. This dish is fun and full of flavor, why shouldn't your ears benefit as well as the rest of your senses? I am currently rocking

Strunz and Farah's Primal Magic.

Preheat oven to 425. (I am very annoyed with TS Debbie and all her rain today for ruining my grilling plans. Seitan and peaches were meant to be warmed and cooked on grill, respectively. Pan-warmed seitan and Broiled peaches it is!)

Place mint, sugar, and ginger in blender or processor (I used the Magic Bullet) and pulse until ground and well incorporated.

Cut peaches in half and remove pits. place in baking dish, cut side up. Dot with Smart Balance. Sprinkle with a third of sugar/mint/ginger mixture (I LOVE ginger so I sprinkled an extra pinch on each half at this point). Bake for about 25 minutes or until tender and bubbling.

Mix remaining sugar mix with blackberries and grapes. I didn't use all of it, just added until they looked coated. Have about a scant T. left and will use for some tea ;) Set aside.

Heat saucepan on medium heat. Spray with olive oil. Add leeks and garlic and saute until they start to brown a bit and are caramel in color. Add a glug or two (or three....or four) of wine to deglaze and stir. Stir in seitan simmering stock (or veggie beef-like stock if you have no simmering liquid). Once gently bubbling add rosemary and chocolate. Stir occasionally, allow sauce to simmer until

thickened so that it coats spoon. Add 1-2 tablespoons Smart Balance, stirring to melt and incorporate. Reserve sauce on low.

Remove peaches from oven, chop one, toss gently with fruit/sugar blend, set aside. Use remaining peach halves for plating under 'chutney' (i can't help myself. My husband is half Indian. I so wanted this to be a chutney!).

Heat non stick skillet on medium heat and spray with olive oil (I love my Misto!). Chop spinach and add to skillet turning to coat a bit, add garlic and a pinch or two of coarse sea salt. Once it starts to wilt, add a scant tablespoon of water, cover, reduce to low heat. Spinach is done when fully limp but still vibrant green. Don't

overcook! Instead, move to a bowl and throw mignon in that pan and cover, allowing it to heat thru on med lo while you prepare CaulPeaFlower Mash.

Meanwhile, rinse well and chop cauliflower into florets and place in microwaveable bowl. Add pinch of coarse sea salt. Cover and nuke for three minutes. Remove from microwave and mash with (to taste), onion powder, nutritional yeast. Add black eyed peas and blend together. I used my

immersion blender here, but a blender or food processor would also work. You could also just try mashing with a masher by hand and allow for the cauliflower to be studded with the peas rather than fully incorporated.

Stir drained sauteed spinach into CaulPeaFlower Mash.

Plate the CaulPeaFlower Mash and top with seitan mignon. Drizzle (or pour! Mmmmm!) on Gravy, top with a pinch of rosemary (fresh if you have it. I didn't.) and a pinch of coarse sea salt.

Plate a broiled peach half and top with Chutney/Salad/Fruit&Sugar Mix.

Notes on this entree:

When I heard Isa was doing this challenge, I knew exactly what I would do. Not very out of the box or crazy original, but it just sounded like something I wanted to eat, but maybe would never have pieced together these four ingredients otherwise. I did a quick search for chocolate sauce for beef and consulted my wine/pairing guru friend for advice on the wine and if the flavors had a chance together and one for 'peach blackberry mint chutney'. The sauce I didn't really modify from what I found here other than using Smart Balance (2T instead of 4 of butter) but did choose a Pinot Noir that my friendly guru suggested rather than the Burgundy blend it called for. ** The chocolate I used was 2 oz of a Perugina 70% cacao bittersweet chocolate bar. The ingredients are all vegan, but

there is a note reading: made on equipment that also processes tree nuts and milk. The 'chutney' didn't really feel like a chutney, but I couldn't see chopping or blending such beautiful plump blackberries so I added ginger (because what's a chuntey without some spice or other?!) because ginger, mint, peach, and blackberry just sounded like a perfect combo in my head. I also modified amounts a bit as I was only cooking for myself (and maybe some leftovers ;).

*I'll be honest. Seitan is not my favorite vegan protein source; it has this 'gluteny' flavor that I spend a lot of time finding ways to mask. And by 'finding ways' I mean 'searching for great recipes that'. I do think it's fun to work with and very versatile. One of my most favorite preparations is Tracy's Seitan Mignon that I linked to above. That woman knows her way around some wheat gluten! I have tinkered with the original recipe as I cannot get NutriMax here and have had to adjust things to avoid it being overly salty. Since I was working with black-eyed peas already for the challenge and had no silken tofu (that is usually used when using this recipe), I subbed the tofu for six ounces

black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained, and a scant T. of chickpea flour. In doing so I found that the seitan dough came together as easily as the original preparation and was firm before the entire 1/2 cup of gluten that is typically used at the end was used up. I barely used a 1/4 c. there at the end, but it was sticky-ish so I coated the outside well before putting in the simmering liquid.

Here are the changes I made to the seitan recipe:

Instead of 1 1/2 T. Braggs Aminos, I used 1 T. Gravy Master + 1/2 T. Shoyu

Instead of 6 oz. silken tofu, I used 6 oz. rinsed, drained black-eyed peas + 1 T. chickpea flour

In simmering liquid:

Instead of 3 T. beef-style bouillon, I used 1 T. Better Than Beef Style Bouillon.

I always add the optional garlic powder, but double it. Same for the garlic powder.

Also, I have no biscuit cutters and often use a juice glass to cut the dough into five (approx 3 inch across) mignons with some scraps. I felt like these should be bigger and used a very large mouthed container (about five inches across) yielding three larger mignons, one of the 3 inch and a scrap that was shaped like a steak (oh, irony! ;).

After cooking, I think that the texture of these larger, flatter cuts is a little less visually appealing and will use the smaller size forever in the future as it was perfect the way it was, smaller and thicker.

Black-Eyed CaulPeaFlower Mash:

I have been making mashed cauliflower for ages. Sometimes I'll add a potato to one head of cauliflower to give it more structure (shout out to Caulipots!), but when eating alone I will typically skip that step. This often means that if I don't drain the cooked cauliflwer enough it's a bit watery, but I just add more nutritional yeas

t and it's all good. Since Black Eyed Peas were one of the contest ingredients, it made perfect sense to me to mash some in there for that texture and starchiness. The canned ones I used were a bit salty so it was perfect, not having to add extra salt. I love stirring cooked greens into mashed potatoes, so why not CaulPeaFlower Mash?

The verdict:

I really loved this! It was almost exactly how I thought it would be. The seitan was tender and flavorful, the gravy was rich and went really well with the mignon and the mash. If I made a gravy like this again, I'd use a bit less chocolate and a bit more wine, honestly. The mash had awesome stick-to-your-fork structure and the greens did what they always do when I stir them into a mash, give a tender salty, garlicky som'n som'n to bite into. I love black-eyed peas and their flavor was definitely present, complimenting the natural sweetness of the cauliflower nicely, I think.

The fruit on the side really balanced well as it was light and fresh and minty and tasted sweet without being syrupy. It went really well with the earthy seitan/mash/gravy combo and I felt really satiated after eating every last bit of what was on my plate. Edited to add: I just spooned the fruit mixture into a container to save and now that it's sit for a while I think it'd be great if I used the stick blender just for a pulse or two to get some of it even more incorporated. Then I could even hold my head up high while calling it a Chutney ;).

The one surprise was that the chocolaty gravy was AMAZING on the 'chutney'. So much so that when my lunch was polished off I grabbed another generous spoonful of the fruit and ladled on a bit of the gravy and enjoyed it just like that.

So. Good.

and yes....I did have wine with my lunch. It's Sunday. The kid is 'rearranging the pantry' for me (oh boy), TS Debby is ruining my light, my grilling plans, and any chance we had of releasing our painted lady butterflies today, and some of my favorite tunes are dancing around us in the kitchen. I have a great bottle of vegan wine now open from this dish, seems a total waste not to enjoy some of it ;) It's a good thing, too.....I just was reminded why I plan to leave Blogger for

Wordpress. No matter how many times I change it, Blogger won't change my font. It also won't let me post today at 4:30, just says 'scheduled'. Yeah, It's now 4:37 pm. So, ugly font? sure! Pretend I posted this yesterday? Fine! I'm gonna kick back with my girl, my glass of vino, and play a game of I Can Do That while the rain falls and I totally don't check the clock for the next 27 minutes, anxiously awaiting being able to enter. ;)

Happy Sunday everyone. Feels good to be back!

The Best Chickpea Salad EVER!

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I wish I could tell you this creation was mine, that it's intense variety of flavors and textures that will wow you were dreamed up by my desire to have a superb chickpea salad recipe to add to my arsenal, but I can't. That desire, though, deserves serious kudos because it DID make me try out Mel's recipe here. I have never tried a recipe of hers I didn't like, but this one really wowed me...chickpeas with lemon pepper and chipotle, oh my! I made it no less than five times in about two weeks and ate it as you see here, on freshly sliced cucumbers (sometimes then topped with a little slice of cherry tomato on that!) or, even better, in a sprouted grain wrap with a bunch of greens and some chopped tomato. It also was fantastic on other raw veggies, my favorite of which was little boats of fresh red bell pepper. I love food that you don't have to turn your oven on but that still satiates you, one batch feeds me for many meals, and this gem of a salad is cooling but full of hot flavors that really sing. So, if you want to break out of the same ol' same ol' chickpea salad recipe, try out this one and send your tastebuds on a mini vacation from the ordinary!

Seitan Wellington...Swellington!

I was perusing the blogs today when I stumbled upon seitan wrapped in puff pastry on Joni's. I, naturally, immediately purchased the new cookbook that she and Celine put out because I was sure this would be great, as would the other 499 recipes inside.

The only logical next step was to run to the store to pick up the puff pastry and get to making dinner!

I had an idea to just toss together some almost duxelles (i've never actually made beef wellington or duxelles in my life, but the combo sounds heavenly, sans beef, so I sauteed some mushrooms in earth balance with garlic and shallots, and red wine until the wine reduced and everything was brown and smelling wonderful) and throw that on top of the seitan loaf before wrapping it in the pastry. Seitan Wellington!

My puff pastry lattice weaving skills are seriously lacking, but I'm totally blaming this one on the little person who had pretty much had it with my paying dinner all the attention at this point. Thankfully, it goes in the oven for another twenty-five so she and I could spend some serious mommy/daughter time!

I was leary of the setian when it was baking. Baking uncovered in the oven for over half an hour? I was sure it would be too dry. It was a bit dry on the end pieces, but the middle bite of my portion from three cuts in was perfection. I think I may add a bit more liquid next time just to make it a tad more moist, or I may throw it all in a loaf pan and just top with pastry. The presentation won't be as fancy but it may cook more evenly and stay a little moister? I've also toyed with the idea of portioning the seitan dough into a mini loaves pan and topping each with it's own pastry, creating mini, individual serving wellingtons . If I do that I'm sure I'll have to keep an eye on the cooking time to ensure that they don't dry out.
The flavor was really great, and I like the use of whole wheat flour with the gluten flour making it a bit more firm in texture. Speaking of texture, tho...if you compare my pictures to Joni's you'll notice that the two pictures are nothing alike. I was really hoping for mine to be like hers, but it just wasn't. I'm not sure what I could have done wrong or differently. I followed the recipe to a tee. I didn't knead the seitan dough much because the recipe didn't say to. Anyone try this and have similar/dissimilar results?

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Served with some steamed carrots with thyme and my new favorite kale (dino, boiled and then tossed with olive oil, shoyu, and lemon juice).

Either way, I did love this and am not only excited to try it again and maybe tinker with it a little, but also to get their book and try some other amazing vegan recipes!