Mushroom Risotto

Made mushroom risotto tonight and it was FAB! Thanks to my cousin Wendy for helping me stir (and stir, and stir and stir....). I used the recipe here. I veganized it of course and changed a few things around. My substitutions:
Veggie broth instead of chicken broth
4-5 TB of olive oil instead of 3
Cremini mushrooms, 1 carton (instead of white mushrooms/portobello combo)
1 small onion, chopped instead of shallots
red wine instead of white
2 TB Earth Balance margarine instead of butter

The risotto was so creamy and rich. I served it with a spinach/arugula salad with cranberries, walnuts and poppyseed dressing.

Roasted and Sauteed.

Tonight's dinner featured roasted broccoli and cauliflower. If you haven't tried roasting these vegetable, you must! So much better than boring steamed vegetables. Toss cauliflower and broccoli in olive oil, season with salt and pepper and roast at 400 degrees F on a baking pan for about 30 minutes until golden.


I made oven baked risotto yesterday which made a ton of leftovers so I had that with sauteed Tofurky vegan sausages, onions and mushrooms. Everything was so good and so filling. I'm very full right now.

Easy Weekend Food.

Today was all about simple, easy to prepare food. The risotto was oven baked which left me with not much to do as the oven did it for me! I threw in a few handfuls of bagged broccoli slaw in with the risotto for some color. The cauliflower was tossed in a bit of olive oil and I popped that in the oven on a sheet pan while the risotto cooked. The chickpea dish was simply canned chickpeas tossed with garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, mint, parsley and salt. Everything came out delicious.
You can find the risotto recipe here. You may omit the nutritional yeast if you don't have it. Tastes just as good without it. I left out the margarine which didn't affect the flavor at all. Make this, it's so good!


The coconut pudding was from The Vegan Family cookbook and has silken tofu, rice milk, coconut milk, cornstarch and sugar which simply got blended together, boiled and then refrigerated until chilled.

Mock Crab Cakes, Oven Baked Risotto and Steamed Spinach

This was fabulous! I had some tofu that I needed to use up and for some reason I wanted to make "crab" cakes. I've never had a real crab cake before because in my omni days I was never a fan of seafood. It doesn't matter because these were so delicious. I got the recipe from vegweb here. I did a few things differently by making my own "Old Bay" spice blend, adding a bit of spelt flour to the tofu mixture to bind it better and dusting the cakes with farina before baking. They came out crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. I served it with homemade remoulade sauce (Tyler Florence recipe using eggless mayo and omitting anchovies), a beautiful oven baked risotto and steamed spinach with lemon. The risotto was perfectly creamy and so comforting. It was a perfect side dish to the crab cakes.


Inside shot.

Risi e Bisi (with carrots!)

This is the Rice and Pea soup from 1,000 Vegan Recipes aka "Risi e Bisi" in Italian. I only had "peas and carrots" in my freezer so I used them. The arborio rice is really creamy and gives the soup a comfort factor. It reminds me of Thai rice porridge. This is dinner tonight after an active day at work.