Quiche-y.

My father in-law and aunt-in-law are arriving from Montreal tomorrow to stay with us for a month. I'm very excited for them to be here and made this beautiful broccoli quiche (from Vegan Brunch cookbook) especially for them to enjoy with a salad after the long flight. The recipe for this quiche is also posted online here at Isa Moskowitz's blog.

New Farm Mac and Cheese

I've heard so many good things about the mac n cheese from the New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook. I was at a used bookstore over the weekend and found a copy for $7 and tried out the recipe tonight. I have to say, I wasn't overly impressed. I mean it's really good and creamy and everything. It's just that it is very much like other nutritional yeast based cheese sauces that I've tried before. I don't know if I'll make it again: 1. because it's too similar to other sauces I've made before. 2. it has quite a bit of fat in it from the margarine to the oil. 3. I think if I'm going to go the fatty route, I'll use Vegan Dad's nut based cheese sauce.

But I'm not sorry that I tried this. The book is so hippie and fun that I look forward to trying other recipes from it.

Pouding Chomeur

I first learned about this sinfully sweet dessert many years ago from my mother-in-law. When I used to visit Marc in Montreal when we were first dating (long distance), his mom Pauline made us lots of wonderful dinners and with dinner there was always something for dessert. Pouding Chomeur, also known as "unemployment pudding" or "floating island" is a traditional Quebecois dessert which is made with cheap ingredients, hence the name "chomeur" which means "unemployed" in french. It bakes up as a vanilla white cake with a sticky brown sugar sauce underneath. I've veganized Pauline's recipe and I am posting it here to share. There are a myriad of chomeur recipes out there with different proportions of ingredients. This particular recipe I find has a higher cake to sauce ratio but I'm assuming you can double the sauce recipe if you prefer. I haven't actually tried that so I don't know what the result will be. You can always make extra sauce on the side and pour on each slice as you serve.

Vegan Pouding Chomeur

Sauce:
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup water
1 TB vegan margarine (I used Earth Balance)

Add all ingredients to a small saucepan and bring to a boil for 1 minute. Set aside.

Cake:
1 TB vegan margarine
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 cup soymilk (or other non dairy milk)

With a hand mixer or stand mixer, cream margarine and sugar together. Add vanilla and soymilk. Mix flour, baking powder together in a separate bowl. Add to the rest of the mixture and mix until combined. Pour batter into a greased medium sized glass baking dish. Pour the sauce that you set aside evenly over the top of the batter. It will be watery, don't worry. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes or until top is browned. As it bakes, the cake will rise to the top and the sauce will be underneath.


You can see the sauce underneath the cake.


To serve, cut a slice, place it face down on a plate and scoop some sauce on top!

Fatayer bi Sabanakh

My post earlier about Mediterranean food made me want some! The fatayer (spinach pies) I had at the restaurant were so good that I wanted to try it out myself at home. Got this recipe from a wonderful book "Classic Vegetarian Cooking From The Middle East and N. Africa". The book asks for pizza dough so I looked no further than Trader Joe's for their pre-made pizza doughs. Worked out perfectly! They were delicious and not as tart (from lemon) as the ones I had at Gaby's. I didn't mind though. They were chewy and crisp on the outside and really lovely inside. Steamy spinach, nuts (in my case almonds because I didn't have pine nuts), onions, sumac and a touch of lemon.


Inside shot.


With a side of baby lettuce salad with balsamic vinaigrette. Perfect summer dining on the patio.

Gaby's Mediterranean Cafe

A week or two ago, I went to Gaby's Mediterranean in West L.A. with my friend (who took the photo above) to enjoy a meze dinner. I have been going to Gaby's for many years and the food usually never disappoints. We got a medley of dishes: the Vegetarian's Choice (plate on the left) which includes hummus, baba ganouj, tabbouleh, grape leaves and falafel. Perfect to share for two. We also go the moussaka (dish in front) which is a beautiful stew of tender eggplant, chickpeas, tomatoes and onions in a tomato sauce. And to make it all complete we ordered the fatayer (spinach pies which you can see on the plate right in front of my chest, haha). Everything was super delicious. We even smoked a bit of apple shisha after the meal. It was very pleasant but I must say that in all my years of dining at Gaby's, they have never seemed to get the customer service on target. Our waitress disappeared for a long time and we had to wait for water and bread re-fills which we eventually got from a bus person. Hopefully that aspect (which is rather important in the restaurant business) gets taken care of sooner rather than later. There are a couple of other Mediterranean restaurants in the area that I'd like to try. Mezza in Culver City and Sofra Kabob down the street from Gaby's.

Austrian Noodles and Cabbage

Woo, what a day! Lots of work, busy, busy, busy I was! Just wanted to come home to a comforting meal and some wine or beer. I made this recipe of Austrian noodles and cabbage from Robin Robertson's book "1,000 Vegan Recipes". Love this book. Can't say enough good things about it. It's full of recipes like this that are perfect for quick weeknight meals.

Junk Food Alert!

I had nachos for dinner. Yes these are very junky but what the heck! I was in the mood for them so I made sure that this was on the menu tonight. I made "taco meat" out of tvp and taco seasonings and cheez sauce from 'The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook'. It's the "instant cheez-it sauce" and I added a few TB of salsa to it. With some black beans, jalapenos and a vegan mayo "sour cream" (just mix it with lime or lemon juice), I had a drool worthy plate of nachos!


There's this recipe for microwave chocolate cake on vegweb that I had made a couple of times before. I was in the mood and I needed it now. So I whipped this up in 3 minutes in my microwave. I added vegan chocolate chips and white chocolate chips. Sweet coconut on top made it a fun dessert to indulge in. This is something I will not do often because it's junk food, but when you want it, you gotta have it!


And you're wondering, is it good? Why yes. Yes it is. It's very fluffy and soft and gooey from the melted chocolate chips.