Veggie Pot Pie

 I used the last of my carrots in this recipe.  It is adapted from a recipe by my favorite vegan chefs, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.  The recipe is actually for a seitan pot pie, which sounds amazing, but my friend's daughter has a gluten sensitivity so our dinners are usually gluten-free.  I just decided not to replace it with anything but some of our turnips (which were incredible, by the way.  The variety was Gold Ball, we ordered them from Fedco). 

This is my adapted recipe, all gluten and dairy-free with a non vegan option, if that's sometimes your thing.  If you want the actual seitan recipe, I highly recommend the Veganomicon by the above authors.  It is my new favorite go-to cookbook.  This gem has politely and without violence to living things nudged The Joy of Cooking out of my number one spot. Sorry, Joy of Cooking!

Crust:
2 cups all-purpose gluten-free flour (or regular)
1/4 cup cornmeal
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cold vegan shortening
1/2-3/4 cold water
2 tsp apple cider vinegar

Filling:

3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup all-purpose gluten-free flour (or regular)
1 large onion, diced
4 large carrots, diced
1/2 pound of potato (your choice here--I recommend red or Yukon gold) diced
Frozen greens, chopped small (or fresh) I used a package from our freezer that I had helpfully labeled "Kale, about a bunch"
1/2 pound turnips, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 cup small sweet peas or corn kernels (I have only had these on hand once and have left the out the other times I've made this and it doesn't suffer too much).  
2/3 cups white wine or vegetable broth
1 1/2 vegetable broth
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp mustard powder
1/2 tsp ground sage.
salt and pepper to taste
*another note here, I have found that using Bell's Seasoning in this is amazing.  It's some sort of blend of sage, rosemary, thyme and maybe oregano...anyway, it's what we New Engenders use to make stuffing magic.  It works in this. Use 1 1/2 tsp.  I also put it in veggie burger recipes to give it a meat-like remembrance).
*one more--I have also added cooked turkey to this, I just mix it in at the end before I pour it into the casserole dish.  It may make the gravy too thin, so I just add about a 1/4-1/2 cup cold water mied with a couple tablespoons of cornstarch. 


Makin' The Crust

Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder in a large mixing bowl.  Add the shortening in small chunks and cut into the flour with knives, a pastry cutter, or forks. Mixture should look like crumbs.

Pour 3/4 cup of the cold water into a bowl with a few ice cubes in it.  Measure out 1/2 a cup and stir the apple cider vinegar into it.  Add the Vinegar water to the dough in a few batches, mixing gently until it holds together when pinched.  Add more, if needed, a tablespoon at a time.

Gently press together into a ball and roll it out on a piece of parchment paper into a similar shape and size as the dish you will be using for your pie (I use a 9 1/2 x 11 x 2 inch Pyrex casserole dish). Slide it onto a cutting board and put some parchment over top.  Place it in your fridge until you need it. 

Preheat oven to 375

For the Filling:

Heat a soup pot over medium heat and add 3 Tbsp of oil and stir in the flour. Stir frequently and toast the flour for about 10 min.  Stir in the onion cook for 4 minutes, add the carrot, potato, turnip, and celery.  Cook for about 8 minutes, stirring frequently.
Pour the wine or broth, stirring to bring up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan.  Cook for about 2 minutes to reduce a bit then stir in the peas, corn, frozen greens, extra zucchini, whatever you have lying around.  Pour in about half of the broth add spices.  Bring mixture to a simmer.  Stir in the remaining broth and bring to a simmer again.  Cook for another 10 minutes until a thin gravy has formed and the potatoes are nearly cooked.  Remove form heat, season with salt and pepper, and pour it into a casserole dish.  Top with the crust, pressing down the edges a little.  Place in the preheated oven and bake for about 45 minutes until bubbly and the crust is browned.

Let cool 10 min before serving.

This thing is pretty good, let me tell you.

Beanballs...

I know.  I wish it had a better name too.  But they are so, so good and I'd like to share them with you.

We are not vegans, but since we are a dairy-free family who tries to eat meat only one to two times a week I find myself turning to vegan cook books quite often.  My favorite vegan chef by far is Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and my favorite book of hers (so far) is The Veganomicaon, and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, and Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar.  She is something of a vegan magician when it comes to deserts.  Nothing is dense and chewy (when it's not supposed to be) and she even has a recipe for frosting that tastes just like frosting! It's a good feeling to watch someone devour a cookie and tell you it's great and then you get to say, "It's vegan!"

The thing I love about the Veganomicon is that she uses real food.  There isn't a lot of fake, factory made "cheeze" or even an abundance of tofu.  The recipes are all made with food, which means a lot to me because I've gotten basically all the food that isn't really out of my life and I'd hate to backslide now.  Don't get me wrong, in order to make that amazing frosting you do need some earth balance or some other vegan margarine, but hey, it's a cupcake, you know?  The other thing about this gigantic cookbook is that it's really funny.  It's like the joy of cooking with a couple of glasses of wine and no animal carving how-to's.  Anyway, I highly recommend it. 

However, I rarely follow a recipe exactly, and this is a version of the recipe she has in this book. It's gluten free and I actually think they have a nicer texture than the ones that have wheat gluten and bread crumbs in it.  They stand up a little better to sauce and reheating. I haven't experimented with adding veggies but I'll make them again in another couple of weeks and I'll give it a try.  They are perfect transports for hidden (frozen) kale.


Beanballs:

Ingredients:
1 (20 ounce) can kidney beans rinsed and drained (about three cups)
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons steak sauce
2 Tablespoons Olive oil (plus some for baking)
2 cloves garlic grated or minced finely
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest (I have never had a lemon handy so I've always left this out)
1/4 cup potato starch flour
1/4 cup corn flour
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

Preheat oven to 375

Mash up the beans with a potato masher and get the stubborn renegades with a  fork. It shouldn't be smooth, you should know that they are made with kidney beans, but no whole ones left.  Add soy sauce, steak sauce, olive oil, garlic, lemon zest potato starch, and corn flour. Use a fork to mix everything together until it well combined and firm. 
Roll the mixture into walnut sized balls (about 12-15) but don't make them too being, smaller is better for texture.  Place them on an oiled cookie sheet and drizzles or brush them with additional oil.  Bake them for 15 minutes, then flip brush with more oil and bake for another 10.  Add them to warm sauce and serve. 

I served them with broccoli polenta, and the sauce I canned this summer.  The polenta went over so-so with the little ones but the bean balls were a hit for dinner and for lunch the next day too!

Egg Pizza (commonly referred to as frittata)

We don't have a lot of quick meal possibilities here.  In my effort to create and consume meals made with food, I have somehow exiled all dinners that can be ready in under a half and hour.  This would be fine with a little forethought, but, alas, there is precious lack of that in the summer days. The summer, with its overabundance of fresh food finds me cowering in my kitchen at 4:45 wondering how I can possibly turning all this raw food into dinner in 15 minutes!  Last year it was even worse.  In my exuberance to preserve food for the winter, I would accidentally process all the food and my kids would have to eat mac 'n cheese. 

Now the problem is more that all my food is frozen or dried.  Or still flour.  I buy all my beans dried, which mean they're at least 45 minutes away from being food (with the help of a pressure cooker), or three days away from being food the old fashioned way.  Rice, same--40 minutes. Polenta's a good quick meal...but with what?! I was even given an electric pasta maker and so it's pretty easy to make pasta, but at 4:45, it doesn't seem easy, and again...with what?  I know I could just have some of these "prepared" foods on hand in case of emergencies...but 4:45 happens everyday!  And it's always an emergency.  When I am at the store I think, "I should just buy a can of black beans," and then I'm all, "No! I should get better at making sure I have beans soaking!"  In the end the only ones who suffer are my mal-nourished children, getting scurvy among all this fresh produce. 

Enter "Egg Pizza."  This dish was recently anointed with this creative name by my daughter.  It's really just a frittata.  This has been a staple meal for us for a long time, but it has reached a new status since there is nothing else here a frazzled mom can make in a jiffy (besides peanut butter and jelly--but sometimes my bread is still flour).  My oldest really loves this meal even though she recently started truing down eggs at breakfast time. She says she doesn't like them.  Add potatoes and serve in a triangle wedge and everyone's happy.  The greatest thing is it seems I can fill it with whatever vegetable I want and she will eat it all! She can practically (no, really she can) polish of an entire 8" skillet by herself.  Chard, spinach, green beans, zucchini...whatever there is I throw it in there and it's gone in a minute.  Of course if there aren't potatoes in it the other ingredients get looked at with a bit more scrutiny, but not much. 

Once upon a time, I used to do the "Cook One A Month" thing and had all my meals planned out in typed-up calendars, in the freezer and ready to go.  I haven't been able to do that since I had my second daughter was born.  I made three months worth of meals before she was born. Just when I thought I had the hang of this two kids thing, I realized that I hadn't had to actually cook dinner yet and panicked a little.  Clearly, I haven't fully recovered.

"Egg Pizza for dinner again!"

I will be planning at least a week in advance for the winter, and I will hopefully be sharing that plan here. 

But for now, I trust in the glory and quickness of the Egg Pizza!

Directions:

Heat 1-3 Tbsp olive oil in a cast iron skillet.
Saute potatoes until browned and the veggies, onions (whatever you like) until soft. 
Beat together 6 eggs 
Pour over veggies.
Cook on low for about 5 minutes or until edges look cooked. 
Place in the oven on low broil until the top is slightly browned (about 5 minutes).
Take out and let cool slightly, slice and serve.  This is good hot or cold. 

Of course this dish becomes magical with the addition of any kind of cheese.  We are mostly dairy free over here but feel free to add about a 1/2 cup of whatever makes you smile.

The Best Tomato Soup IN THE WORLD!

Well, I haven't had all the tomato soup so maybe I can't know for sure, but this soup is pretty awesome and we have eaten a whole mess load of it in the past month.  I got the inspiration for it here. But we are pretty much dairy-free over here so I had to tweak the recipe a bit. 

Ingredients:

About 6 pounds of tomatoes (any tomato will work, but Roma tomatoes will have more meat in them and give you a slightly thicker soup)
3 Tablespoons of olive oil
1 large onion
4 cloves of garlic (more or less to taste)
4 large carrots
1 cup cashew cream* (or heavy cream, or light cream)
salt, pepper, herbs such as oregano, basil, thyme, or whatever you like.  I just put in an ice cube of pesto from the freezer

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 
Cut tomatoes in half, trim the stem end and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper cut side down.  Don't worry about peeling them, when they're done roasting the skins will slip right off.  Roast for 30 minutes.  Let cool slightly so you can handle the skins without damaging yourself.  Pull off the skins.

Heat the olive oil in a soup pot and saute onion and garlic until soft.  Add carrots. Add tomatoes.  cook on a low simmer until carrots are soft. 

Alternately you can skip all the steps after roasting the tomatoes and throw everything in the crock pot and cook on low for 2-4 hours until the carrots are tender.

Use an immersion blender or a blender in batches to puree the soup. 

Stop here if you'd like to freeze the soup.

Add cashew cream (or the cream you're using) and drop in your frozen pesto, if using.  Heat the soup back up slowly.  If you use real cream make extra sure not to let it boil. 

Yay!

Cashew Cream?

Cashew cream is the best thing in the whole world if you avoid dairy and even if you don't!  I have used it in this soup and in a corn chowder and neither of the soups have that, "this should be cream, but clearly we're dealing with hippies with some sort of dairy-free notion and they refuse to use the good stuff" taste.  Really, it adds something magical to soups.  You make it using raw cashews , which don't have the strong flavor of cashews you're thinking about.  It's thick and creamy and gives the soup a deep flavor. 

This is how you make it:
Measure 2 cups raw whole cashews (pieces tend to dry out) and cover in cool water.  Put bowl in the fridge over night.  Drain the water and put the cashews in a blender and cover with water (about an inch over the cashews).   Blend it until it's smooth.  I have heard the suggestion to strain it if there are any tiny pieces in it your blender couldn't take care of, but I never had that issue and my blender wasn't the best.  Try it!  It's sooo good!